Bad Moon Rising

There's a fine line between a conspiracy theory and a deliberate act by powerful parties to change the world to their favor.  Whether one believes in one theory and not another can vary wildly on personal background, personal politics, and education.  Surely there are those out there who have no trouble accepting that we landed on the moon but at same time vehemently maintain that 9/11 was an inside job. My own personal feelings are such that in order for something to qualify as a conspiracy theory the reward, or motivation, to the conspirators most be exponential to the number of parties involved.  If a conspiracy requires only one or two individuals to act nefariously, the heft of the motivation needn't be particular great to render it a plausible conspiracy theory.  If, however, the successful perpetration of a conspiracy requires a great many individuals to act against society in a conscious manner, then the motivation or reward must be considerable for all involved to remain silent and committed to the cause.  Unless of course the conspirators feel they are sufficiently powerful that they don't really care if their conspiratorial actions are well known.

Such is the case with those behind the insidious Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA.  The goal of this internationally organized treaty would be to further the interest of corporations whose only chance of continuing to survive as they have in previous decades is to ensure that they can treat their customers as criminals first and consumers second.  ACTA has received little to no attention in the mainstream American press because it has not yet been completed and is much more complex than the 45 second sound-byte today's media affords such topics.  What has been leaked from behind the closed door negotiations is almost exclusively bad.  First and foremost, this trade agreement is designed to give intellectual property owners the ability to shut down users it claims are stealing their property, without the burden of proof or an appeal to the judicial system.  ACTA would also compel signatory nations to enforce border crossing searches for intellectual property infringement.  Want to go to Canada?  Better not have any of that Eve 6 album you got off of Napster in 8th grade on your iPod!  "Canada would never do that, eh!" you say, "they're just too darn nice!"  Of course they would.  These trade agreements are designed such that those member nations that did not participate in proactive searches for IP theft would suffer trade penalties, while the overall incentives built into the agreement put nations who do not sign the agreement at a significant disadvantage.  In short, ACTA puts a huge asterisk right next to the Fourth Amendment.*   

The worst part about this isn't what's in ACTA, it's how ACTA works.  ACTA is a product of corporate lawyers and lobbyists from multinational corporations with access to the highest levels of the world's governments.  It does not protect people.  It doesn't even protect nations.  All that ACTA does is protect those entities whose interest is not in the civil foundations set down in the constitutions of the countries they operate in, but in the market share and margins they can maintain by keeping you locked into their product line--by force, if necessary.  Worse still, there's really not a damn thing you can do about it.  The representative body of our government, and specifically the Senate, is unlikely to get involved.  An executive trade agreement does not require Senate approval, and whether or not the Senate even has the power to review or terminate such an agreement is a constitutional grey area.  Which is exactly why this trade agreement is being negotiated in secret and not being passed as domestic legislation in this or almost any other country--Singapore being the only exception I am aware of, but they're already essentially a fascist state.  Political and public support for such draconian IP protections has been weak to non-existant, so the corporations who refuse to adapt to modern technologies and cling to their pre-Internet business models have decided to make an end-run around the legislative bodies of the world's nations and simply engineer a trade agreement--through the inertia of their powerful friends and large bank accounts--that implements the tools they need in its provisions.  

President Obama's administration has been poor to awful on this subject, and simply pointing out the unlikelihood that any other administration would act less callously doesn't make it right.  Our media has failed to warn us, and frankly I don't think there are enough Americans actively paying enough attention to make a difference even if they had raised the red flags and rung all the bells.  If ACTA moves forward with these provisions and the US signs, then it will be one more shudder in the death rattles of representative government by the people and a shot in the arm to government by fiduciary responsibility.  

*Actually, there's already a huge asterisk next to the Fourth Amendment thanks to the Dept. of Homeland Security and the search provisions they put in place regarding travelers entering the US and their digital property.