Internet under attack

www.boingboing.net...

Someone has uploaded a PDF to a Google Group that is claimed to be the proposal for Internet copyright enforcement that the USA has put forward for ACTA, the secret copyright treaty whose seventh round of negotiations just concluded in Guadalajara, Mexico. This reads like it probably is genuine treaty language, and if it is the real US proposal, it is the first time that this material has ever been visible to the public. According to my source, the US proposal is the current version of the treaty as of the conclusion of the Mexico round.

I've read it through a few times and it reads a lot like DMCA-plus. It contains, for example, a duty to technology firms to shut down infringement where they have "actual knowledge" that such is taking place. This argument was put forward in the Grokster case, and as Fred von Lohmann argued then, this is a potentially deadly burden to place on technology companies: in the offline world Xerox has "actual knowledge" that its technology is routinely used to infringe copyright at Kinko's outlets around the world -- should that create a duty to stop providing sales and service to Kinko's?

I know this is mostly directed at pirating seemingly, but this opens the gate for even more hardcore watching, enforcement and regulation on the internet by TPTB.

Yeah, I can see that. Regardless, the internet has a lot bigger problem than that. Talking about the future data congestion here. You imagine what the internet would be like in the future if the problem is not immediately remedied. With the all new mobile broadband gadgetry that is coming soon, the great internet traffic jam is bound to happen eventually.