Bay 12 Games Forum

How can you make whole-world law?

The UN already does this (or tries), up to and including ordering countries not to research nuclear warfare and other weapons. Why should you be so surprised when quote-on-quote 'worldwide' treaties are made to regulate other things?

@ Neonivek:

You do realize that if this gets passed, it would be several orders of magnitude WORSE than the Patriot Act, right?

I'm doing my part by posting it wherever I can to make sure word gets out. 

So, check this out, fellow gamers. It's freakin' scary. Actually, let me revise that statement: it's fucking scary.

ETA: Wow, this junk is even on wiki already.

    Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACTA_treaty

    ACTA would establish a new international legal framework that countries can join on a voluntary basis[1] and would create its own governing body outside existing international institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the United Nations.[4][12] Citing a fact sheet published by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and the USTR's 2008 Special 301 report the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) states that the goal of ACTA is to create a new standard of intellectual property enforcement beyond the existing standards in the TRIPs Agreement and to increase international cooperation, including the sharing of information between signatory countries' law enforcement agencies.[2]

    According to the European Commission the goal of ACTA is to establish an international framework that improves the enforcement of existing intellectual property right laws. The Commission states that ACTA is to create improved international standards for actions against large-scale infringements of intellectual property. To this end ACTA will have three primary components: "international cooperation"; "enforcement practices"; and "legal framework for enforcement of intellectual property rights". The "ultimate objective" of ACTA is that large emerging economies, "where intellectual property rights enforcement could be improved, such as China, Russia or Brazil, will sign up to the global pact".[8] According to New Zealand ACTA aims to facilitate a "strong and modern legal framework so that law enforcement agencies, the judiciary, and private citizens have the most up-to-date tools necessary to effectively bring counterfeiters and pirates to justice." Areas for possible ACTA provisions include: criminal enforcement, border measures, civil enforcement, optical disc piracy, and Internet distribution and information technology.[13]

http://www.blacklistednews.com/news-6197-0-32-32--.html

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad. It says:

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

* Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

H/T @miccolis, @ilabra & @exposur3

MORE:
The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together

From EFF.org:

Negotiations on the highly controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement start in a few hours in Seoul, South Korea. This week’s closed negotiations will focus on “enforcement in the digital environment.” Negotiators will be discussing the Internet provisions drafted by the US government. No text has been officially released but as Professor Michael Geist and IDG are reporting, leaks have surfaced. The leaks confirm everything that we feared about the secret ACTA negotiations. The Internet provisions have nothing to do with addressing counterfeit products, but are all about imposing a set of copyright industry demands on the global Internet, including obligations on ISPs to adopt Three Strikes Internet disconnection policies, and a global expansion of DMCA-style TPM laws.

As expected, the Internet provisions will go beyond existing international treaty obligations and follow the language of Article 18.10.30 of the recent U.S. – South Korea Free Trade Agreement. We see three points of concern.

First, according to the leaks, ACTA member countries will be required to provide for third-party (Internet Intermediary) liability. This is not required by any of the major international IP treaties – not by the 1994 Trade Related Aspects of IP agreement, nor the WIPO Copyright and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. However, US copyright owners have long sought this. (For instance, see page 19 of the Industry Functional Advisory Committee report on the 2003 US- Singapore Free Trade Agreement noting the need for introducing a system of ISP liability). (Previously available at http://www.ustr.gov/...r_reports.htm.)

Second and more importantly, ACTA will include some limitations on Internet Intermediary liability. Many ACTA negotiating countries already have these regimes in place: the US, EU, Australia, Japan, South Korea. To get the benefit of the ACTA safe harbors, Internet intermediaries will need to follow notice and takedown regimes, and put in place policies to deter unauthorized storage and transmission of allegedly copyright infringing content.

Read the rest here

More stuff:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/181312/trade_talks_hone_in_on_internet_abuse_and_isp_liability.html

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/

The United States has drafted the chapter under enormous secrecy, with selected groups granted access under strict non-disclosure agreements and other countries (including Canada) given physical, watermarked copies designed to guard against leaks.

Despite the efforts to combat leaks, information on the Internet chapter has begun to emerge (just as they did with the other elements of the treaty).  Sources say that the draft text, modeled on the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement, focuses on following five issues:

1.   Baseline obligations inspired by Article 41 of the TRIPs which focuses on the enforcement of intellectual property.

2.   A requirement to establish third-party liability for copyright infringement.

3.   Restrictions on limitations to 3rd party liability (ie. limited safe harbour rules for ISPs).  For example, in order for ISPs to qualify for a safe harbour, they would be required establish policies to deter unauthorized storage and transmission of IP infringing content.  Provisions are modeled under the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, namely Article 18.10.30.  They include policies to terminate subscribers in appropriate circumstances.  Notice-and-takedown, which is not currently the law in Canada nor a requirement under WIPO, would also be an ACTA requirement.

4.   Anti-circumvention legislation that establishes a WIPO+ model by adopting both the WIPO Internet Treaties and the language currently found in U.S. free trade agreements that go beyond the WIPO treaty requirements.  For example, the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement specifies the permitted exceptions to anti-circumvention rules.  These follow the DMCA model (reverse engineering, computer testing, privacy, etc.) and do not include a fair use/fair dealing exception.  Moreover, the free trade agreement clauses also include a requirement to ban the distribution of circumvention devices.  The current draft does not include any obligation to ensure interoperability of DRM.

5.   Rights Management provisions, also modeled on U.S. free trade treaty language.

Revised somewhat: it appears you CAN find this on google by just typing in 'secret copyright treaty leaked'. Google's search algorithm just sucks more than I thought.

So, after much waiting, I started this game today. I was a big fan of the Gothic games (1 and 2, anyway), and I've been looking forward to Risen for a while. However, I've avoided holding my breath because I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be presented with yet another eye-candy-with-no-substance game.

It's clear almost from the get-go that Risen is the real spiritual successor to Gothic 1 and 2 that G3 wasn't. The graphics, which deserve mention, are absolutely freakin' breathtaking - however, strangely enough, they load up and are MUCH less memory-heavy than G3's were. My rather mediocre system with a 9600 GT card handles everything on 'high' settings without any lag. And it looks fantastic.

The gameplay is very 'back to basics' Gothic-esque. If you liked the style of G1/2, you'll like Risen. The combat system is what G1/2/3's should have been. It's TOUGH, of course, just as it's meant to be, and you'll find your ass handed to you by all manner of woodland creatures in the beginning of the game. But the controls themselves are much more fluid and responsive than they were in the Gothic games.

It's worth warning people that the particular style of this type of game isn't for everyone. You'll die. A lot. And the game is more about exploring and adventuring than some cosmic good/evil struggle.

Anyway, I'd highly advise giving it a go to anyone who enjoys CRPGs (or action RPGs). I'm off to go play more now. 

Heh. Looks like another KOTOR-clone from Bioware. Don't get me wrong, KOTOR I and II were great games, and I even liked Mass Effect... to a degree... but it's kind of annoying how game companies just keep churning out clones of the one game that got popular 10 years ago. Originality is obviously not highly valued in the corporate gaming world.

I'll be playing Risen, myself... I'll take a Gothic clone over a KOTOR clone any day. 

(If only for the fact that the moral choices in Jowood games tend to be somewhat more ambiguous. Seriously, did Bioware actually hire someone to write the lines of the Raging Elven-Floozy-Raping Douchebag in that movie, or did they just steal them from some poor thirteen year old nerd?)

On maps with many Z-levels, I find it somewhat tedious at times to sift through 40 levels of ramps for whatever reason (whether to focus on invaders, a wild animal, something I'm building, blah blah).

It would be nice to be able to set 'quick zoom' spots that would correlate to keyboard shortcuts (F2-F9 would be handy for this). If there are several points on your map that you find yourself jumping between constantly, just press the appropriate quick zoom button and you'll immediately have your map recenter on the point you've associated with the specific button.

Yeah, TOME is a great roguelike - better, IMHO, than many of the bigger and more popular games (some of which I enjoy, but few of which actually provide the same amount of fun).

I'm severely addicted to playing Lost Soul characters, especially underpowered (read: Yeek) warriors. Most of the time you die, of course, but the few times you do succeed... it's awesome.

For more info: http://www.worldofgothic.com/

Searched for a topic on this, surprised there wasn't one (just a few odd mentions here and there).

I've played the entire series. Gothic 1 and 2 are undoubtedly some of the most well-realized, immersive games ever created, and they stand in my memory to this day as two of my favorite games of all time. The fighting system does take a bit of time to get used to, but once you do, it actually becomes fun.

Also, if you manage to beat the games, you'll have some great memories of your first encounters with things like Shadowbeasts... and how you got horribly mauled by them as a newbie.

Gothic 3 was still good, but somehow seemed to lose some of the charm the original two had. I'd still recommend playing it, but only as an afterthought.