社交媒体再次发力，打假协议胎死腹中

    传媒业控制互联网行为的最新尝试遭遇滑铁卢：《反假冒贸易协定》（Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, ACTA）遭到欧洲议会否决，直接被宣判了死刑。这个结果对大型版权所有人及其政治盟友不啻当头棒喝，但很可能他们并未意识到：社交媒体已经强大到足以威胁他们的计划。他们的反对者现在拥有前所未有的优势，可以迅速组织起来。

    欧洲议会上周三以压倒多数投票否决了ACTA。这个协定意图建立跨境保护知识产权的标准，不仅适用于传媒产品，比如通过互联网传送的音乐和电影，还适用于商标和专利。也就是说，它会打击那些试图将仿冒古驰（Gucci）手袋和假药运往他国的罪犯。

    公众对ACTA广泛而强烈的不满主要源于两点：最初的谈判太过隐秘，而协定条文又惊人的含糊不清。谈判通过密室会谈进行，没有听取大众以及公众利益团体的意见。条款太过模糊，根本无法判定将采取何种执法手段。批评者警告说，该协定将培养一种被自由软件基金会（Free Software Foundation）称之为“监视和怀疑的文化”。有个说法，按照ACTA，海关官员可以合法地随机抽查个人使用的iPod里存储的内容。传媒业对此嗤之以鼻。但其真实性已经不重要，这种危言耸听之所以有市场还是由于协定的模棱两可使得怀疑甚嚣尘上。

    在某种意义上，ACTA与《禁止网络盗版法案》（SOPA）和《保护知识产权法案》（PIPA）非常相似。同样是由于来自公众和互联网行业的强烈抨击，这两项法案今年早些时候分别在众议院和参议院被搁置。特别是SOPA，人们担心它到底将如何执行。与此类似，ACTA要求互联网服务提供商（ISP）对其网络上所传递的内容负责。它甚至会让ISP担负起知识产权警察的职责，为ISP收集客户信息提供免责规定，哪怕客户仅仅是被怀疑传送未经授权的材料。批评者还指责说，像SOPA一样，ACTA并没有将正当法律程序写入协定中。

    ACTA的某些细节、特别是谈判的隐秘性已经泄露，立即爆发了大规模的抗议。各色人等并肩作战：在波兰，人们上街游行示威；而黑客组织匿名者（Anonymous）的成员则对商业机构和政府发动了网络攻击。

    所有抗议活动的迅速组织，即便是临时性的，也都是建立在社交媒体的基础上。即使五年前，这样的群体运动都难以实现；而退回十年，则更加无法想象。不管是好是坏（很可能两者兼有），Twitter和Facebook所提供的网络交流的普遍性和易用性一经成为这类行动的基石。政客和知识产权的拥有者在制定执行政策时必须好好考虑这一点。作为出发点，应该直接对付奸商而不是无辜的第三方，同时还要确保任何法律和贸易协定应遵循基本的民主原则，比如正当的法律程序。

    The apparent death of ACTA, the media industry's latest attempt to control what can and cannot be done on the Internet should (but probably won't) be a wake-up call to the big copyright-owners and their political benefactors. Social media has become powerful enough to thwart their plans. And, their adversaries now have a method of quickly organizing themselves, an advantage they didn't have before.

    The European Parliament on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. It would have created standards for enforcing intellectual property rights across borders. ACTA would have applied not only to copyrights on media products like music and movies transmitted over the Internet, but also to trademarks and patents. So it also targeted people trying to move knockoff Gucci handbags and fake pharmaceuticals from one country to another.

    There are two essential reasons for the widespread public outcry that ACTA has met with: the initial secrecy of the negotiations and the stunning vagueness of the agreement's language. The negotiations were held behind closed doors, without input from either the general public or from public-interest groups. And the terms were so murky that it was impossible to tell what enforcement tactics would and would not be allowed. Critics warned that it would have created what the Free Software Foundation called "a culture of surveillance and suspicion." One example, which the media industry called laughable, was that under ACTA, the content of people's iPods could be legally scrutinized at random by customs officials. Whether that's true or not is almost beside the point -- such warnings were taken seriously because the pact's vagaries left a lot of room for doubt.

    In some ways, ACTA was similar to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act(PIPA), two bills in the House and Senate, respectively, that were shelved early this year in the face of massive criticism from the public and the Internet industry. SOPA, in particular, also left people wondering what enforcement might look like. ACTA could similarly have made Internet service providers liable for what was transmitted over their networks. It might even have turned ISPs into IP cops by granting them "safe harbor" for collecting information on customers who were merely suspected of trafficking in unauthorized materials. And, critics said, like SOPA, there was no due process of law built into the pact.

    Once some of the details of ACTA were revealed -- particularly the secrecy of the talks --protests erupted. Those came from both bad actors and good: People actually marched in the streets in places like Poland. And the online vandals of Anonymous launched cyber attacks against businesses and governments.

    The speedy organization of all the protests, ad hoc though it was, was made possible by social media. Even five years ago, such a groundswell would have been difficult to achieve. Ten years ago, it would have been impossible. For good or ill (probably some of both), the ubiquity and ease-of-use afforded by the likes of Twitter and Facebook are making such actions possible. Politicians and owners of intellectual property would do well to keep that in mind as they try to create enforcement policies. A good start would be to more directly target profiteers rather than innocent third parties, and to ensure that any laws or trade agreements adhere to basic democratic principles, such as due process of law.