By Porter Darby
Round Table editor

I like being able to use the Internet. I really do. I like to be able to check my email, watch stupid videos, browse Wikipedia, or do any of the numerous other things available on the web.

But a small group of people might be changing that.

A recently leaked part of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) could put a halt to that Internet that I love so much. The ACTA is an agreement secretly being proposed by numerous countries to curb counterfeiting actions by criminals

The leaked digital chapter of the super-secretive ACTA agreement defines the results, for criminals and various accomplices, with copyright infringement.

Now, I may not know a ton of legal-ese, but I know enough to understand the gist of the document; if you infringe copyright, you are in trouble.

Not only does the document try to stop copyright, but it strikes right at the heart of the issue – if an Internet service provider receives “legally sufficient notice of alleged infringement” (a letter from a company saying a person at a certain IP address has infringed), and no “legally sufficient response from the relevant subscriber,” the ISP will either remove material or disable access for the appropriate individual.

Now, I want you to take a step back for a minute – a company will send a notification to an ISP saying a certain person has infringed. The “accused” must indicate that the accusation is false, either through a mistake or misidentification. There is no time limit; there is no set wait time. This is a massive problem.

For people who don’t infringe copyright at all, they should be fine. If a company doesn’t have a reason to send a notification, there is should be no reason to worry. Should.

But what if a company sends a mass notification asserting that multiple IPs are infringing; I might be one of the people who are included in the list of IPs. I’m not infringing, but if my neighbors are, my ISP might shut off my Internet – that is, unless I respond to the notice within a very short time, anything from two seconds to two years.

And this isn’t that the ISP wants to shut you down – you are too valuable as a customer. It’s that if they don’t, the government will start bringing them to court under facilitating copyright infringement, so they must comply or take a great risk.

In the end, a company shut you out of the internet if they want if this agreement passes. We can’t let that happen.