Pirate Party Explains Import of Leaked Sections from Secret ACTA Negotiations

From the US Pirate Party blog: 

I know that many of you have been reading about the secret ACTA negotiations that are going on currently, and we found a leaked portion of those agreements, the section that is probably the most important to us in our circles: The Digital Environment section (Article 2.17). I felt that it was important to you to explain what all this legal talk means, and how it effects you . . . The United States of America's Copyright Law will be dictated by the laws of everyone else. . . . The United States laws on how we handle criminals can be circumvented by declaring people who commit copyright infringement 'in violation of international law', and thus would be subject to a different form of due-process and punishment than traditional federal and state laws would enforce. . . . Websites like YouTube (and especially smaller alternatives) will be put out out of business, because they will be forced to develop expensive systems, and spend their time and resources on copyright infringement prevention . . . . There have been a variety of criticisms of the WIPO Treaty, including that it is too broad (for example in its prohibition of circumvention of technical protection measures, even where such circumvention is used in the pursuit of legal and fair use rights) and that it applies a 'one size fits all' standard to all signatory countries despite widely differing stages of economic development and knowledge industry. . . . Even if you want to make backups of the movies and music you already own, you can be brought up on criminal charges. If you are a linux user, you would not be able to legally watch DVDs on your computer.