Politicians Worldwide Asking Questions About ACTA 101
An anonymous reader writes "Legislators around the world are demanding more information on the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. US Senator Ron Wyden demanded answers in a letter to the USTR (PDF) this week, ACTA arose in the UK House of Commons yesterday,
and French Deputy Nicolas Dupont-Aignan raised ACTA questions in the National Assembly late last year. All of this comes on top of earlier efforts from Swedish Member of the European Parliament Jens Holm, as well as New Zealand MP Clare Curran, who has repeatedly raised concerns about ACTA, and NDP MP Charlie Angus, who posed questions about ACTA in the Canadian House of Commons late last year."
It's good to have the spotlight shone on ACTA.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even though the spotlight's being shone on the dodgy practices behind ACTA, what's the bet that this will still result in just plain old stonewalling until the final agreements have been ratified by treaty, and all is needed is legislation in each member state?
ACTA comes from utterly fraudulent governance, and not from the public's mandate.
Re:Not just Wyden - call your Senators (Score:1, Insightful)
What is this, somoe kind of international health care reform?
Re:It's good to have the spotlight shone on ACTA.. (Score:5, Insightful)
ACTA comes from utterly fraudulent governance, and not from the public's mandate.
True enough, but you're leaving something out. ACTA comes from the union of fraudulent governments which are owned and operated by multinational corporations. These multinationals have no allegiance to anyone or anything except money and power. This agreement or treaty or whatever they want to call it is just one symptom of a much larger problem.
Re:It's good to have the spotlight shone on ACTA.. (Score:4, Insightful)
what's the bet that this will still result in just plain old stonewalling until the final agreements have been ratified by treaty, and all is needed is legislation in each member state?
In a few of the member states, all thatt would be needed to pass said legislation would be the approval of the politicians that had just been stonewalled. Lets hope there's still some working democracies out there.
I'll correct this post when my cynicism wakes up
The Senate is Taking Refuge in Audacity (Score:3, Insightful)
World fascism is about three years away, and there's nothing we can do but watch. Have fun.
Re:It's good to have the spotlight shone on ACTA.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Checks and Balances . . . ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Franken's staffers seemed particularly bothered by the fact that since ACTA is being negotiated as an executive agreement, they neither see negotiating texts (which are being done in secret) nor have any chance to review the agreement before it has the force of law.
I thought that the US Government had a system of Checks and Balances (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checks_and_balances#Checks_and_balances), where each branch of the Government (Legislative, Executive, Judicial) was supposed to keep an eye on the other ones. The above sentence seems to imply that the executive branch can make laws without the approval of the other branches.
Can someone explain this to me? What exactly is an "executive agreement?" Could this be challenged by the Supreme Court? It seems like Congress has no say at all in the matter.
Re:It's good to have the spotlight shone on ACTA.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Corporations are made of people, and people still bleed.
It's good to have the spotlight shone on apathy. (Score:4, Insightful)
"ACTA comes from utterly fraudulent governance, and not from the public's mandate."
And which public would that be? The one's that take their civic responsibility seriously, or the public that yells at their politician through the TV? Your complaints about "fraudulent governance" or "public mandate" would actually mean something if people were actually participating and the entire failure was they were simply being overpowered. But it's rather hard to be sympathetic over someone who simply lies there and takes it. Get back with me on "fraudulent governance" and "public mandate" once the global public grows a backbone and actually starts understanding that mandates don't come from silence, but faulty governance does.
Re:It's good to have the spotlight shone on ACTA.. (Score:3, Insightful)
French Fries. (Score:3, Insightful)
Politicians around the world have been so relaxed that the public accepted that they can get away with anything, like the French royalties and nobilities used to be.
Eventually somewhere, somehow the threshold will be crossed and heads will roll.
Interesting how those who expect heads to roll don't include theirs.
It's good to have the spotlight shone on dubbing. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why we have what's know as a "force multiplier". That's why one person with a P2P connection can cause so much strife. Compare to one person with a high-speed dubbing tape deck of old.
Re: Corporations are made of people (Score:3, Insightful)
the copyright bubble (Score:5, Insightful)
I've posted most of this before on slashdot; This is just a cleanup of previous posts -- it has details of why the ACTA is secret.
A Private War
I used to read stuff like this and get upset. But then I realized that my entire generation knows it's baloney. They can't explain it intellectually. They have no real understanding of the subtleties of the law, or arguments about artists' rights or any of that. All they really understand is there is are large corporations charging private citizens tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, for downloading a few songs here and there. And it's intuitively obvious that it can't possibly be worth that.
An entire generation has disregarded copyright law. It doesn't matter whether copyright is useful or not anymore. They could release attack dogs and black helicopters and it wouldn't really change people's attitudes. It won't matter how many websites they shut down or how many lives they ruin, they've already lost the culture war because they pushed too hard and alienated people wholesale. The only thing these corporations can do now is shift the costs to the government and other corporations under color of law in a desperate bid for relevance. And that's exactly what they're doing.
What does this mean for the average person? It means that we google and float around to an ever-changing landscape of sites. We communicate by word of mouth via e-mail, instant messaging, and social networking sites where the latest fix of free movies, music, and games are. If you don't make enough money to participate in the artificial marketplace of entertainment goods -- you don't exclude yourself from it, you go to the grey market instead. All the technological, legal, and philosophical barriers in the world amount to nothing. There is a small core of people that understand the implications of what these interests are doing and continually search for ways to liberate their goods and services for "sale" on the grey market. It is (economically and politically) identical to the Prohibition except that instead of smuggling liquor we are smuggling digital files.
Billions have been spent combating a singularily simple idea that was spawned thirty years ago by a bunch of socially-inept disaffected teenagers working out of their garages: Information wants to be free. Except information has no wants -- it's the people who want to be free. And while we can change attitudes about smoking with aggressive media campaigns, or convince them to cast their votes for a certain candidate, selling people on goods and services they don't really need, what we cannot change is the foundations upon which a generation has built a new society out of.
Culture Connection
Just as we have physical connections to each other, we now have digital connections to one another. These connections actively resist attempts at control because it impedes the development and nature of the relationships we have with one another. People naturally seek the methods which give them the greatest freedom to express themselves to each other. That is a force of nature (ours, specifically) that has evolved out of our interconnectedness. Copyright law has been twisted to serve as a bulwark against the logical result of increasing social interconnectedness between people and computers: Access an ever-increasing amount of humanity's history, knowledge, and culture. Ultimately, this is a battle they cannot win -- they can only delay, building dams and locks to stem the tide, but they will fail. It's how, when, and where it fails that will decide the fate of economies worldwide.
Every law advantages one group while disadvantaging another. And every engine, be it physical or social, functions because an energy imbalance exists and by moving energy from one potential to another, we can skim some off to do useful work. Laws work the same way -- by creating artificial differences between groups of people, society produces goods and services. This is why we will always have new Prohibitions. It's not a comfor
Re:Checks and Balances . . . ? (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact ACTA is secret and isn't concerned with matters vital to national security is all we need to know that this shouldn't be allowed. I am thinking such secrecy is intended for things like agreements over nuclear weapons and wars. Though those do not have to be and shouldn't be secret either, it's more along the lines that if the other parties to negotiations insist on secrecy, the US can agree to that for the sake of getting them to negotiate at all. So those questions about whether ACTA has 3 strikes provisions, or really is within the bounds of existing law are academic.
Now, how to stop it? A preemptive law might do it. Congress could pass a law that clarifies acceptable use of executive secrecy. If lives are not at stake, then the executive may not negotiate in secret. But, I can just see them making the ridiculous claim that lives are at stake, or even tossing in a minor missile or bomb agreement the way movie producers throw in a four letter word solely to upgrade a rating from G to PG. So, perhaps require some proof of such an assertion, and non biased and independent judgment of that proof.
Also, persuade Obama that it's not worth it. Why is he even thinking about this ACTA garbage? And why won't he lift the secrecy? What possible hold could these ACTA backers have over the President to both keep him mum and get him to even look at it and spend time on it? Let the President know that this is not a minor matter and that he can't just blithely allow and do things in unjustified secrecy while everyone else is focused on other matters. If a group of Congressmen told him to forget this heinous secrecy or else face opposition over those other matters, or something like the above bill becoming law, especially with enough support to override a veto, I expect he'd cave. He may even want to be "forced" in this matter, and needs Congress to show a little life and give him the excuses he needs to tell these ACTA backers that he tried but was thwarted. When the Republicans ran Congress, they pretty much gave Bush carte blanche, and the result was poorer governance, as explained here: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/62091/norman-j-ornstein-and-thomas-e-mann/when-congress-checks-out [foreignaffairs.com] . I hope the Democrats are a little smarter, and don't make that same mistake.
Same problem as software auditing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not just Wyden - call your Senators (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's good to have the spotlight shone on apathy (Score:3, Insightful)
Torches and pitchforks (Score:1, Insightful)
At some point, we have democracy by proxy. It seems that day has come. Secret back room deals are not democratic. We won't put up with them. Ratification and 'done deals' can and will be undone, and pushy companies will find they have nothing to sell. China isn't all that interested in kowtowing to American IP interests. There was a time when China would put up with American demands. There is $700 Billion (or is it trillion) worth of Chinese pressure that the Americans have to blink at. ACTA? Not if the Chinese say no. The word Ratified has a similar sounding first letter as the words Repealed and Recall. The back room politicians wanting this (paid shill) should think twice. Getting paid is one thing. Losing your job, and your pension, and no prospects of a cushy job later should be something they think about too. These are the post-bailout days. Corporations wanting freebies are no longer welcome. If a business is dying, then it should die already. Noone has to sweep the streets after the horses anymore, there are hardly any buggywhip manufacturers anymore, and noone fixes typewriters anymore. Commercial music sales on CD is flat? Really? I remember when disks were $22. Last I saw, a new CD was $9. I know a lot of places where its $2. Some places are even less than that. People are only so willing to put up with crap. At some point, ACTA and other back room crap will die.
Re:the copyright bubble (Score:3, Insightful)
I love the generation argument. So simple, yet so true. With their braindead enforcement attempts, these content sharks have sown the seeds of their own destruction.
Re:the copyright bubble (Score:1, Insightful)
Later European Parliament question (Score:3, Insightful)
The summary says: "All of this comes on top of earlier efforts from Swedish Member of the European Parliament Jens Holm, [...]"
Well, Jens Holm has not been a member of the European Parliament for half a year, and his question is almost a year old.
It would be a lot more relevant to link to the ACTA question [europa.eu] from November of Swedish Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party, Christian Engström.
the addict bubble. (Score:1, Insightful)
An interesting bit of prose...except for one problem. People are buying and consuming, even if illegal, what the big media generates. We can talk all we want about revolutions and seed sowing, but the reality is that the public at large is still addicted to mass media content. It's kind of hard, historically or otherwise to call that a failure. Regardless of what laws they get passed, they will only be considered failures when the public at large stops consuming in whatever form their content takes.
Re:It's good to have the spotlight shone on apathy (Score:2, Insightful)
Soapbox - failed
next option... well, The Conservatives have proven willing to sell Canadian citizens and their rights. The Liberals, as usual, are internally divided and as such will bury their heads in the sand and hope it blows over. The NDP... well they get THIS issue right, but they have the financial management skills of my 12 year old with a credit card, and lately every time they get the chance to do something run away like frightened children.
I suppose we could try building a new party... we've been known to do that from time to time up here...
Ballot box - inconclusive
Hey I have an Idea to fix the recession! You guys down there have any bullets?