European Parliament All But Rejects ACTA 248
An anonymous reader writes "European Parliament today adopted Written Declaration 12/2010 which basically tells the Commission to all but drop the negotiations. From the article: 'Citizens from all around Europe helped to raise awareness about ACTA among Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) by collecting, one by one, more than 369 [of the MEPs'] signatures. With Written Declaration 12/20103, the European Parliament as a whole takes a firm position to oppose the un-democratic process of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and its content harmful to fundamental freedoms and the Internet ecosystem.'"
About Fucking Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:369? (Score:3, Insightful)
I noticed that too, but I'm guessing that it refers to the amount of MEPs who got somehow involved. That would be 369 out of 736 MEPs, a significant number. Since this is EU stuff, there's always the possibility that anything you read has been hastily translated from another language, adding additional noise.
I hope someone who isn't ignorant like me can clarify the signature thing though.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:5, Insightful)
The EU blows hot and cold but there are times that I am very grateful that they have the back bone to stand up to the US. Our prime minister has taken over from Blair as the one who gets on his knees and blows who ever is in the White House.
Re:Of course, this doesn't stop (Score:3, Insightful)
"copycounterfeiting"? They even go after people who make copies of copies? That's just... wow... ;)
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:5, Insightful)
EU has been impressing me lately. They seem to actually care about good governance sometimes. That's one hell of a lot more than I can say about the USA and the "land of the corporate free reign".
Here, let me fix that for you...
- Dan.
Re:Wow, really impressed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So, can I sigh in relief now? (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't over? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a European I am glad to read this. However, I am no sure if this is over yet. The cynic in me says: there wasn't enough money flowing to some representatives or some representatives want to advance their own agenda a little bit more. I guess it is time to negotiate behind closed doors a little bit more until we reach an agreement.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
A democratic institution representing the desires and best interests of it's electorate?
What gives?
Too many people to effectively bribe.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people are freer than others.
Sadly, corporations now have the rights of people.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes without most of the responsibilities that go with it.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:5, Insightful)
without any of the obligations...
Taxes? pass them on to customers.
Service? Who do they draft?
License fees? pass them on to customers.
Liability? We bought laws to protect us from our own greed and sins.
All the *priveleges* without any of the responsibility.
Now just watch (Score:5, Insightful)
Now let's all just watch the commission ignore the requests of the parliament. Unless it's really not important at all, of course.
Power in the EU is not with the parliament, but with the commission. Even after the treaty both executive and legislative power remains with the commission, and they threw in a part of the judiciary to match.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:0, Insightful)
Err, Obama?
All super-human expectations aside, he's doing a terriffic job. Just too bad it all boils down to politics after a while..
Re:good (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it Christina Hendricks? 'cos I would totally take back the other wishes. All of them.
Re:Whoda thunk it? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no shortage of socialist or nanny actions in Europe, nor bad policing although I lean towards incompetence there and not plain fascism. We steer clear of some of the problems that exist in the US, but there are still countless similarities to our parts of the world.
You've got Mexifornia, we've got Eurabia. You complain about taxation? Try Europe, it's no fun here either. You complain about No Child Left Behind, we struggle with declining education as well. Compared to your ghetto's our problematic neighbourhoods might seem decent, but we too face severe disparities in living standards and safety levels in certain environments as well. We might be a bit more relaxed about softdrugs, televised breasts or people claiming to be atheist, but we have no shortage of conservative and/or religious people up to the highest levels of government trying to ban whatever they can and they succeed often when it coincides with the goals of nanny state socialists. And plenty of celebrities and non-celebrities doing the complete opposite. Extremist nutcrackers, from just plain weird to dangerous to society? Check, we both have plenty.
Or the short version: we've never diverged that much with regards to freedom and opportunity. And as continent with relatively many and quite fluent speakers of English, I don't think we soon will. We can speak the same language and therefore our interchange of ideas is excellent. The only reason we seem to think we're so different is because we're so close that we take the similarities for granted.
Re:This isn't over? (Score:5, Insightful)
Repeating the standard pub arguments about politics is not the same as "insightful", mods.
The whole ACTA thing is already being negotiated behind closed doors. It's unlikely that anyone is trying to bribe MEPs at this point since the European Parliament is not directly involved in the negotiations itself, and the European Commission is trying its best to keep them as far as possible from the negotiations. Not to mention that it's pretty hard to bribe that many individual MEPs with so many different political backgrounds and nationalities so as to block a written declaration from passing. It would be one of the most expensive and idiotic strategies ever.
And of course MEPs do this because it advances their agenda: they don't want to be kept out by the European Commission from negotiations like this only to be presented with a fait accompli later on. Well, that combined with the fact that several of them also don't like the inclusion of patents in it, and all the stuff about cutting people's Internet access for copyright infringements is also not very popular there [edri.org].
Note that I'm not saying that it *is* over now. However, that is unrelated to any alleged bribery or selfishness.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Are Canada and Mexico next? (Score:1, Insightful)
Mexico is no better. If they would have any balls they would have legalized drugs just to get rid of the anarchy they have now.
We tried, more than four years ago. Your Señor Booosh wouldn't let us. We will either remain a client state, or be "liberated".
And please, don't blame us for your bad habits. If business wasn't so good, we wouldn't be in it.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
But what was he doing? Studying & living blissfully in a relatively expensive place, financed by his family at home in the position of public authority, on a curse leading to a diploma which will be useless (just for a paper; while cheating) - but with a position in a public institution at home virtually assured after his return.
Minus the cheating bit, your description could really apply to any somewhat privileged middle-class Western individual. In that sense it probably covers you, me, and the vast majority of Slashdot posters as well.
It sounds like your issue with this gentleman is the fact that he's enjoying his status on the backs of his own less-fortunate countrymen, while blaming their problems on someone else. But don't kid yourself that you're somehow morally superior to the guy. Those of us who are lucky to be born into a wealthy country are basically doing the same thing, we're just doing it on the backs of some other country's less-fortunate folks (and many of our own countrymen too).
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not geography, it's politics.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Norway is not part of the EU and they won't be until they in about a century from now run out of oil and gas.
Opera is a well respected but very much niche browser, in the EU and even in Norway, supporting it in this manner would be a bad investment.
It's only since this year that the EU parliament has some real legal teeth and they love to use them against the somewhat old fashioned/conservative European Commission.
Because members of the EU parliament are at home often little known they tend to be more independent than their national counterparts.
Today's action demonstrates this independence and has next to nothing to do with 'EU vs US'.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This isn't over? (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be one of the most expensive and idiotic strategies ever.
That didn't stop Obamacare in the US. I think you underestimate the willingness of politicians to jerk the populace around in return for some short-term gain. 8*)
As far as I'm concerned, the mass hysteria about Obama's health care reform is incredibly sad and hilarious at the same time. Then again, I'm from socialist Europe and probably a communist nazi (whatever that may be), so what do I know...
How exactly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Political campaign spending is severely limited in most EU countries (in the UK political parties can't advertise in the media, which means parties are not in need of corruptive donations from corporations).
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like the EU sued Shell (Dutch) under the same laws to protect...
Wait, can I start again.
Re:This isn't over? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sometimes I feel that in some aspects of life tables had turned completely - USA being paranoid and totally authoritarian over it's "intellectual property", censoring Internet with DMCA's (yes, to me it's just another form of censorship) and "terrorism/pedophilia" hysteria, pushing such behavior to other countries; while "socialist" Europe and "communist" Russia enjoy much more open and free Internet (plus we're moving towards open source OS'es and applications much faster than Microsoft/Apple occupied USA). Ironic, really.