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.'"
So, can I sigh in relief now? (Score:4, Interesting)
Source? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:All but ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Officially, negotiations are ongoing. In reality, the majority of those that would vote on it have pledged to vote no, if true, ACTA will never go though and become law. So the issue is 'all but dropped' in that the negotiations are still open, but no one on either side expects them to go anywhere.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:3, Interesting)
In the end, representation generally does happen, in a way - it's just that what individual members of a given society claim they want and value, and what the society actually promotes in the system of governance, are not necessarily the same thing.
Personal anecdote time: during uni I had one roommate from a place which will remain unnamed, but is generally one of impoverished & corrupt ones - at the time we were also watching on the BBC a major unrest there, revolving around electoral fraud. Of course he was openly disgusted at such state of affairs, rampant corruption, etc.
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.
The close relation between those things and what he supposedly despises never quite seemed to click with him... at most, some other groups / etc. were the guilty ones.
Re:Are Canada and Mexico next? (Score:5, Interesting)
That analysis isn't quite right as Stephen Harper(current PM) has done a fair bit of boat rocking with his far right agenda etc. That asshole has undone some 30+ years of relative progress in just a few short years.
He is very willing to bend over for any US agreements however. Mostly because he's busy pointing at the US(the southern US in particular) as an example for Canada to follow, as though thats a good idea. He slacked up on that part however after their economy collapsed and ours mostly just dipped and leveled out rather than collapsing.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not convinced the EU did this for good reasons, or for their OWN corporate overlords (like they did when they sued Microsoft in order to protect the EU-based Opera). Recall that the EU corporations would actually be damaged by ACTA, which primarily exists to protect the US TV/music industry. So naturally the EU corporations would oppose its passage, and press the MEPs to oppose it too.
This is EU corporations fighting back against US corporate protectionism.
Then again, perhaps I'm just too cynical.
Re:So, can I sigh in relief now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, the EP must approve (almost) all international treaties that the commission negotiates, the ACTA treaty is among these.
Now, the EP have several options if they really want to force their will through. These include:
1. A vote of no confidence, which would get the commission sacked.
2. Try the old methods of Tiberius Gracchus and veto everything that comes out as a proposal from the commission or the council.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:4, Interesting)
That's some mighty fine cynicism there. But I can't find much to pick at. Opera seems a bit small-fry for that sort of a concerted effort though. Hmmm.
(Correction) (Score:2, Interesting)
Point still stands anyway, the Council dumped all over parliament on the SW patent thing, and I've no reason to believe they'll do differently now.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:1, Interesting)
A democratic institution representing the desires and best interests of it's electorate?
What gives?
Electoral funding laws that try to ensure that elected representatives are not corporate sponsored...
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:2, Interesting)
>>>The U.S. seems to have started that way before greed settled in then for reasons I cannot comprehend,
The Northeast (federalists) wanted to protect their growing business interests (mills, fishing) and during the 1790s quickly setup the central bank and other instruments that were unconstitutional, but also not answerable to the people, and held a great deal of power to favor the early corporations.
One could argue the "greed trend" dates as early as the 1780s when the Constitution gave authors and inventors a virtually unlimited monopoly on their creations. That had not existed under the original Confederation. At first that new monopoly was a reasonable 14 year span but now it's over 100 years. Ridiculous.
We are wiser to stick with the precepts of Natural Law, with few excursions. Does nature give to human beings a monopoly over their ideas? No. Therefore neither should humans have a monopoly in Man's Law - let ideas by liberated after a reasonable time (say one decade).
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:5, Interesting)
We are wiser to stick with the precepts of Natural Law, with few excursions. Does nature give to human beings a monopoly over their ideas? No. Therefore neither should humans have a monopoly in Man's Law - let ideas by liberated after a reasonable time (say one decade).
I'm used to your posting complete nonsense, but this is hilarious. Natural law means that the strong prey on the weak. Predators feast on whatever they can catch. If you really believe that this is a good way to build a civilisation, then I presume you won't object if someone stronger than you decides that the world would be better off without you in it. Or is that one of your 'few exceptions'? In which case, you are one of the 'Libertarian Communists' that another poster referred to recently - you want a strong society to protect you and a weak society to protect everyone else.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:3, Interesting)
And yet the rest of your post goes on to talk about freedom of speech. Well, in teh America, you can't post details about Scientologist beliefs, because those are copyrighted.
They have, apparently, done enough to make you aware of their criticism.
To put it bluntly, you can't get it stopped. Your only choice is between right-wing evil (Republicans) and right-centrist evil (Democrats). Your de facto two-party system means that your leaders are pretty much entirely unchecked. That, in turn, means that your only hope is that multi-party EU will put on the brakes, and luckily for you, it seems to be doing just that.
Two parties is just one more than in Soviet Russia, so why do you expect to get more than just a tiny bit more freedom either?
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:1, Interesting)
> Ooops. Sorry. I didn't know Norway was still an independent. Is there a reason why they've chosen to remain outside the Union?
I suspect that it's something to do with Norway's oil and gas reserves. It's the world's fifth-largest exporter of oil and third-largest of gas, and they aren't even particularly aggressive about exploiting them. This makes Norway a rather expensive place to live, and also quite inefficient (any claims of "we need to make cutbacks" are met with "no, we just need to sell more oil"), which means that Norway's economy is likely to be somewhat out-of-sync with the EU as a whole for the foreseeable future. I suppose that there may also be some concern that the EU might try to use Norway as an ATM.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't agree with Syria and Israel being allowed to join, but to be fair, part of Turkey actually is in mainland Europe. Granted, a very small part, but a part nonetheless.
Why should membership be arbitrarily limited by geography?