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: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:About Fucking Time (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:4, Interesting)
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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?
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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: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.
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Could be, I haven't been keeping up with the figures. I know that in Germany Firefox recently overtook IE, but it's possible that Germany is an outlier and that it's IE first then Opera in the EU as a whole.
It certainly would be worth the EU's time to protect EU corps from US ones. The optimist in me doesn't want to think like that. The pessimist in me moved to australia about six months back.
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Opera is quite small also in "Europe" (supposedly you mean "EU" here, because most of that CIS population is also in Europe; EU != Europe, remember?); most of their strenght certainly lies outside of the EU.
It's worth EU's time to protect the market from abusive companies, from wherever they are (usually from the EU)
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You really never noticed there's no posting & modding at the same time here?...
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Firefox is the #2 browser in Europe.
http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2009/03/19/what-is-firefoxs-market-share/ [mozilla.com]
http://www.atinternet-institute.com/en-us/browsers-barometer/firefox-march-2007/index-1-2-3-77.html [atinternet-institute.com]
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:5, Informative)
Opera is based in Norway. Norway isn't part of the EU.
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'.
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That doesn't fit at all how the EU "goes after" primarilly local companies abusing the market. You just hear about cases of overseas / from you place ones more.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:5, Funny)
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).
EU sued Microsoft in order to protect Opera?
Whatever it is you are smoking, I'd like some. Thank you.
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Just like the EU sued Shell (Dutch) under the same laws to protect...
Wait, can I start again.
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That's not geography, it's politics.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:5, Insightful)
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Some people are freer than others.
Sadly, corporations now have the rights of people.
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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.
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Hey, if there's one thing about the USA it's that when you go for something you really go for it. Other countries have surpassed you in the number of fat citizens but nobody, and I mean nobody, just up and goes for it like your fat folk. Same for head-up-assness.
I'm sure there are non-negative examples too... like the space program, hell, back when it was a race the USA decided to damn the consequences and make a concerted push. It's a good quality, albeit with unintended consequences.
Re:About Fucking Time (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Power in the EU is not with the parliament, but with the commission
Actually the most powerful body in the EU is the Council of Ministers, which made up of serving European government ministers and very much in the euro-driving seat in recent years.
However, the European Parliament does have the power to reject or amend international trade agreements, which ACTA would appear to be.
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The EU Parliament can still overrule the Council of Ministers with a 2/3 majority vote and history has shown that they're willing and able to do so when the COM try and go against them on big issues.
Re:Now just watch (Score:5, Informative)
Power in the EU is not with the parliament, but with the commission.
This used to be the case, but is not true [wikipedia.org] anymore, for almost a year now [wikipedia.org].
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I tend to think that younger government bodies tend to be more idealistic in nature. The U.S. seems to have started that way before greed settled in then for reasons I cannot comprehend, it became open season on the native american and the american bison among others and people of the time seemed perfectly comfortable with it.
Give the EU some time and it will also degenerate into something we can hate. There is lots of big industry looking for ways to grow and the way they do that is by getting or prevent
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>>>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 an
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.
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...Natural Law is nonsense...
Okay well if you don't want to listen to C64 Guy, listen to Thomas Jefferson instead. I dare you to call his idea "nonsense". He had an estimated IQ of 160 (the typical college grad is only 109):
"If nature [aka Natural Law] has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself. But the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of ev
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I agree, but the thing that worries me is that I don't really understand WHY the EU has been making such seemingly rational and sound decisions.
I worry that someone will trip up a janitor somehwhere and a chain of events will be set in motion that will result in the EU parliament insisting that black people wear flashing LED hats and women can only breathe every second minute of the day. And that dogs can only bark on Tuesdays.
I just wish there was a sound basis for their soundness of behaviour.
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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.
EU FTW!!!! (Score:2)
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Too late. They paved it and put up a parking lot.
369? (Score:2)
Really? They couldn't be bothered to count more than 369 signatures?
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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:369? (Score:5, Informative)
Really? They couldn't be bothered to count more than 369 signatures?
There are 736 Members of the European Parliament [wikipedia.org]. 369 is a majority.
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Re:369? (Score:4, Informative)
There are 736 Members of the European Parliament [wikipedia.org]. 369 is a majority.
It won't be when Microsoft gets done with it.
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).
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Translation: "More than 50%" - enough to win.
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The target was 369, a majority. The current total is 377.
Wait, what? (Score:2)
A democratic institution representing the desires and best interests of it's electorate?
What gives?
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Funny)
quick! to the Liberation-mobile!
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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
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: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:Wait, what? (Score:4, Informative)
The European Parliament is usually a reliable entity with good sense. That's why there are so many rulings that allow the hateful non-elected European Commission to go over their heads in many issues. I wouldn't be surprised if the EC just ignores the Parliament and signs an agreement with the US to apply ACTA here.
After all, it's presided by a jerk called Barroso, that went from Maoist troublemaker in the 70s to free-market right-wing super-bureaucrat. He avidly supported the invasion of Iraq when he was the Portuguese Prime Minister and licked Bush's ass until his mouth turned brown. Strangely he was rewarded a job as head of the Commision in spite of being a spineless ass-licker that embarrassed and ashamed us Europeans, and specially us Portuguese.
Another ass-licker, Tony Blair, nearly won the job of President of European Council, but this time the outrage was too much for the Euro Dickhead Bureaucrats to sweep under the rug.
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I like to think "democracy", ie. the fast growing Pirate Party and subsequent loss of votes.
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Also even if voter turnout was 34%, I would call 34% a democratic mandate. Nothing stopped the hypothetical 66% from not voting, and their abstinence is impartiality.
So, can I sigh in relief now? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:So, can I sigh in relief now? (Score:5, Informative)
In my understanding yes the parliament now have more power to reject the commission, but it can't really stop what the commission is doing until there's a proposal on the table. This is as I understand it mostly a statement of intent that they will, because the way it's been handled.
What is likely to happen is that the commission will propose something, have it rejected, revise it again, get rejected again ad infinitum. They've been known to fight wars of attrition - or failing that - slowly giving in to demands until it finally passes with a small margin.
Long story short, I believe eventually they will pass some form of ACTA, but hopefully most of the bad bits will be gone by then.
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That's the mile high view. At least when I followed the telecom directive, which was before the Lisbon treaty mind you, there were many variations of many of the paragraphs going back and forth and being voted on in between those readings. As coalitions approved of the various paragraphs, the votes turned from against to for between readings. I suppose you can bet on the treaty being rejected in its entirety, but it's a risky bet. If eventually enough of the MEP are convinced that we do need a trade agreeme
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not sure though, so don't quote me.
Do what now?
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.
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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.
--
"Europaeus sum!"
ACTA Delenda Est!
good (Score:2)
Re:good (Score:4, Informative)
Re:good (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it Christina Hendricks? 'cos I would totally take back the other wishes. All of them.
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Not to worry, with the solar-powered Corvette he should be able to find an acceptable substitute.
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Not to worry, with the solar-powered Corvette he should be able to find an acceptable substitute.
Well said. Plus I've already dated a redhead. The scars are healing nicely.
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Huh? Isn't the US government the one behind it? They're hardly likely to drop it...
Further details... (Score:5, Informative)
The 369 signatories (377 now) are all MEPs (members of the European Parliament). 369 is significant because it is a majority of the eligible votes.
The linked page is just one of the relevant pages - you have to follow the links on the left to get at the rest. Here's a couple of interesting pages:
http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Written_Declaration_12/2010_signatories_list [laquadrature.net]
http://www.laquadrature.net/en/ACTA [laquadrature.net]
Source? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Source? (Score:4, Informative)
Try this [europa.eu] and search for ACTA in the title. The document in question is here [europa.eu] (pdf). Note that the status is ONGOING but that tomorow is the lapse date.
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Are Canada and Mexico next? (Score:2)
Now that Europe has more or less said FU to ACTA, can/will Canada and Mexico drop it too?
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no.
Canadian politicians are lemmings: OMG, don't want to rock the boat. until they've been in 6+year in parliament, they have no balls or leave with the pension.
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.
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.
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: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: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...
2 words: THANK YOU (Score:2)
A big THANK YOU to all the MEP's who signed this. Way to grow a spine. Let's all hope ACTA dies the brutal death it was always destined for.
Just empty talk (Score:2, Informative)
Unfortunately, the EU Parliament is a pitiful powerless entity and "Written Declarations" are just words without substance. The EU Parliament site describes what a Written Declaration is: (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/plenary/writtenDecl.do)
"A written declaration is a text of a maximum of 200 words on a matter falling within the European Union's sphere of activities.
Written declarations are printed in all the official languages, distributed and entered in a register.
MEPs can use written declarat
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Amen. Not to mention that the EU has a history of bending over backwards for lobbyists [wikimedia.org], evil Orwellian shit [telegraph.co.uk] and selling out its citizens' privacy to foreign nations [wikimedia.org].
So this declaration feels less like "Oi! Stop drafting that treaty!" and more like "Oi! Stop drafting that treaty without giving us a chance to add some juicy bits!".
Re:Just empty talk (Score:5, Informative)
1. The EC submits the draft.
2. If the EP accepts, it's passed. Otherwise...
3. The EP rejects the draft and gives the EC a list of things they want changed.
4. The EC submits a new version of the draft.
5. If the EP accepts, it's passed. Otherwise...
6. The EC can try to reconcile with the EP and figure out a shared draft. If this fails...
7. The draft is dead and can't be resubmitted.
I think the EC could try to start a war of attrition with the EP but that could end with the EP just veoting anything looking remotely like IP legislation until the EC shuts up.
Is it really a victory? (Score:2)
Reading the text, I'm worried that the European Commission will be able to argue that the current process is already complying with those demands.
There's a lot of "You can't do X unless it complies with existing EU law!" or "This better not have side effect X!" - to which the European Commission could say "Ok, we're already obliged to comply with EU law, so that changes nothing, and of course we've no intention to cause side effects, so let's continue and sign this thing.".
I'd love to see a document showing
O Rly? (Score:2)
Common sense in politics? ;)
Wasn't the end of the world said to be in 2012?
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"copycounterfeiting"? They even go after people who make copies of copies? That's just... wow... ;)
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The days of "if the USA take their ball and go home, no one can play" are over. There are other big kids on the block and they bring their own balls.
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What's dishonest about it?
It's more than half of the people, so it's the majority. Not an overwhelming majority, yet still.
And in places where voters can/have to choose between more than 2 candidates (that is: almost everywhere except the US), candidates who get an actual majority of 50+% instead of only a relative majority are considered popular.
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A candidate who wins election by 50.1% percent isn't popular even though he won.
You are limiting your own imagination if you only assume two candidates when talking about an election. I hope that is not the case, that you just worded yourself so that it possible to interpret it that way.
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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.
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Well, they haven't pledged to vote 'no' just made a vague list of demands and expressed quite a lot of reservations.
Sadly, I don't think it means that much. The EU Parliaments has expressed skepticism of ACTA
(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.
All but a formal final rejection (Score:5, Informative)
WTF does "all but drop" mean? If you look at it grammatically, it means "to do everything but drop", which is the opposite of what the submitter implied.
"All But Rejects" in the headline indicated to me that the European Parliament had expressed its disapproval in every way short of a formal final rejection.
Re:All but a formal final rejection (Score:4, Informative)
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I had to look it up to, it seems to be correct English:
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/all+but [thefreedictionary.com]
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In general, "all but foo" means that everything foo-like has happened, short of foo itself. In this case, it means that ACTA hasn't been officially dropped, but it might as well have been because everything up to (but not including) its formal abandonment has taken place.
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No. It's a style form and it means they have upgraded the dropping XP path to the max, all they haven't done is actually drop it. If someone all but kills you, you're still alive. But you're also in a puddle of mud on intensive care at best. The EU has slammed ACTA.
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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 n
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You complain about taxation? Try Europe, it's no fun here either.
You are not kidding, Märchensteuer (Sales Tax) is 19.0% in Germany and almost 50% of my income is gone after I pay tax and health insurance. Our problem is pretty much same as in any other western country. Corrupt politicians are lining their own pockets while telling everyone else to save and pay more taxes.