Proposed Final ACTA Text Published 148
ciaran_o_riordan writes "The US Trade Representative has published a text which, subject only to a last legal review, is proposed to be the final text of ACTA. The differences between this text and last month's, from the Tokyo round, are mostly cosmetic but there's an important positive change giving signatories the option of excluding patents from section 2. As for software patents, most harm has been avoided. If signatories make use of the section 2 exclusion option, there might be no harm at all. Lobbying for this will be important. Meanwhile, the many problems regarding Digital Restrictions Management, and the extra powers given to businesses to obtain personal and identifying information about accused copyright infringers "in the Digital Environment" are still there (mostly section 5). Earlier texts were much worse. The improvements in recent months are surely due to public outcry, leaving us indebted to the anonymous friends who scanned and leaked the various secret versions and the activists who made text versions and spread them across the Internet. There's a chance we can still influence the text in this legal review phase, but the bigger task ahead will be working on the national implementations. It's not yet clear what procedure the US will require for its own ratification."
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
Big business may be corrupting the elected representatives, but the blame still lands at the feet of the voters who keep voting the same people back into office.
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
big business owns big media. big business has big bucks to spend. even if your candidate has money to spend, if big business owning the big media doesnt want him to get elected, they wont just give airtime to him/her in their media outlets. and, your candidate wont win.
its as simple as that.
that is of course leaving aside the fact that big business can easily brainwash entire swaths of society, or, outright lie to them, if need be, through their media.
Re:Copyrights? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No problem here (Score:2, Interesting)
While in effect, Treaties are the same as amendments.
They CHANGE the Constitution.
The fact that Amendments and Treaties can be repealed does not change that fact.
Amendments and Treaties carry the full force of the Constitution. They become a part of the constitution.
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
Part of the cause of that is the lack of proportional representation, though.
No, the biggest problem is the power and size of government. Even with parliamentary systems with proportional representation major parties can be forced to include small and evil parties to form a governing coalition. Witness Israel, whenever the government holds serious talks with Palestinians it has to deal with small ultra conservative Jewish parties who oppose giving Palestinians any land. That is what happened in the talks that came closest to peace, the Taba Summit [wikipedia.org] or talks. In 1999 Israel's PM Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat [pbs.org] came the closest to peace in Taba, Egypt. Running against Ariel the Bulldozer [locatetv.com] Sharon, who had the support of those ultra conservative parties, to become the PM for another term Barak didn't finish negotiations. And of course Sharon opposed them.
Falcon
well (Score:3, Interesting)
if the good people dont act, evil has the day.
Re:No problem here (Score:3, Interesting)
Many in the Senate are still stinging from the voter rebuke that just occurred, and the rest are not in a mood to pick a fight with the voters.
If they are stinging from it, they are morons. It happens every damn midterm, and every damn midterm people paint it as some big revolution, or some big protest. If, in two years, a Republican is sitting in the White House, two years later we will have a Democratic senate and house. Its how things work. It is a completely normal, and predictable, event.
Its actually shocking to me that the Republicans didn't get the Senate too.
I'm not a cheerleader for either side. They both have consistently failed us as a country, and have consistently failed to uphold their own stated ideologies. They are failures on pretty much every count. This latest wave of Republicans (with their "popular mandate", which really means 60% of local voters) will fail both the country and the people who voted for them too, just like the last wave of Democrats.
Yes, I'm cynical. I would stop, but trends always seem to back it up.
I find the partisan finger pointing to be amusing. For most of the things that screwed our civil liberties there has been wild bi-partisan support in the halls of congress, even if there has been ideological dissent from non-politicians in the streets. The Democrats and Republicans aren't working for you. No matter who your favorite is, and who you're hoping wins, they don't give two shits about you.
At best they think your some little insignifigant thing that must be cared for, since you don't know whats good for you. At middling they are looking out for their next election, and the amount of money they will need to win it (they will work for you, once they finish working against you for funding). At worst they are working wholly for their own self interests.
Perhaps worse still, and completely killing the viability of most third parties (and the very few actual tea party types), they might be working out of some "true ideology" that they hold sacred, consequences be damned since they are only focused on the big picture.
God I hate American politics.