EU ACTA Chief Resigns 253
bs0d3 writes "The EU ACTA chief has resigned, saying, 'This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.' 22 EU members signed the controversial ACTA treaty Thursday in Tokyo."
Another politician with half a brain? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another politician with half a brain? (Score:5, Funny)
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"Apparently you've missed the Republicantard Presidential race..."
Fixed it for you...
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Whooosh....
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Looks like a classic case of "Push the red button and then then run into hiding to avoid the angry mob".
Re:Another politician with half a brain? (Score:5, Funny)
Looks like a classic case of "Push the red button and then then run into hiding to avoid the angry mob".
Vada a bordo, cazzo!
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grande Schettino
Think I had one of those at Starbucks the other day: tasted like schettino to me, anyway...
Re:Another politician with half a brain? (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly.
This "ACTA Chief" sounds like a coward If he is displeased with the process, and he's the one in charge, then he should be using his position to make the ACTA a formal treaty to be passed b y the People's representatives in Parliament. To scurry away shows an supreme lack of fortitude and irresponsibility.
Re:Another politician with half a brain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another politician with half a brain? (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly.
This "ACTA Chief" sounds like a coward If he is displeased with the process, and he's the one in charge, then he should be using his position to make the ACTA a formal treaty to be passed b y the People's representatives in Parliament. To scurry away shows an supreme lack of fortitude and irresponsibility.
He is "using his position", just not in the way that you expect. Giving up a well-paying job because you believe that what your superiors require you to do is unethical is a dramatic way to draw attention to the problem. The alternative, to take their money while trying to undermine their goals is problematic at best. He would have had to mute his criticism and would probably soon have had to resign in disgrace.
This way is much better. First of all, it makes a news story. Second, he can now speak frankly about the ACTA and his opinion will be considered important because he is "the former ACTA chief who resigned in protest".
Re:Another politician with half a brain? (Score:5, Insightful)
He got ACTA signed in Europe.
That's not how I understand it. I think you got misled by the misleading title of TFA/TFS. He's not the 'EU ACTA Chief'. He was the European Parliament's rapporteur on ACTA. His job was to investigate the issue and produce a report on it.
Re:Another politician with half a brain? (Score:5, Interesting)
âI want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliamentâ(TM)s demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly..... This agreement might have major consequences on citizensâ(TM) lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter.â
Wow.
Do Europeans still have the right to own guns? If I read that my government was bypassing my elected representatives to pass ACTA, I'd be visiting the local target shooting store to polish my skills. Passage of laws without representation is just 1 step short of tyranny.
"No legislation without representation."
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Europe is a sum of the countries. In cases where EU intervention is generally needed and welcomed is rules that are needed to improve economy in all member states. I.e. finances, competition, or in this case, copyright.
Guns are a local issue. They're not going to be easily allowed over borders, and few will care if us finns own a shitload of guns that may not be even legal in many member states. Because it's not an issue which requires pan-European input.
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Elected? Yes. Democratically? That depends. A few basic requirements for being a real democratic election don't apply to EU Parliament elections. One of those basics is 1 man = 1 vote, which has two implications: First, no one has more than one vote in the election and second each vote weighs the same. The later isn't the case in the EU. A vote from Luxembourg is worth more than 1,000 votes from France, U.K.
Re:Another politician with half a brain? (Score:5, Informative)
Get a clue before spurting nonsense. The vote in the parliament is still not done, if the vote fails (which he wants to make sure with his dramatic exit), the all the signing by the member states isn't worth the paper the treaty is printed on
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Fuck you very much, samzenpus, for your once again inflammatory stub posting. kdawson would be proud.
US analogy (Score:3)
Seems like the US analogy would be as if the President has signed it, but the Senate hasn't ratified it.
Re:Another politician with half a brain? (Score:5, Insightful)
He's a little fucking late, don't you think?
Nope, handing over the report and quitting at the same time is perfect timing, especially if you want to draw attention to why you are quitting. Finishing what he started shows he's a professional, had he quit half way through they would have simply replaced him with someone more malleable.
Re:Another politician with half a brain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also he is now free to tell all and sundry, as often and as loudly as possible exactly why he quite. He is basically in the best position to deliver a swift kick in the goolies to ACTA in Europe.
Re:Another politician with half a brain? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think my faith in humanity might yet be vindicated.
Not so fast.
He got ACTA signed in Europe. He did the job he was paid for, only now can he say whatever he likes.
He did no such thing. Signing is the responsibility of the respective member countries, specifically their ministers. In "EU-speak" the Council. The next step is to get ACTA ratified in a) the EU parliament and b) the national parliaments, without which ACTA is just a piece of paper with no impact whatsoever except for wasting a lot of time.
What this man did was (at first glance) admirable. Had he done this after the ratification in EUParl had gone through, not so much, but that vote is not until in a few months, and is going to be a highly influenced by this kind of high-profile action.
Still, that doesn't mean you shouldn't call your MEP to make them aware of this action, and the importance of saying no to ACTA
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I'm confused by EU procedure.
In the U.S. somebody signs the treaty (typically an ambassador or president), and then the Senate decides whether to ratify or reject it (reflecting the wishes of the States and the People). It's a very simple and straightforward process.
Re:Another politician with half a brain? (Score:4, Informative)
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Ahhh thanks. The Commission sounds like a pointless organization. But isn't that where the EU President sits?
I should probably add here:
The U.S. President already signed the ACTA. Our States' House (Senate) will be ratifying or rejecting the treaty in a few days.
In other news: SOPA is dead but it's already taken-on a new form called OPEN (Online Protection and Enforcement). These media monopolies refuse to give-up. In my opinion neither Microsoft or Google are entitled to government-granted monopolie
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Not quite. Now we wait for them to settle into their cushy promised position at one of the main beneficiaries of ACTA.
Call me picky but... (Score:5, Informative)
"News sites" hosted on port 82 set off some alarm bells. That being said, this piece has been picked up by other news sites with more direct citations. Techdirt (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120126/11014317553/european-parliament-official-charge-acta-quits-denounces-masquerade-behind-acta.shtml) and The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/27/eu_signs_acta/) both have articles that are worth reading.
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"News sites" hosted on port 82 set off some alarm bells.
So why don't you fill us in then? What is so suspicious about using port 82? Is that port often used by pedophiles or terrorists? Is that the port that the NSA uses to spy on people?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Re:Call me picky but... (Score:4, Interesting)
What is so suspicious about using port 82?
Because its not 80. Why isnt this alleged news site (that is either down or is slashdotted right now) not using the standard http port?
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That's a circular argument. Care to elaborate?
I have to defend this argument (that port 82 is inherently suspicious) in a thesis paper. If you can give me the answer before 9:00 AM EST you will have saved me from failure, and possibly protected me from ruining my life (by inadvertently using port 82 to read news articles).
Thanks in advance!
Re:Call me picky but... (Score:5, Informative)
So basically, you're saying "It's different, therefore I find it scary and view it with suspicion."
Yeah, great. That mindset has served mankind very well over the years.
Jeez... we're not talking a moral choice here, we're talking about a technical standard. And if you do something different from the standard and nobody can think of a good reason... but they *can* think of a number of nefarious reasons... that's a pretty good basis for suspicion.
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this is entirely inaccurate. There is no requirement that any form of data go across any port. We've simply decided to start doing that. Nothing says it has to be that way, and actually it's only slightly better for security to actually not use standard ports because that's the standard attack vector and gives you hints if someone has a default config, which means *bad* security.
Way to state backwards reality there.
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Re:Call me picky but... (Score:5, Funny)
Only on slashdot can a discussion on a non-default HTTP port turn into one about survival of mankind :D
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Perhaps.
Re:Call me picky but... (Score:5, Informative)
The whole idea of a "news site" is to be openly accessible. A website on a non-standard port is still openly accessible, but only to those who know the site is accessibly through this port. This knowledge may either be direct or indirect (like through a link like here).
Basically, its a news site only accessible to the general public through linking. This points a lot to "targeted news", which also tend to point into the direction of "false news" and/or "propaganda". Now, I'm not implying this is the case here. In fact, there are many other possible explanation, one of them being the one I just provided. As the previous post said, it "sets off some alarm bells", but it doesn't necessarily mean something foul is going on. It's just weird.
As for your open, trollishy questions, I'll say this. Many illegal activities that are performed on the web, regardless of their nature, do so on sites accessible only through nonstandard ports, like port 82, to hide the said activities from general view. Only those within intimate knowledge of the activities know the ports and can thus access those sites.
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The whole idea of a "news site" is to be openly accessible. A website on a non-standard port is still openly accessible, but only to those who know the site is accessibly through this port.
... and most importantly, it is only accessible to those not behind a coproate firewall which only lets 80 through.
This knowledge may either be direct or indirect (like through a link like here).
Well, the link was present in the Slashdot summary, so it's not a question about knowledge. And a link would have been needed even on a site hosted on port 80, as there are many pages on a site, and the link allows to directly go to the page of interest.
As for your open, trollishy questions, I'll say this. Many illegal activities that are performed on the web, regardless of their nature, do so on sites accessible only through nonstandard ports, like port 82, to hide the said activities from general view. Only those within intimate knowledge of the activities know the ports and can thus access those sites.
Indeed. Not only corporate firewalls think that all web sites are on port 80, so do many network sniffers. Thus using a non-standard port is a
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See, they called Kader Arif a "Chief" when he's only the "rapporteur". From Techdirt on this subject [techdirt.com], 'A rapporteur is a person "appointed by a deliberative body to investigate an issue."', far from a "Chief".
maybe not a chief, but still a very important person to the proposal. The rapporteur is supposed to investigate the proposal, and then to present it to the deliberative body for approval, usually making a case in favor of the proposal. If now the rapporteur, who is supposed to defend the proposal, is already against it, this speaks volumes...
However, this doesn't mean that ACTA is dead yet. What will probably happen is that the MAFIAA will just chose another rapporteur (being more careful this time around.
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Port racism!
Re:Call me picky but... (Score:5, Informative)
Mr Kader Arif gave some insight here [numerama.com]:
(french) http://www.numerama.com/magazine/21424-acta-demissionnaire-kader-arif-denonce-une-mascarade.html
(google tr) http://translate.google.fr/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.numerama.com%2Fmagazine%2F21424-acta-demissionnaire-kader-arif-denonce-une-mascarade.html&act=url
"I want to denounce as the greatest of all the process that led to the signing of this agreement: no association of civil society, lack of transparency from the beginning of negotiations, successive postponements of the signing of the text without no explanation was given, setting aside the claims of the European Parliament, however, expressed in several resolutions of this assembly, "he complains.
The MEP also confirms what we reported on the schedule to the charge imposed for parliamentary committees to express their views on the content of the agreement. "As the reporter on this text, I also faced unprecedented maneuvers of the right of Parliament to impose an accelerated schedule to pass the agreement as soon as possible before the public is alerted, denying that the European Parliament's right of expression and the tools at its disposal to carry the legitimate demands of citizens. "
For Kader Arif, "everyone knows, the ACTA has greement problem, whether its impact on civil liberties, responsibilities it imposes on providers of Internet access, impact on the manufacture of generic drugs and the lack of protection it offers to our geographical indications ".
"This agreement can have major consequences on the lives of our citizens, and yet everything is done for the European Parliament has no say. So today, in submitting this report in my charge, I wants to send a strong signal and alert the public about this unacceptable situation. I will not participate in this charade. "
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"News sites" hosted on port 82 set off some alarm bells.
... and they also tend to crumble lots quicker under the slashdot...
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In this new fangled hypertext thing, you can actually post that as links to TechDirt [techdirt.com] and The Register [theregister.co.uk] instead of making us type it in the address bar
But thanks for pointing is to some helpful information
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IF you want to run e.g. Apache and IIS on the same machine, they can't both use the same ports. I've been in this situation before, and had to run one of my servers on a different port, IIRC it was 81. So maybe this chap's got three webservers?
It's not the first time (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It's not the first time (Score:5, Informative)
Of course the rest of Europe put a lot of pressure on the Italians to get this change of government but it was and still is still 100% in the power of the parliament to agree with the new governments policies or ultimately send it home.
The Greek situation is from a democratic point of view not much different, parliament can send their government packing at any moment it no longer agrees with the policies proposed.
Since last year the EU has become closer to the electorate now the EU parliament can veto policies put forward by the commission. These EU commission policies don't fall from the sky, they are the result of lengthy deliberations between the governments of the member states who also have to answer to their parliaments at home.
So when you, like me, are not happy with the signing of the ACTA agreement you should also contact your local politicians, not just the MEP's.
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Yep. Nothing quite like a quasi-binding non-elected government body dictating to a sovereign nation on what they should do on their internal affairs. You forgot to mention about them wanting to siphon off a few trillion euros and be immune from prosecution though.
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Except the new Italian PM was never an elected minister by the People. He simply showed-up in the parliament one day, out of nowhere.
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That is because people don't know their history regarding EU. When it first started it was an economic union. The target was to help companies, not the people. Since then it has changed it's name but I belive that its root values are still there. There are people who try to change it though.
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Why can't more politicians do this? (Score:2)
I think it would fix so many problems...
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Probably not the best idea.
What's to gain if the all remaining politicians with at least microscopic remnants of a backbone resigned as well?
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hey dude. (Score:3)
he is the RAPPORTEUR for acta. his duty was to investigate the proceedings, and report to european parliament. he did NOT have anyone sign acta.
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Errr... the karma bonus lets you post at +2, as you and I are doing.
How do we protest this? (Score:5, Interesting)
What we need is a simple webpage with links to complete tutorials of how to protest this for each country, where people can edit the tutorials, like, a wikipedia for protests. I don't know how to create such a website quickly, but I'm sure some guys on Slashdot could whip out something like this in a couple of hours.
Re:How do we protest this? (Score:5, Informative)
In addition, if you're a member or supporter of any national party in Europe, lean on your party's committee members as well. Often they have a large influence on their EU counterparts, and don't forget that your own governments still have to ratify the treaty.
Sadly, it looks like in many countries ACTA will sail through the ratification process: at that point most ruling parties will already have given it their implicit endorsement, and they might look silly nacking out now. Rebelious coalition members might vote in favour as well, out of political expedience. If the EU parliament does not kill this, I guess it'll be too late.
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"What we need is a simple webpage"
What you need is to grow a pair and shoot the bastards responsible for this.
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corrupted politicians are like pirate sites:
cut one head and 2 grow back....
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Thanks for the suggestion, Jared. [wikipedia.org]
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What you need is to grow a pair and shoot the bastards responsible for this.
Unfortunately, here in Europe, we don't have a Second Amendment yet: we only get the crap laws from the US, never the good stuff!
I'm proud of Mr Arif (Score:5, Insightful)
What can I say? I'm very pleased that Kader Arif had the guts to make his disgust with the ACTA process known so publicly. His actions deserve to be widely recognised outside the tech community as well as within; we should ensure that "regular" media outlets cover this part of the story.
Will his stand bring down the entire shameful edifice that is ACTA? No. Is it an important part of the battle that is being fought and must continue to be fought? Yes.
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Re:I'm proud of Mr Arif (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, but what is he going to do next? If he feels so strongly about this, why did he not remain in his position and use that power more constructively? This isn't likely to be put in front of the E.U. parliament before June so who is this going to notice this 'falling on my sword act' apart from those who already oppose this, i.e. Slashdotters and the like.
Sometimes you are put into a token position where you have no real power, where no one has to answer to you and you can enact no policies. Not uncommon in, say, a sham investigation. In that case his only power is to resign in the most public and shaming manner possible.
Re:power is to resign (Score:2)
Despite it getting modded down above, I'll try one more time.
Why did he wait until *after* the countries signed (provisionally, etc)? Surely he knew his findings last week? So why didn't he resign on opening of business Monday?
Re:I'm proud of Mr Arif (Score:5, Interesting)
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"ACTA? It's like that SOAP or PIPE thing them kids been screamin' about on the Facebooks? Who cares, let those cheese-eating surrender monkeys go out and buy some good ol' American films, the thievin' little shits!"
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Yeah, Arif Kader is one of the unreasonable ones. And thank fuck for that!
I'm pissed at all those "reasonable" politicians that will merrily let the world go to shit.
Fundamental disconnect: (Score:2)
Re:Fundamental disconnect: (Score:5, Interesting)
"might"?
There is nothing "might" about it. It will have devastating effect on a lot of law-abiding users, and probably very little on the less law-abiding users, if not outright help the "pirates" in the long run.
But it will criminalize the majority of the internet users.
Re:Fundamental disconnect: (Score:5, Insightful)
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1) "Bread and games" concept and fall of the Roman empire once it (for any good reason) was unwilling or unabl
Terrorists (Score:2)
The American Mafia that is terrorising the other (EU, and then some) countries (bribing, black-mailing, pressuring, whatever) should be arrested by "your" patriot act and sent to guatanamo. They are a menace not only to the life of every American, as to the whole world.
I never thought that my generation would ever get the world to this state. Seems we were a bad batch... "I don't want to live in this world anymore..."
awww sh*t! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Without a huge move like the one made by Reddit/ Wikipedia/ Google & Co/ etc we'll never be able to stop it.
You must have some important (and independent) site which can black-out Internet. ACTA will hit hard on ISP's, it must be a chance that they can put a pop-up Web Page once per day or every few hours explaining to Internet users whats going on? Or they are just in the hands of politicians who signed the ACTA?
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You must have some important (and independent) site which can black-out Internet. ACTA will hit hard on ISP's, it must be a chance that they can put a pop-up Web Page once per day or every few hours explaining to Internet users whats going on? Or they are just in the hands of politicians who signed the ACTA?
good point, but that's exactly my concern above ... there are 22 countries that have already signed. basically it's impossible to get people from 22 countries informed via one or two important sites. what we are using here everyday are basically the same big-name sites that US/Australia & others are using (Wikipedia, YouTube, Google) but asides from that, everyone is on his own: For instance in Romania, (probably) the only high-impact news site is hotnews(.)ro. But can't guarantee for it's independence.... And even if we would manage to get hotnews to make a blackout/popup warning about ACTA, this would only get us 1 vote down.
1 vote down is a message like what Kader Arif did (of course we both agree that this whole discussion is academic in nature)
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activepolitic.com:82 Link not work (Score:3)
URL: http://activepolitic.com:82/News/2012-01-26d/EU_ACTA_chief_resigns_in_disgust_over_disrespect_at_citizens.html [activepolitic.com]
Connection to 64.30.66.124 failed.
The system returned: (111) Connection refused
Here's some alternative, https://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/ACTA_rapporteur_denounces_ACTA_mascarade [laquadrature.net] which quotes from Kader Arif's blog:
http://www.kader-arif.fr/actualites.php?actualite_id=147 [kader-arif.fr]
Probably was the best course of action (Score:5, Interesting)
It's probably best for himself and his family that he made a big show of his dissent like this. There's probably some angry, big moneyed cockroaches that are scurrying after the light was shone on their big bureaucratic power grab.
These fat media/government cockroaches are appearing more and more desperate, no?
It's just a matter of time till the lazy-ass 1337 network hackers get their collective acts together and start shunting their god-given right to free traffic off onto a pure P2P, encrypted, usually-connected, fido-net style worldwide wireless network grid a la "media net" from The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson.
'Monitored' is post-central-government era term that means the same as 'controlled'. In our lifetimes, there will be no centralized corporate/governmental infrastructure worth controlling. And the most delicious part: their goofy special protections for DRM in the 90's will be their undoing.
Computer networks, exchange and value, ideation and realization - these have all become interlinked concepts. The hub is the network.
Guess what, cockroaches? The democracy genie is outta the bottle, and it has been for 15 years. These desperate, piddly attempts of yours to stuff it back in the bottle won't work for long. (And if the people would just WAKE UP, they won't work at all!)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Every generation becomes a teenager and picks something the government is doing, thinks it's wrong and protests.
But every generation grows up and eventually realizes they were really dumb when they were younger after they learn every generation before them did the same thing and it made no difference.
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Really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebellions [wikipedia.org]
Re:Probably was the best course of action (Score:4, Insightful)
Some 'hippies' from that era are now Big Business themselves, directly making deal with government leaders.
The pot smokers of that 60s eventually had kids, but those parents come up with all sorts of BS reasons for why it was ok for them to smoke, but not their kids. Those same hypocrites will also change their business ways now that they actually have some money in the game.
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Go support Freenet. It's all of those things except the wireless, which may be added on with ease once node density increases. We're having retention issues at the moment, so if you'd run a node or two with a terabyte-sized store and a fair amount of ban
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Wtf? (Score:2)
So, he resigned to 'send a message', and now they'll simply hire someone who will be 'compliant' and keep his mouth shut. :tinfoil:
Re:I can understand why (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can understand why (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately, for evil to lose not much more is required than for good men to do something.
Re:I can understand why (Score:5, Informative)
I did something, I signed this petition [avaaz.org]. I hope it helps.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet/?fp [avaaz.org]
Re:I can understand why (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I can understand why (Score:5, Informative)
Excellent :)
Write to Them [writetothem.com] has a convenient link to MEPs (and MPs, etc).
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I also did something, I wrote to the MEP's in my area, outlining my position and asking their opinion. They need to know this is important. My local government web site had a link to my MEP's.
The Free Software Foundation provides the following page of contact details for all the relevant EU politicians: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2011/acta:-signed,-not-yet-sealed-now-its-up-to-us [openrightsgroup.org] Those on the Development Committee are the most important and are listed on the following link: https://memopol.lqdn.fr/europe/parliament/committee/DEVE/ [memopol.lqdn.fr] For the FSF views on ACTA see: http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta [fsf.org]
Re:I can understand why (Score:5, Informative)
Thank you for contacting Andrew about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
I can assure you that I will forward your email to Andrew so that he can read the specific points you make.
Andrew is not on the committee that specialises in these issues, but has been following developments closely along with his group colleagues, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE).
He recognises that some of ACTA's aims are valid, but also has real concerns that - as with so much legislation in this area - its implications for privacy and freedom may be more serious than is currently understood, and is seeking greater assurance on these points.
Throughout negotiations on ACTA the ALDE group has called for greater transparency and tabled a resolution in September 2010 asking the Commission for all relevant studies and impact assessments before signing the agreement. ALDE colleagues have sponsored many of the Parliamentary questions on this matter.
Negotiations were finalised in November 2010 and the relevant parties are now in the process of ratifying the Agreement through their internal procedures. In the EU this means that both the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers must give their approval. The Council adopted a decision on December 17th authorising the signature of ACTA, and the text now passes to the European Parliament for ratification. The International Trade Committee (INTA) and the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) have already asked the Parliament’s Legal Services for advice on the agreement, and then the INTA Committee will produce a report with input in the form of opinions from the Development Committee (DEVE), the Industry, Research and Energy Committee (ITRE) and the JURI Committee.
On 24 November 2010 the European Parliament adopted a Resolution in which we called on the Commission to confirm that ACTA’s implementation will have no impact on fundamental rights and data protection. MEPs welcomed the Commission’s confirmation that the ACTA provisions will be fully in line with EU law and that neither personal searches nor the so-called ‘three strikes and out’ procedure will be introduced. The Parliament also emphasised that any decision taken by the Commission as part of the ACTA Committee must not unilaterally change the agreement’s content, and that therefore any proposed change must be approved by the Parliament and the Council.
ALDE will finalise its decision on whether to support the agreement or not once the legal advice and INTA committee report are available and only if concerns about interference with internet freedoms and other civil liberties can be assuaged. Until then it is not possible to have a fully informed position on this issue.
In the meantime I attach a couple of interim briefing documents I have received on the issue, which are designed to address some of the specific criticisms that have been levelled at these proposals.
Thank you once again for contacting Andrew about this issue. I hope this response has been helpful.
Re:I can understand why (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can understand why (Score:5, Funny)
Evil will always triumph, because good Is dumb - Dark Helmet
Re: (Score:2)
How is that funny and not insightful?
Re: (Score:2)
How is that funny and not insightful?
I think it is more a bit of both. It both is a bit insightful and from a funny movie. There may also be a bit of a woosh going on here.