EU Council Refuses To Release ACTA Documents

CaptSolo writes "The EU Council refuses to release secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement documents, stating that disclosure of this information could impede the proper conduct of the negotiations, would weaken the position of the EU in these negotiations, and might affect relations with the third parties concerned. The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure requested these documents last week. FFII's response questions ACTA's secrecy saying: 'The argument that public transparency regarding 'trade negotiations' can be ignored if it would weaken the EU's negotiation position is particularly painful. At which point exactly do negotiations over trade issues become more important than democratic law making? At 200 million euro? At 500 million euro? At 1 billion euro? What is the price of our democracy?'"

Comments

Just tell us already!

[Tubal-Cain]

weaken the position of the EU in these negotiations

For the sake of government transparency, I say it's worth it.

might affect relations with the third parties concerned

For the worst, I hope.

Re:Just tell us already!

[narcberry]

Questioning the council leads to fear, fear leads to hate, hate leads to the dark side.

It's not democratic.

[mysidia]

It's closed-door rulemaking the old-fashioned way.

Democratic nations should be petitioning against the negotiations and attempting to recall council member representatives on that basis.

Before it's too late...

Re:It's not democratic.

[Halo1]

it is democratic as long as the people doing the negociations are democraticly elected. That is called representative democracy. "We the people" can punish the leaders if they f- up by not re-electing them.

No, that's not how the Dutch or other European democracies work. We have a system whereby you have a government and a parliament (with one or two chambers). While both the people in parliament and in the government are democratically elected, the job of the parliament is to scrutinise the government. It's all part of the checks and balances.

The problem with the ACTA is that the national parliaments have no access whatsoever to the texts under negotiation, and hence are unable to perform their jobs as representatives of the other citizens.

It is this leaking that shifts the balance away from the electoral result, So actually i believe that leaking does more harm to the democratic process than the fact that they do it behind closed doors.

That's only true if you believe that a representative democracy means that you "cast your vote and then forget about everything". That's a very naive and unrealistic view. Voting is only a part (but an important one) of what is necessary to make a representative democracy work.

Constant scrutiny and input from the general public is desirable and I dare say required to keep things functioning properly. After all, the people in government and parliament are not supposed to and cannot rule from an ivory tower, just decreeing what is "best for the populace", without any external input.

They are elected to represent us, but that does not mean that from that point on they will automatically always possess all necessary knowledge to decide about anything that matters. They regularly have to inform themselves about topics they don't know everything about.

So how should they inform themselves? By looking at studies and talking to experts. Studies are written by people and experts are also people. Inevitably, you are going to get some bias. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that they get input from an as broad as possible group of people so that they get an as complete as possible picture (rather than just the picture that one or other special interest group wants them to see).

Hence, public scrutiny and awareness about what is going on is of paramount importance to avoid lock-ins by special interest groups. That doesn't mean it is easy to avoid this, but it is a necessary precondition.

The European Court of Justice recently still stressed the importance of openness in law making in its ruling in the Turco case:

Openness in that respect contributes to strengthening democracy by allowing citizens to scrutinize all the information which has formed the basis of a legislative act. The possibility for citizens to find out the considerations underpinning legislative action is a precondition for the effective exercise of their democratic rights.

I Know!!

[BlueStrat]

We can just ask President-Elect Obama to publish it after he gets sworn in! He's all about "Change", right?

Right?

-Strat

Re:I Know!!

[TitusC3v5]

Except that he's president-elect of America, which, last time I checked, wasn't a member of the EU. Besides, hopefully his Change mantra will include the US not strong-arming other nations into doing what we want.

Re:I Know!!

[Tubal-Cain]

Why does everybody seem to see politics as binary red/blue issues? Why can't we dislike both canidates?

Re:I Know!!

[corsec67]

Because then things get complicated, and you have to actually compare things.

I do really hate how people keep talking about stuff as a binary thing, when there are a variety of options.

Re:I Know!!

[BlueStrat]

Except that he's president-elect of America, which, last time I checked, wasn't a member of the EU.

Last I checked, America was also involved in the ACTA negotiations. Wouldn't the US State Department have copies of such an agreement he could release if he so chose? As a matter of fact, isn't America one of the biggest, if not *the* biggest, proponent of some of the most egregious and draconian parts of this agreement? Could he not instruct the US State Department to change terms that the US put in?

Besides, hopefully his Change mantra will include the US not strong-arming other nations into doing what we want.

If that includes not strong-arming his own and every other nation he can into an agreement with the horrid regulations/laws/rules reported to be included in ACTA, then I'm with you.

I really do hope he does live up to his campaign rhetoric and promises about being a different sort of politician that truly believes in a more open, compassionate government and doesn't pander to corporate lobbyists.

I wouldn't bet the farm on it though.

-Strat

Re:I Know!!

[jlarocco]

[citation needed]

How about this? He was only in the Senate for 3 of those years, yet he still managed to rank second!

Or maybe this?

Or this?

I could go on all day, but what's the point? You're just going to make up some ridiculous excuse.

Re:I Know!!

[timmarhy]

"hopefully his Change mantra will include the US not strong-arming other nations into doing what we want."

holy FUCK are you naive little man.

Re:I Know!!

[Elektroschock]

Yes, and Parliaments cannot see what is negotiated there, they don't even know the precise mandate of the Government to conclude this agreement and Eu bureaucrats admit that the objective is to impose IP enforcement regulation on "trade partners". According to EU officials part of it are civil and criminal sanctions for IPR enforcement and internet content filtering. The directive for criminal sanctions is currently stalled in the EU-Council because the EU level has no competence for that and the proposed measures were just disproportionate. And internet content filtering was kicked out of the Telcom package by the EU-Parliament after the lobby hijacked the telco regulation on committee stage. And sure the EU wants to export its IPR enforcement directive to the US. According to EU officials the reason of the pressure on the US side is that change was expected, regardless Obama or McCain and the anti-democratic trade nuts wanted to fix something before the change of administration. It is a kind of IP maximalist coup d'etat. Trade officials conspire to crack "down on piracy and counterfeiting" without any regard to proportionate legislation, balace of established law, democratic principles, the policies and principles of foreign trade policy as removal of trade barriers, etc. It is not the officials specialised on IPR policies who drive that but trade politicians who don't understand the current corpus of law and follow the principles of "more is better".

Now, ACTA is a maximalist tool, driven by ideological trade officials from many nations who want to jointly hijack the political deliberative process.

That is just the procedural stuff that is anti-democratic, anti-parliament, anti-expert, anti-constitution, pro-forum shopping, pro-maximalist, anti-free trade. The WTO and WIPO are not radical enough for them.

http://action.ffii.org/acta/Analysis

Re:I Know!!

[MrMr]

Exactly, some people also divide everything in two categories, and others don't. D'oh!

Re:I Know!!

[ichigo 2.0]

Did you check the figures adding up to the total? He received $126,349. Of this, $6,000 was from PACs while the rest includes contributions from individuals employed by the two companies. If someone contributes $20 to his presidential campaign, it will go in that total. Since he raised record amounts from individual contributions, I'd be surprised if he wasn't near the top of that list, and I'd expect it to be the same from any employer picked at random in the USA.

Guess who got $0 from those PACs?

And no, I'm not a McCain supporter, both candidates sucked.

Re:uh oh....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah? You mean that the US have published the documents? Please link or just shut up with your idiotic comments regarding Europe. Thanks

Or in other words...

[syousef]

All your rights are belong to us.

Somebody set up us the bomb (and the people actually voted for them!)

You have no chance to survive make your time. Ha ha ha ha ....

I'm confused

[Malevolent Tester]

democratic law making?

the EU

Can someone explain the relation, please?

Re:I'm confused

[stygianguest]

Oh stop it. I know it's a popular meme, but it's not much more than that. The european union is a democratic institution and always has been. Yes it has its faults, but it has become more democratic with time. Unlike some other federations that shall remain unnamed, like the USA.

I'd also argue that the EU has brought more democracy to the world since the 90s than any other state or organisation. The expansion of the EU and the often just the prospect of it, has brought democracy to eastern europe and beyond.

What is the price of our democracy?

[Mashiki]

Priceless.

When a government decides to have policy and decision making behind closed doors that can/may and probably will impact your day to day life, you can and are moving from a democracy to an oligarchy. Regardless of whether you're electing them or not, the state of affairs on such is the same.

People in the EU shouldn't be questioning this, they should be up in arms over it, screaming and protesting in the streets over it.

Re:What is the price of our democracy?

[hairyfeet]

Oh you want to add some insult to the injury? How about how they just boosted AIG to $150 billion and that $700 billion? They have actually spent $2 trillion and are refusing to say where the money actually went. You just got to love putting Wall Street insiders in charge of a Wall Street bailout.

Australia has this problem as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Australia has the same problem. EFA Tried to sue using Freedom of Information laws to get the same info out of the department of foreign affairs and trade. Same response. All the governments are under an NDA on this thing. The USA needs to cleanup this mess because they're the ones forcing the non disclosure clauses. New Zealand also has the same issue.

Re:Australia has this problem as well.

[BiggerIsBetter]

Australia has the same problem. EFA Tried to sue using Freedom of Information laws to get the same info out of the department of foreign affairs and trade. Same response. All the governments are under an NDA on this thing. The USA needs to cleanup this mess because they're the ones forcing the non disclosure clauses. New Zealand also has the same issue.

If nothing else, it serves to remind us that in most countries, the government is a very separate entity to the people... Ironic given the USA mantra "of the people, by the people, for the people." How a government can be under NDA for a policy that affects their country's people in such a broad manner is beyond ridiculous. Perhaps they are concerned that other governments of the world may gain a competitive advantage? Funnily enough, I'd wager that non-signatories most certainly will.

Sadly, it may be too late for New Zealand. The main sponsor of this act was Minister of Commerce Judith Tizard, who recently lost her office as part of the beaten Labour party in NZ elections, and also lost her electorate as an MP... but nevertheless, the act goes into effect here Feb 28 2009.

Re:uh oh....

[TapeCutter]

You were modded troll by a continent?

Oh, how surprising!

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

In case none of you know, the EU is pretty much a mislabeled dictatorship. Citizens of the EU have pretty much nothing to say about what goes on or who gets "elected" for this or that. Democracy, pah!

The EU is a very good idea gone horribly wrong. Read me right, I want a united Europe, but not like this. We can vote for people who have get no actual power, yay! We waste money on going from A to B X times a month to not hurt France and Germany's pride, yay! We the people decline on the new "constitution" (what a joke) and they try pushing it through anyways, yay! I could go on, but what's the use...

All the good ideas get tossed, more (insane) regulation nobody wants gets piled. Media pay no attention to it either. What's going on in EU politics? You wont get it from the telly, the paper, or the generic news sites (though Obama is all over the place)...

The EU as a government body is a farce in need of some serious fixing, the only problem is some countries have serious ego and other countries actually care.

Give me the information and my 1/300m'th say in who our new EU overlords are, and I shall welcome them!

Re:Oh, how surprising!

[Hordeking]

In case none of you know, the EU is pretty much a mislabeled dictatorship. Citizens of the EU have pretty much nothing to say about what goes on or who gets "elected" for this or that. Democracy, pah!

The EU is a very good idea gone horribly wrong. Read me right, I want a united Europe, but not like this. We can vote for people who have get no actual power, yay! We waste money on going from A to B X times a month to not hurt France and Germany's pride, yay! We the people decline on the new "constitution" (what a joke) and they try pushing it through anyways, yay! I could go on, but what's the use...

All the good ideas get tossed, more (insane) regulation nobody wants gets piled. Media pay no attention to it either. What's going on in EU politics? You wont get it from the telly, the paper, or the generic news sites (though Obama is all over the place)...

The EU as a government body is a farce in need of some serious fixing, the only problem is some countries have serious ego and other countries actually care.

Give me the information and my 1/300m'th say in who our new EU overlords are, and I shall welcome them!

What? Did I hear you whining about the EU? We've been putting up with that sort of crap since at least 1850. It started a war in 1861. The US Federal Government really took advantage of having fewer states to ratify constitutional amendments (well, they had claimed they had suceeded, and the Federal Gov't claimed they hadn't, but didn't include them in the ratification process anyway) and pass all sorts of terrible laws. Have you ever wondered why there's a negative stereotype of the US South?

What's that? I hear you whining about more laws that noone actually wants? May I present to you Franklin Rooseveldt, who got his New Deal to stick even though it was unconstitutional, by threatening to stack the supreme court in his favor. We're still hurting from that one, with an overburdened social security system that I pay into, but will probably be bankrupt when I get to retirement age. Let me present to you one Lyndon Baines Johnson, who intensified that problem, by creating even more entitlements. Furthermore, let me present to you the current crisis, which resulted in $700*10^9 (THAT'S A LOT OF NUTS!) to save corporate investors and debt-owners from their own greed. Let me point out that I didn't get a whole lot of say in that one, and I tried to clearly communicate it to my elected officials.

What's that? I hear you complaining about a lack of power? At least you have more control over your own little area. Our Federal government seems to be able to override a lot of things at the state level (let me be the first to point out that technically, the states were considered the supreme component, holding much the same status as the countries comprising the EU today.) Haven't you noticed that we always end up with one Republican and one Democrat in nearly all elections that win 49% and 50% of the vote? Have you further noticed that most of the time, their policies, despite how they are package, vary rather little from each other?

Maybe you should concentrate on making the EU a better place, looking at the US as an example of what not to do (and some examples of good ideas, lest I forget the extremely simple Constitution, simple enough that even a child can generally understand it). Maybe if you can make the EU a freer place, I'll want to move to one of the countries there. As it is now, The EU and US are going the direction of having telescreens on everyone's wall.

Re:Oh, how surprising!

[hughk]

Note that the problem with the EU comes down to national governments not wanting to cede power. The council is composed of the leaders of the respective governments whilst the commission is headed up by appointees of those governments. The parliament is democratically elected but has insufficient power. The trade commissioner responsible for ACTA (it was one of his "successes") was Mandelson and we know how he has always had his links with business and the media.

The role of British media should also be examined as they love to misrepresent regulations out of context whilst forgetting to inform people about useful things like the matching regional development aid. It seems that the UK has been somewhat inefficient at applying for grants that other countries, i.e., Ireland have done very well out of.

Please remember that the EU has relevance here tro slashdot, given the support for open formats and open source software and the reverse engineering directive which gives rights that are simply not available in the US.

Simple solution to this problem

[Hordeking]

Ok. The EU doesn't want to reveal the documents that appear to have some sort of direct impact on me. So, wouldn't that amount to a secret law of some kind? Ignorance of the law is no excuse, with the exception that the law was intentionally hidden. In other words, a rather pointless law, unless you're trying to write yourself some sort of blank check. Then you're no better off than Soviet Russia or Mao Mao's China.

The EU won't release the paperwork? Well, the simplest solution is "Better the devil I know than the devil I don't. They're hiding something, but it could be potentially bad for me. Since I don't know, it would be best to oppose it in it's entirety." Of course, this yields a known devil (the status quo).

There. Problem solved.

Re:uh oh....

[gwait]

Whoa dude,

By all accounts the US are the instigaters of this ACTA nonsense, instigated under a Republican administration.

Trade reps have been bullying and bribing the Canadian government for a couple of years to get our Lilly livered conservatives to try to pass a "made in Canada" DMCA that makes the US DMCA look like a good idea. (Bill C-61)

It went away when the Canadian Conservative party called an election this fall, but now that's done with, it's expected to come back with a vengeance.

This ACTA thing seems to be phase 2, and you can bet it is NOT AT ALL about free speech, but rather the exact opposite.

Expect your internet connection box to turn you in for crimes against the state in a few years.

Secret from who exactly?

[vik]

The EU is not alone. Here in New Zealand we're trying to find out what is in the ACTA and the word is we'll be told when they're ready to vote on it.

Meanwhile you have to wonder who this information is being kept secret from, since all the governments it'll affect already have a copy.

Vik :v)

Re:uh oh....

[TapeCutter]

Relax, it was a joke, admittedly at your expense. The point(s) I was trying to make in a gentle manner are...

1. Avoid the logical fallacy of assuming that one random opinion represents the thoughts and opinions of one billion people.

2. Look up some definitions, some of the words you are using do not mean what you think they do (eg: socialisim).

3. The USA is a nation, the EU is largely a trading bloc.

4. Your troll mod could easily have come from anyone, anywhere. In fact given the mood in the US it could quite easily have come from someone down the street.

5. Get over yourself, ideology is the problem not the answer.

Disclaimer: I'm an Aussie.

By "Third Parties" they mean "The Public"

[erroneus]

Government and the Business interests that pay them are the first parties. The Third Parties are The Public. When you realize that is their actual meaning, it all makes sense because ultimately, when we find out what they are trying to do, the public outcry will weaken their position as they are negotiating all of our rights away.

Re:uh oh....

[meringuoid]

A copyright treaty in favour of the corporations to the detriment of the workers is... socialist? Wow.