FOIA Request For Pending Copyright Treaty Denied

Penguinisto writes "According to CNET, Knowledge Ecology International's FOIA request for information about ACTA was denied. ACTA is the pending copyright treaty believed to have been authored by lobbyists for the content cartels. Even stranger, the denial cited 'national security reasons (PDF). While it is not unusual for the White House of any administration to block FOIA requests for national security reasons, one would think that a treaty affecting civil interests alone wouldn't qualify for such secrecy. Not exactly sure what involvement the former RIAA mouthpiece Donald Verelli (a recent Obama pick for the DOJ) may have in this." KEI is not alone; the European Parliament wants to see the ACTA documents too.

Comments

All the more....

[Darkness404]

Wait... Didn't Obama say he was all for transparency? How less transparent can you get that you can't even disclose a treaty about copyright without it being a matter of "national security". Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Re:All the more....

[CodeBuster]

You do not get to be president by being a nice honest guy

Generally speaking that is probably true. However, Gerald Ford, the only US President who was appointed rather than elected (yes, that is possible albeit highly unlikely in our system), was by all accounts a genuinely nice guy. Of course, he sort of "fell into" the office of President so perhaps he should be considered an odd exception rather than the rule.

ACTA is more than a "Copyright" Treaty

[langelgjm]

FYI, ACTA is much more than a "Copyright" treaty. I wish that's all it were about, but the "C" in ACTA stands for "Counterfeiting". There's been a recent rash of seizures of legitimately produced generic drugs in the Netherlands, all on concerns about "counterfeiting." The pushing through of ACTA is likely only to make this sort of nonsense worse, and the effect on people's lives is real.

Re:Power

[bigstrat2003]

He's only been in office for a 2 month! How much could he do/not do in 8 weeks? Not very much.

He's responsible for every decision that has been made in the past 8 weeks. I'm a fair man, and I'm willing to say that processes that were in place as he took office aren't his fault... but that doesn't sound like it was the case here at all.

The whole "Obama has broken his promises" thing is basically nothing but something Republicans babble about because they are sore losers.

No, it's the truth. He broke his promises before he took office (see: promises about the FISA bill, which turned out to be bullshit when they weren't politically convenient for him any more), and he's breaking them now.

Furthermore, attempting to polarize this matter into "omg Republicans vs Democrats" is naive of you, at best. I've already seen people who were happy Obama won, who have renounced their support after seeing what he's done so far in office. Not everything is about some stupid bullshit party allegiance.

Wha?? Are you getting this from Conservapedia?

[langelgjm]

First of all, as others pointed out, you must have meant the Equal Rights Amendment.

Second, I'm fairly certain that NOW was one of the main forces behind the ERA, and that it was conservative forces raising fears that the ERA would lead to mixed-sex public restrooms and public funding for abortions which managed to shoot it down.

In fact, now that I look, NOW's website appears to support the ERA, so I have no idea where you're coming up with this stuff.

Re:national security

[Rary]

Government really should not be involved with religious sacraments and marriage is a religious sacrament.

Actually, marriage existed as a civil institution long before religion stuck its nose into it.

Perhaps what would be better would be for marriage to remain in the civil realm, thus avoiding any religious influence on who can marry whom, and instead allow religious institutes to perform "spiritual unions".