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Two Senators Call For ACTA Transparency
angry tapir writes "Two US senators have asked President Barack Obama's administration to allow the public to review and comment on a controversial international copyright treaty being negotiated largely in secret. The public has a right to know what's being negotiated in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Senators Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, and Bernard Sanders, a Vermont Independent, argue in the letter."
There's my comment.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Why legislate in the open when you can negotiate secret treaties in the dark?
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
It doesn't matter if this treaty is filled with rainbows and puppies. It needs to be killed as a matter of principle. Free people and free nations do not make law in the dark.
meet the new boss same as the old boss.. Oh, excuse me, i didn't mean to offend any of the myopic zombies that put this guy in office ) And no, it this were an actual troll, i would be making excuses for why his consistent secrecy is tolerable.
"We got more senators than that"
Indeed. It's a shame that only 2% of the senate is willing to stand up against this gross violation of transparency and democratic principles. Good luck to Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown and anyone else who might join them.
Note the voting pattern of Hispanics, Asian-Americans, etc. These non-Black minorities serve as a measurement of African-American racism against Whites (and other non-Black folks). Neither Barack Hussein Obama nor John McCain is Hispanic or Asian. So, Hispanics and Asian-Americans used only non-racial criteria in selecting a candidate and, hence, serve as the reference by which we detect a racist voting pattern. Only about 65% of Hispanics and Asian-Americans supported Obama. In other words, a maximum of 65% support by any ethnic or racial group for either McCain or Obama is not racist and, hence, is acceptable. (A maximum of 65% for McCain is okay. So, European-American support at 55% for McCain is well below this threshold and, hence, is not racist.)
If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama. At that level of support, McCain would have won the presidential race.
At this point, African-American supremacists (and apologists) claim that African-Americans voted for Obama because he (1) is a member of the Democratic party and (2) supports its ideals. That claim is an outright lie. Look at the exit-polling data for the Democratic primaries. Consider the case of North Carolina. Again, about 95% of African-Americans voted for him and against Hillary Clinton. Both Clinton and Obama are Democrats, and their official political positions on the campaign trail were nearly identical. Yet, 95% of African-Americans voted for Obama and against Hillary Clinton. Why? African-Americans supported Obama due solely to the color of his skin.
Here is the bottom line. Barack Hussein Obama does not represent mainstream America. He won the election due to the racist voting pattern exhibited by African-Americans.
African-Americans have established that expressing "racial pride" by voting on the basis of skin color is 100% acceptable. Neither the "Wall Street Journal" nor the "New York Times" complained about this racist behavior. Therefore, in future elections, please feel free to express your racial pride by voting on the basis of skin color. Feel free to vote for the non-Black candidates and against the Black candidates if you are not African-American. You need not defend your actions in any way. Voting on the basis of skin color is quite acceptable by today's moral standard.
The senators can sign a law that takes a way the parts of the bill of rights.
cheers,
A. Tapir
Senators don't sign laws or treaties, they only approve them.
The President is the one who ultimately wields the pen.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
America had a choice,,, Ron Paul. The sad part is that the 2012 election will once again reign in "change" in the form of a Republican "conservative". Both parties are bought and paid for with the exception of a few individuals. Wake up people!
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
Yes and no. They can still put something into law with 2/3rds majority vote.
Nonsense and tosh! That doesn't sound like something the founding fathers would have done. What have your liberal history professors been telling you?
Remember to keep your bogus enquiries going through to these twats' online customer support people. Be subtle though, as they are ignoring people based on IP address.
The senators can sign a law that takes a way the parts of the bill of rights.
After which it will be immediately ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
and the supreme court can void them
Hey, three out of three ain't bad!
Just leave the US. It's done for. Our best chance at freedom will be independence in space. Go live in a remote country and get away from these douche bags. You getting raped so much in the US that your asshole is gaping.
The Legislature is supposed to WRITE the laws, the President signing a law is the approval part.
We are supposed to have a House of Representatives but it's really a House of whatever [insert current speaker here] wants to allow to the floor.
And the house leadership is selected by elected members of the house, who are presumably representatives of their district, given that's how they get elected. Sounds representative to me. Probably was more so before the mid 90s when party loyalty and fundraising became a bigger criteria for leadership than seniority, so if you're complaining that party politics distorts the picture, I'd agree, but it's still essentially a function of who gets elected.
Our Government stopped being about transparency and democratic principles a long time ago.
To the extent that this is true, it's because this is what we (as a whole) really want. Not what we say we want. We might say we want information and transparency, but frankly, even most of the attentive people I know outside the legislature simply don't pay *careful* attention. They might have hobby horses and hot-button topics, but very few of us have the stomach for careful analysis.
We get the government we have because generally we prefer to focus on our own lives, and when we're not, we prefer entertainment and passionate expression of our general philosophies over thoughtful, nuanced, nuts-and-bolts policy discussion. And because most of us need to be *paid* to seriously research a position and then go down and talk to members of congress about it -- or talk to each other reasonably about it. No surprise the people who will pay others to do that are best represented.
If you're one of the few people who donates to organizations that lobby and do legal work, that takes the time to cite policy research instead of simply ranting when you write your reps and senators, that understands the opposition positions and research well enough to know which of their points are respectable and which are refutable, that might even know (and be known to) some of the congressional staff by name, then congratulations, you're one of the few what I'm saying doesn't apply to.
But for the rest of us, well, the government as it now stands is essentially a reflection of our real habits and values instead of our ideals.
Tweet, tweet.
Tag this with "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense"
Our current plethora of unconstitutional laws and policies would suggest that's not the case.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Unfortunately this is a treaty, not a law. I don't know if the supreme court can nullify a treaty.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Okay let us be clear here about treaties. This process does not follow the normal process for laws because its . . . different. The president gets to negotiate a treaty with a foreign power or powers. The senate then has to ratify it with 51 votes (but really 60 for the usual reasons in the senate.) The senate can't override the president on a treaty. Now, that said, while the senators don't have any authority as to the terms of the treaty, its a problem for the president if he negotiates a treaty the senate won't ratify. It reduces his credibility for all future treaties, so generally if two senators make a request, he's at least going to listen. Especially when those votes are ones he's counting on for his agenda in other matters. And yes, despite the irregular nature of it all, a treaty once negotiated by the president and ratified by the senate becomes part of the law of the land, unless it otherwise violates the constitution.
depends how they phrase it doesn't it...
Nah. Being a treaty and not a law, they could simply say that it is unenforcable in the US. Either way it would be the same: totally legal, and yet effectively meaningless.
C|N>K
the treaty would not be nullified, but a treaty does not make domestic law, and any laws that complied with the treaty would be unconstitutional.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
It appears they can.
http://supreme.justia.com/constitution/article-2/19-constitutional-limitations-on-treaty-power.html
No they can't.
They are the lowest rung on the ladder. The President has to sign it and the Supreme Court has to approve it.
So are they actually against ACTA, or just signaling to the RIAA and MPAA that they need some campaign contributions?
Finally, my senators are doing something before I have to do something! God bless Vermont. In all seriousness, we need to stand up against Big Media. The morons running the RIAA and MPAA need to learn that they can't control media like they used to, times have changed. "Kick back watch it crumble See the drowning, watch the fall I feel just terrible about it That's sarcasm, let it burn ...
The dinosaurs will slowly die
And I do believe no one will cry
I'm just fucking glad I'm gonna be
There to watch the fall"
Dinosaurs Will Die - NoFX
While I applaud the efforts of the two good senators, they still have 98 other members of the Senate to convince.
I only vaguely recognized the name Bernie Sanders until just recently when someone pointed me to this congressional hearing where he rips Greenspan a new one. Great Stuff!
Damn sleep, missed the beginning of this one. Secrecy is the antithesis of Democracy. Unless your talking about your newest super-duper kill-em-all weapon then secrecy is Evil. It hides agendas, it does not promote truth and it allows people to push their petty prejudice onto everyone. It's Evil. Whatever is decided do it in the open with all parties being on the level.
Shh.
THe President's signature on a Treaty means absolutely nothing. Consider the Kyoto Treaty as an example of a Treaty signed by the USA, but never ratified by the Senate.
Until the Senate ratifies a Treaty, it's just a scrap of parchment, even if the President has signed it.
Note that this is the reverse of the usual process, where the Senate proposes and the President disposes. In a Treaty, the President proposes, the Senate has the final voice. Which can include telling the President to go pound sand and start over.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
One of the (many) problems with ACTA from the US perspective is that it's not being negotiated as a treaty, which would then require ratification by the Senate before becoming law. It's being negotiated as an "executive agreement", which requires zero Congressional oversight. Ostensibly this also means that it cannot go beyond the bounds of existing US law, and of course the USTR et al. all assure us that it doesn't, but without seeing the text, there is no way to know if that's actually true or not.
Another point - from my own perspective, one of the main problems with ACTA is not necessarily its effect on the US, but rather on other countries. At least in the US we already have well-established fair use provisions and other protections (safe harbor, counter notification, etc.), however that is not always the case elsewhere. If ACTA exports all the draconian features of our IP laws without any of the protections, it has the effect of screwing over everyone else. ACTA is currently being negotiated mostly among OECD countries (they could never have pushed it through WIPO, there is too much opposition from the G77), but when it's finally established, we can expect it to become a requirement for anyone who wants to sign a free-trade agreement with the US.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Better go look up the World Trade Organization. Half the stuff that organization does is by means of processes that aren't transparent at all. There's not been even a hint that anyone in the legal community might suggest the WTO has done anything improper.
If you wish to fight ACTA, you better get off your butt and do it now. The lawyers aren't going to fight it afterward.
Senators don't sign laws or treaties, they only approve them.
Or in this case, hopefully, refuse to approve them.
In which case the President isn't supposed to be able to do squat.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Reading political discourse among most slashdotters is like watching old people fuck. It's messy, clumsy, and a little bit revolting.
You probably mean "the idea of older people fucking", or are you in the habit of watching old people fuck?
Besides, I find the intended meaning of your spur rather murky considering the number of insightful comments on this topic. Although you were rated +5 Funny, I find your attempt messy, clumsy and a little bit revolting.
It could be worse. In Canada, our members in the House of Commons have to vote with their party or be removed from it (so votes on bills really are predetermined here). And the senate has rubber stamped every bill through for years.
At least you only have to watch one set of bastards: the ones in Cabinet. Any bills introduced can be scrutinized fairly well.
With Congress, every one of those critters (500+) can add an amendment or rider to any bill. It's very hard to figure what exactly is going to pass because the lobbyists can hit anyone of Reps to get their stuff through.
There are pluses and minus to each system.
I'm especially gratified because I sent him a letter on this topic a few weeks ago. My letter might have been the one that prompted him to act. Yeah, I know the odds of that are vanishingly small, but everybody needs something to believe in. I choose to believe that what I do makes a difference.
Fast tracking is different from executive orders. Fast track (now called trade promotion authority) allows the president to negotiate a trade treaty in advance, then present the entire package to Congress in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion. This prevents trade negotiation from getting bogged down in Congress - without fast tracking, every senator is going to want a tariff on whatever their state happens to produce.
Fast track really isn't relevant to ACTA for two reasons. First, as I pointed out elsewhere, it's being negotiated as an executive agreement, so it doesn't require Congressional approval anyway. The flip side of this is that it is supposed to "color within the lines" (as a USTR rep put it) of existing US law, but without seeing the agreement, we just have to take the administration's word (along with that of other colorful characters, such as the MPAA and PhRMA) that this is true. Oh, and some of the few public interest group people who have gotten to see draft texts (under NDAs) have specifically said in their opinion, it would go beyond current US law.
Second, fast track authority expired a while ago (I believe in 2007), and Obama is unlikely to get it back anytime soon. Protectionist sentiment in the US is strong right now, and free trade is not high on Obama's agenda anyway (see, e.g., the tariff on Chinese tires).
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
THe President's signature on a Treaty means absolutely nothing. Consider the Kyoto Treaty as an example of a Treaty signed by the USA, but never ratified by the Senate.
Ratification isn't the end of things either, consider the case of Elian Gonzalez. Or hot the US acts with respect to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty.
likely lower courts would void them even more so if the 1st rights where damaged.
And the result from this is what exactly? Did it "save" the economy? Did it do anything besides create great drama?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone