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."

Comments

Re:Most insightful department ever

[Shakrai]

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.

That really surprises you? Our Congress is anything but transparent. Bills aren't drafted in public and debated on the floor -- they are written behind closed doors by the Congressional leadership and only brought to the floor for some grandstanding in front of the C-SPAN cameras before the vote (whose outcome is already pre-determined) is taken. It's even worse in the House than the Senate. In the House you can't do ANYTHING without the approval of the leadership. 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.

Our Government stopped being about transparency and democratic principles a long time ago.

My original link + PDF of the letter

[angry tapir]

Here's the link to the longer article that was originally in my story submission before the editor removed it. It includes a link to a PDF of the letter.

cheers,
A. Tapir

Re:Most insightful department ever

[afidel]

Brown's been on the good side of technology legislation for a LONG time, when he was over in the House he served on the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet and was almost always on the side of the citizenry. Every time I've written him about issues concerning me I have received a detailed and thought-out response, some signed by him personally. I've also had the pleasure to meet him in person on numerous occasions and even had the chance to follow-up on some of those letters. He remembered details of my correspondence so I'm fairly certain they were not simply responded too by staffers. He might not be as approachable today as a senator has significantly more constituents but I doubt he cares less about them.

Re:Most insightful department ever

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

That really surprises you? Our Congress is anything but transparent. Bills aren't drafted in public and debated on the floor -- they are written behind closed doors by the Congressional leadership and only brought to the floor for some grandstanding in front of the C-SPAN cameras before the vote (whose outcome is already pre-determined) is taken. It's even worse in the House than the Senate. In the House you can't do ANYTHING without the approval of the leadership. 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.

Our Government stopped being about transparency and democratic principles a long time ago.

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.

Re:Most insightful department ever

[grcumb]

It never was -- there aren't good old days. Transparency and openness only became possible with mass media, mass literacy and cheap papers a century to a century and a half ago, depending on how you look at it.

Indeed. The fascinating history of the Belgian 'colonisation' (read: enslavement) of the Congo, King Leopold's Ghost, deals tangentially with a campaign in the run-up to the First World War to shed light on all the secret treaties that Britain had signed and which led it inevitably into war.

The campaigner was vilified in the press and mocked by government sources as a delusional paranoid. It was only in the years following the conflict that he was proven to have been substantially correct,

Believe it or not, the situation we have today is about as good as it's ever been. We do at least have some hope of actually exerting electoral pressure on our candidates, and governments do at some point have to bring information such as this into the open. Congrtulations to the two senators for their actions. Their efforts[*] should be supported, regardless of party affiliation.

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[*] Their efforts, that is, not them. One of the great pitfalls of modern democracy is that we often confuse the person with the policy. Policies should be supported or opposed, not people.