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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.
"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.
The senators can sign a law that takes a way the parts of the bill of rights.
cheers,
A. Tapir
The way US politics and campaign finance are run, there is no way to make a credible run for office unless you are "same as the old boss."
If you don't like that fact, find a way to change it. But don't complain that a system designed to perpetuate itself continues to look the same.
Senators don't sign laws or treaties, they only approve them.
The President is the one who ultimately wields the pen.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
American was not interested in a racist religious nutbag.
Yes and no. They can still put something into law with 2/3rds majority vote.
Ron Paul may be a homophobic, racist, religious, evolution denying nutbag, but at least he isn't a globalist, corporatist, wiretapping immunity wishwashing, patriot-act handwaving, trillion dollar handouts for everyone nutbag. While it is nice to have a president whose morals and ideology matches your own, at this point I would be supremely happy to just have someone who isn't a scumbag willing sell out our rights or future for the highest dollar. Or perhaps it is me who is crazy and just doesn't see the big picture of how we can continue to spend money we do not have on a recession caused by us spending money we do not have.
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
i am an atheist but i'd vote for the pope himself if he truly believed that following words of constitution is not passe, advocated drastic cuts in federal spending, stopping war machine, restoring sound money policy and allowing people to be personally responsible for their life, without government interference.
You can say a lot about the man, but not that he is just like every other career politician without principles. 'Traditional' candidates are two sides of the same coin, merely disguised as rep/dem. In the end they all blow taxpayer's money left and right, they all increase public debt by 1 trillion every year and they all lick wall street balls whenever wall street feels like it.
Hey, three out of three ain't bad!
You mean he's secretly Australian?
we got Obama, so you are wrong
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
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.
Reading political discourse among most slashdotters is like watching old people fuck.
It's messy, clumsy, and a little bit revolting.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well, I want to believe.
I want to believe that we can buy our way out of a recession with money loaned to us by China.
I want to believe that real change is just around the corner and we just have to wait for the country, economy and rest of the world to catch up.
I want to believe that we can offer health care to everyone for free without it costing anyone more money.
I want to believe that we can just blame George Bush for everything that is wrong and with him out of the presidency we don't have to worry about any of those things anymore.
I want to believe that the US can abandon commitments to the rest of the world without consequences just because our priorities change. Let Israel, former Soviet countries and everyone else just fend for themselves.
I want to believe that the US can accept everyone that can make it here as a new citizen without any difficulties. I want to believe we can take care of them all, because, well, that's the way it should be.
I want to believe that government managed health care can be free, open to all, and much, much better than what we have today.
I want to believe that money is irrelevant and we should just focus on goodness, love and peace.
Unfortunately, it is really hard to believe stuff like this. I keep trying to convince the bank they should take "peace" and "love" instead of a check for the mortgage. I try to convince my employees that goodness and love is more important than a salary or benefits. So far, it isn't working out all that well.
So as much as I'd like to believe, I am faced with reality which doesn't allow for believing in stuff like this.
No, it would make him secretly Australia.
Seconded. He was a Republican long before proclaiming himself Libertarian. Republican and all that is implied by that...
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/angry-white-man?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca
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.
When did he proclaim himself Libertarian? At least during the 08 race, he opted to not run on the Libertarian ticket after losing the Republican race. If he switched, a) it must have been recently, and b) citation please. He's liked by many Libertarians to say the least, but as far as I'm aware he still has an (R) next to his name.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
depends how they phrase it doesn't it...
He ran as a Libertarian in the 1988 presidential election.
Political party:
Republican (1976-1988)
Libertarian (1988 Presidential Election)
Republican (1988-Present)
He remains a member of the Republican Liberty Caucus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Liberty_Caucus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul
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
True but I don't understand how my comment is labeled troll but the two above, equally off-topic quotes are insightful when all I did was expand on them.
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.
Maybe you want to believe that crap, but most of us want to stop hearing jingoistic misrepresentations, exaggerations and outright lies. Unfortunately, neither you nor the rest of us seem destined to get what we want.
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
"Reading political discourse among most slashdotters is like watching old people fuck."
So is trying to understand the morass of a legal system we have, as a plain citizen, considering its written by lawyers for lawyers.
"It's messy, clumsy, and a little bit revolting."
A little bit revolting???!!!!!!
Maybe every congressmen should be forced to vote publicly on each and every law/decision that is made and none of this committees/combined bill crap. They might actually spend some real time actually working on the congressional floor doing their job for more than a few days a year. That is instead of spending those few days grandstanding on predetermined bills/garbage that's little more than an embarrassment with the crap that's packed in. How can we expect any kind of transparency when no one is directly voting on the laws that are being passed.
The sick part is this is just the way they want it.
No, but Iran was.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Though you were modded down, I agree with you. And while I liked a lot of what Ron Paul stood for, I tended to prefer Dennis Kucinich who's a very different candidate in many ways. (Not just party affiliation.) But I also knew both of them would never get anywhere, because they were both outside the status-quo-maintaining system.
There are numerous easy solutions to solve the campaign finance issue. However, none of them will ever get anywhere because the current system has far too many very rich, very powerful people involved.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
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!
Don't hold your breath; from your description it seems the US system took their lessons from religions, and look how quickly they react...
One that hath name thou can not otter
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.
Simple - last count in 2004 is that we had over 59 million hypocritical morons that can vote!
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't believe political discourse is revolting, just the way it's done by many here.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Right, don't complain, just be apathetic. How about we complain like hell till we reach a tipping point.
You need to complain to as many people as possible. That is doing something. That is how you change public opinion.
Aside from that, what else can you do? The only option I see left to enact real change is to take them all out to Capital Hill, lynch them publicly, and start all over. Of course, there's no guarantee it won't reach this point again...
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
He's still a better alternative than the republicans.
No. He's really, really not. That's the kind of thinking that keeps us locked into this damned system where we have to choose between a douche and a turd (as South Park put it). Once you reach a certain level of evil, it doesn't matter how much more evil your opponent is (unless he's openly promising to run a second Holocaust or some shit like that): neither one is preferable to the other at that point.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I want to believe that you actually understand and admit the huge shit sandwich that was handed to our current President by our former President.
I want to believe that you're really not this ignorant, and that you're just misrepresenting these issues to dump blame on a President you don't like.
I want to believe that you'll stick to the topic instead of wasting our time with your drivel.
Convince people to stop voting Republican and Democrat. Convince smart, honest people to start running for office.
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"
Only to a mathematician does choosing between the lesser of three evils sound like an improvement over choosing between the lesser of two. Politics should be about quality, not quantity....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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
Actually, no, the Democrats because they pay for what they spend, and thus generally reduce the debt slightly over time. You can remember which is which this way: the Democrats tax and spend, while the Republicans borrow and spend.
Both arguably spend too much. Both are too spineless to call the bluffs of the corporations who threaten to cut jobs in their state if they don't vote the way they want. Both completely ignore their constituents, sending letters that suggest that they care about your views, then immediately vote according to the way the big corporations have told them to vote. Neither party has any actual leaders as far as I can tell.
The result is stagnation followed by knee-jerk reactionary voting whenever something breaks. The difference between our government and a proper one is basically like the difference between software maintenance and software engineering. Our current government does maintenance on our body of law, throwing hacked patches in there when things break badly enough. They don't learn enough about the entire system to see what they are breaking, so they break stuff constantly.
What we need in our government is a software architect---someone who understands large, complex systems, can reason, and can do a major overhaul to fix all the thousands of warts before they turn into thousands of cancerous tumors (I'm mixing metaphors, I know, but you get the point.)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
And my previous post is a perfect example of what happens when you do too many nit-picky rewrites.
s/because they//
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
There are numerous easy solutions... However, none of them will ever get anywhere
Based on your statement, I think we may have different understandings of the word "easy."
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
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.
I favor "big" citizenry.
Citizen's Political Power in the U.S.
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.
Since 1900, the National Debt has gone down in 16 separate years.
In twelve of those years, the President was a Republican. In the other four, the President was a Democrat.
Note, for the record, that the Democrats in question were Truman and Wilson. The debt went up every year of Clinton's Presidency.
Note further that until the Republican takeover of the House (the body required to initiate all spending bills) in 1994, the Democrats had controlled that body for 40 years. The Debt went down for two of those years, and increased in 38 of them.
In other words, there is relatively little evidence that the Democrats are more fiscally responsible than the Republicans. Basically, both Parties spend more than they take in as a matter of course, and neither has any real inclination to change.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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
We're disappointed too. Disappointed, but not surprised.
He was the lesser of two evils, and possibly the chance to get some of the young people to pay attention for a few minutes.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
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.
none of them will ever get anywhere
Jesus, pessimist much? Campaign finance is imho the single biggest problem with American government today and it would be best for starters if people had a more positive attitude in working toward solutions. It's frustrating when I see a lot of people just say "god our system/government/president sucks", throw their arms up and walk away.
Important to note however is our one key advantage over the entrenched powers that be: strength in numbers. We can out-petition them, out-protest them. Make our voice strong. We can out-muscle them if it came to that. But most importantly we can out-vote them. All we have to do (admittedly probably not simple nor easy) is unify and organize ourselves, and change will come.
call me FOSS im the boss with the sauce and the source
Right, because it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that maybe there is a cultural connection, and they felt he would represent them more.
If what you say is true, then no African-American candidate anywhere would lose where the majority of the voting population was African-American, and I don't see any evidence to back that up.
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
The debt went up negligibly in the last three years of his Presidency. The deficit was nearly down to zero by 1998, and IIRC, if you include Social Security's surplus, there was a budget surplus every year from 1998-2000 or possibly 2001, though this is, in effect, borrowing against Social Security's future to pay down the national debt. Either way, the $5 billion dollar deficit in FY 2000 under Clinton was only 1.1 percent of the $459 billion dollar deficit in 2008 under Bush. Just putting things in perspective, since you claim there is no significant difference in the rate of overspending between Democrats and Republicans.
Where we've seen the most responsible government spending has been in years with a Democrat in the White House setting strategy and policies, and Republicans in Congress trying to prevent the President from getting the money he needed to actually implement those policies. In other words, the best government is a gridlocked government, or at least the best of what we've seen lately.... *sigh*
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
1) About $250 billion over the last three years of Clinton's terms. Note the Republican Congress during that period.
2) About $110 billion by 1998.
3) $20 billion in 2000. Yes, it was much lower than Bush's $125 billion in 2001.
4) No, the National Debt is the difference between what you take in (including SS taxes), and what you spend. There was never a real surplus.
5) I never complained that there was "no significant difference" in the rate of overspending between Democrats and Republicans. That said, it should be noted that of the total surplus since 1900, Republicans managed more than Democrats, but not overwhelmingly more.
Note, further, that when you compare spending by the House's of Representatives (the guys who have the Purse Strings, according to the Constitution), you find that the overwhelming majority of the deficits have been run up under the Democrats, not the Republicans. Of course, that's mostly because the Democrats have controlled the House for most of the last century.
In other words, there's really not much evidence that the Democrats are more frugal about running up deficits than the Republicans, or vice versa.
By the by, for perspective, the last time we had a surplus was 1957 (where, I note, we had a Democrat House and a Republican President - the same composition we had during most of our deficits). Which was before I was born (and I'm older than most of you by quite a few years). If you're not in your mid-50's or older, you've never seen a real surplus....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Absolutely. I agree 100%--we need to get the word out now. I'll start by gathering all my neigh-...wait, what's that? Dancing with the Stars is on? Sweet! Er, let me get back with you on that reform thing, ok?
(There is supposed to be a Sarcmark® here, but my $1.99 check hasn't cleared, yet...)
I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. As long as the welfare and social service train keeps on rolling and people feel they are reasonably safe, they won't make attempts at radical change.
And anytime someone *does* get angry enough to do something about it, the government will crack skulls and bury things away. How many high-up officials (or even low-ranking police officers) were suspended, indicted, subpoenaed, etc. for what they did to protesters at the 2004 Republican National Convention? I've yet to hear anything about that.
We're pretty much screwed unless something so colossally bad happens as to galvanize a majority of the population into action.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)