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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.
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.
and the supreme court can void them
You mean he's secretly Australian?
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.
Our current plethora of unconstitutional laws and policies would suggest that's not the case.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
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.
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
It appears they can.
http://supreme.justia.com/constitution/article-2/19-constitutional-limitations-on-treaty-power.html
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.
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.
Personally, it reads like they want to know what ACTA is about before they are for or against it. Which is basically what I'd expect from a level headed politician. What they want is that the legislative (ya know, the body that SHOULD actually make the laws. If you think that's the prez's job, you're essentially wrong) can do its job. What I'd guess they want is to take back the power that has somehow appearanty creeped towards the prez (who represents another power, actually) while nobody was looking.
One of the cornerstones of a democratic, non-authoritarian government is that separation of powers. The creed is that no person should have more power than he absolutely needs. The US founding fathers saw that in certain situations it might be necessary to act swiftly so they created that office of the president and gave him the extraordinary position of wielding the executive power in his single hand, because executing laws can be a matter that cannot wait until you have assembled hundreds of people and got them to find a consensus.
Creating new laws, on the other hand, is something that should, must take time. It should be pondered and considered, by many brains with many different views, so every aspect these laws could affect can be taken into consideration. Good laws rarely come from one single person. No person has all the facts, no person takes every possible consequence into consideration, so many people can crate better laws that benefit most.
Ok, ok, so far the theory, because we know how much rubberstamping is going on, with few senators even knowing what they vote on. But at least they should have the power to do so, if they take their job seriously and don't just want to have good salary with little to no work or responsibility.
I'd guess they want their duty back. Whether they're eventually for or against it, only time will tell. But they want to know what they vote on, and given that most Senators don't, I'd consider that a good sign.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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