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Ambassador Claims ACTA Secrecy Necessary
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "According to Ambassador Ron Kirk, the head of US Trade Representatives, the secrecy around the ACTA copyright treaty is necessary because without that secrecy, people would be 'walking away from the table.' If you don't remember, that treaty is the one where leaks indicate that it may contain all sorts of provisions for online copyright enforcement, like a global DMCA with takedown and anti-circumvention restrictions, three-strikes laws to terminate offending internet connections, and copyright cops. FOIA requests for the treaty text have been rebuffed over alleged 'national security' concerns. One can only hope that what he has said is true and that sites like Wikileaks will help tear down the veil of secrecy behind which they're negotiating our future."
If it's an international treaty, then why is the secrecy a "national security" matter?
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
I for one, welcome our new overlords.
Just saying that such a statement seems like a quiet -- yet deniable -- way to ask folks to tear down the secrecy. If he really wanted it to survive, you'd assume he'd be a tiny bit more subtle than, "If this shit is known, this treaty is fucked."
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
That would be a bad thing? How exactly?
Home fucking is killing prostitution.
Otherwise people would know the extent and bounds of the laws, and avoid breaking them.
Police states need lots of secret laws.
If the contents of this treaty are so abhorrent that politicians cannot survive being associated with it, then that seems like a great reason why everyone should walk away from the table.
Alphanos
I'll be glad when we have a new president!
Should any draft treaty in Copenhagen be published as it goes, along with all views from all the parties and what they are willing to agree to or not through the negotiations?
As in any other area of life, this is yet another example of "when you want something then create moral laws that give it to you, but when those laws don't work in your favour then forget them".
If people will walk away from the table if they become associated with the effort, then what does it tell you about the effort?
It tells me that ACTA is something that companies want to increase their profits without the bad publicity of trying to throw their "customers" in jail.
Perhaps it's better if we stopped the charade here.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I am an American Citizen. Not a taxpayer. Not a consumer. A citizen.
My government no longer has my consent to government. I only obey laws out of fear of punishment, not because I believe that such behaviors is correct and moral.
I feel that those who represent us in this country have long ago forgotten the best interests of those they serve, the People, or more correctly, have just decided that it's more profitable serving Corporations and sacrificing essential freedoms for temporary security and monetary reward.
The only way this kind of stupidity and evil will end is with revolution. From time to time the Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants, or however the exact original goes.
The Government's only purpose is to serve the people, to do for them what they as individuals cannot do for themselves: Infrastructure, Sanitation, Hospitals, and Emergency Services springing immediately to mind.
The Government of the United States has increasingly grown bloated, incompetent, and has increasingly sold out the rights of its Citizens to corporate interests.
We were once the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. Now we are the land of timid sheep, beholden to our corporate masters, constantly sacrificing our necessary freedoms to protect Children who would better be protected by their parents actually doing their job and parenting, and to protect us from Foreign threats caused by our own meddling in the affairs of other nations.
It's time to realize that the problem is not whether the politician in the White House is Black or White, Male or Female, Democrat or Republican or Independent.
The problem is that there is a politician in the White House, instead of a Citizen-Servant who is First Among Equals, not elevated to the status of Royalty.
We must abolish the Federal Government as it currently stands and return to the ideals of the Founding Fathers on which they attempted to create a nation: The Inalienable Rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
No one should have the right to restrict my freedom to do as I wish so long as I do not materially harm another human being.
Down with the Tyrants.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/contact-us/your-comment
On one hand, I see why a treaty like ACTA might be desirable to establish a common copyright law across all nations. Especially given how much copyright infringement is going on between nations and how hard it is to enforce laws nationally when the economy and the access is global. I can also understand that they may not want to disclose the nitty-gritty of the treaty until they have a lot of the kinks worked out so that parts that will get changed aren't attacked and destroy hope for the treaty ever being passed in any form.
However, everything I've heard about it, admittedly "leaked", is terrible. They're using the secrecy of the process to hide the severeness of the treaty rather than "working out the kinks". Also, the treaty seems very much focused on protecting America's corporate copyrighted interests rather than respecting the authors and the people who use the author's works. This is a huge opportunity to fix our system, but instead it's being used to make everyone else's more broken.
It worked because 200 years ago the only people who had say in gov't were wealthy white land owning men. A fairly homogeneous class that didn't have too many internal divisions. Now-a-days we have a huge spectrum of voters which makes it much harder to agree on anything.
Blar.
If people would walk away from the table if the text was made public then that is all the more reason to make the text public. Not because I want people to leave the talks but, if people are unwilling to participate in talks if it's open to public scrutiny then there is no more obvious an indication that those talks should not be happening.
... and though most of us won't want it, most of us won't really do or say anything until our friends, family, and selves, are spending time in jail or paying huge fines for actions we generally thought were harmless.
Like the opinion machine on TV is gonna spin it any other way than 'we need it, you just don't know it'.
Kirk says the treaty will be published when it is finished - how long does the public have for filing responses and objections before the treaty becomes law? What possibilities are there for modifications? If the public, or their congressmen, want a modification, must the treaty be renegotiated? In what ways does ACTA affect national security? What other nations insist on secrecy for "national security" reasons? Who would walk away? Why would they walk away? Why is that bad? How is this different from any other international treaty? What other treaties have been negotiated in secrecy and published when "finished"?
There is no substitute for common sense. Especially, no body of rules will do.
Okay, so the text *is* shown to corporate lobbyists, but *not* to the public?
He's worried about people walking away from the table? No kidding. People *should* walk away from such a table!
see a Text Widget
There, fixed that for him!
When will the rule of law next be used in the interests of the public as a whole rather than of the corporations? (and no, I don't mean "we should be free to do teh piratez! making money is wrongz", I mean sensible law that benefits society as a whole).
You can keep you table Mr. Kirk.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
George Orwell
Secrecy is necessary to plan the indefensible; what's rare is the Ambassador's honesty in admitting it.
Well, thanks then. I'll take your stocks, bonds, REITs, life insurance and the cash in your wallet, which after all, are all fundamentally just imaginary.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
OK, fine, anybody who would walk away from the table if the negotiations were open, good riddance!
if anything but governments were involved in it? Why does all of this ACTA stuff sound so much like "conspiracy"?
What do the negotiations matter? The politicians, or most of them, aren't usually involved in negotiations anyways. What counts is the ratification. That's where the politicians wear it.
Well, ratification would count, except that in the U.S., ACTA is being negotiated as an executive agreement, and thus doesn't require ratification by Congress.
A few Congresspeople have sent a letter to Obama expressing their concern over the secrecy of the treaty, but others are just parroting the line about protecting American business and innovation, etc.
I agree there are good reasons for some negotiations to be kept private, then ratified later. However, when there is no ratification, the negotiation is entirely secret and simply presented to us as a fait accompli, where is the opportunity for public involvement and comment?
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
With laws like this I get a very 'Judge Dredd' type image of the future, with the twist that you aren't told what the laws are, so you don't know which laws you are breaking.
Actually what bothers me is if the government is indeed working for the people of their nation, then why so much secrecy, unless we are talking national defence? Has the idiocy of copyright extremism really become a factor of national defence? How long until the big media companies are allowed to have their private armies.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
> FOIA requests for the treaty text have been rebuffed over alleged 'national
> security' concerns.
Has a lawsuit been filed over this yet?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I just wrote the President, I urge you to do the same. I think they deserve to get slashdotted in that way. Tell them what you think and that there Is interest in the topic and that you have an opinion. Then they have some more information on which to base a decision, especially when you think that this is an issue that effects all the people.
What I am concerned about is that this looks like an end run by another group that was seeking net non-neutrality. In this case the corporate owners of copyrights, here we know that it is not the singer song writter (like it ever was) that is being effected, or for that matter consulted. It appears as though big corporations, I suspect news and entertainment are a big part of it as well as software companies. That want to get a hand on the internet spigot to have prior-constraint control over information especiall information they feel they own. But then I suspect a handful of countries would love to have access to request internet connection be broken for filtered if they think the message is not what they want. That is being done in China now certainly and the some Middle Eastern countries. That is not a good trend. It would be like only being allowed to listen to Fox news all day, is it really fair and balanced and calling it news might be a stretch. And it is a small step from corporate control to a corporate state (or one that is corporate controlled).
The key here is the controls that are being hinted at may not be in the countries , or the worlds best interest. We need to know what they are contemplating before we as a people are committed to an action that effects our information infrastructure. We own it, not them. They forget that sometimes.
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear!
If Kirk had any interest in increasing transparency in the ACTA negotiations, he'd be able to. He has about a dozen plausible ways:
1. He could say that the Obama administration is interested in transparency, therefore the US will make draft texts public.
2. He could have his office stop denying FOIA requests on the idiotic grounds of "national security."
3. He could say something like, "In light of increasing concern about the transparency (as expressed by groups like the MPAA and the European Parliament), we have opted to release draft texts."
That's just what I can come up with off the top of my head. No, I think his statement is probably honest (in part because I'm guessing he was caught off guard - I've met Jamie Love, and I'm betting the way he posed the question to Kirk put Kirk on the spot).
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
If they figure that they would walk away from it, one would think that might be a clue that it's not a particularly good thing in the first place.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
(b) This section does not apply to matters that are--
(1)(A) specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and (B) are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order;
People interpreted that as meaning national security, but it clearly means foreign policy in this instance.
When the FFII asked the EU Council of Ministers for opening up the documents regarding the ACTA negotiations, the Council refused, with (a.o.) the argument that this "might affect relations with the third parties concerned".
So the US can't release it because others might object, and the EU can't for the same reason. Inquiring minds want to know which mysterious third country is kicking both the US and the EU into submission. Canada?
Donate free food here
Corporate armies like the controversial Blackwater (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Worldwide)? To my knowledge the US is the only country (of any significance) where mercenaries are in fact legal and hired by the government.
Guess what these people will do once the war is over... 'private corporate security', whatever you call it It's still a fucking army!
A common copyright law is fundamentally flawed. Any laws regulating fast moving technologies need Thomas Jefferson's "Laboratories of Democracy". If anything, we should pass a constitutional amendment giving the states the sole right to regulate copyrights and patents.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
But I suppose you have to slam the black man, in case he slams your women, huh?
Typical, someone raises a question about what the government is doing, but because the president is black then anybody who questions him must be racist right? "You're a racist" is such an effective way to censor people these days.
I hope you recognize the irony of just how incredibly racist it is to call "racism" when nothing racist was even hinted at.
Asshole.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Well, ratification would count, except that in the U.S., ACTA is being negotiated as an executive agreement, and thus doesn't require ratification by Congress.
There are 3 types of treaties, "Treaties" proper, as defined under the Constitution requiring 2/3 Senate approval, congressional-executive agreements, which are negotiated by the Executive (President), and implemented by Congress by simple majority in both houses as if they were ordinary laws, and sole-executive agreements, which are negotiated and implemented by the Executive branch limited to the manners in which they have authority to do so (instructing the FBI not to enforce certain laws, for example). According to Wikipedia, the latter two types are often prefered because they lack the permanence of Constitutional treaties:
It is desirable, in many instances, to exchange mutual advantages by Legislative Acts rather than by treaty: because the former, though understood to be in consideration of each other, and therefore greatly respected, yet when they become too inconvenient, can be dropped at the will of either party: whereas stipulations by treaty are forever irrevocable but by joint consent...
--Thomas Jefferson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Clause
Obvious troll.. ignore everything that is going on because its really about the black man..
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
To the people: If you are not doing wrong you have nothing to hide.
For themselves: This entertainment industry legislation has to be kept secret for national security reasons.
The hypocrisy.
But... the future refused to change.
Is ACTA all about protecting copyright for music, or is there something even bigger at stake here like preventing Indian drug companies from duplicating western drug companies and selling them to even poorer nations at a fraction of the cost? Is Monsanto going to benefit from improved patent protections and succeed in licensing all grain foods globally with their portfolio of terminator seed crops? If it's just about stopping downloaders of content that's one thing, but I really would have concerns that there's a stealth agenda to entrench a new order of corporate overlords!
Certainly not me.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
There seems to be several issues here:
1) they say they keep it secret to make sure it gets passed.
2) but this has big problems that it denies the ordinary people who will need to follow the law a chance to tell what they think of it _before_ it gets passed.
3) in ideal world the people making decisions have done their homework and asked ordinary people and _all_ interest groups what they think of the law. This should be easy to implement via internet.
The secrecy is not a good thing. How can they decide who is worthy enough to modify the text of it?
No, what's funny is that a troll grandparent "Why did we revote these idiots in and vote this idiot in" as if they were comparable JUST so they could slam Obama gets insightful when pointing out gets a troll point.
I note too that you didn't comment on that whole "these revoted idiots and obama are all the same: why did we vote for them" is answered with "you didn't know obama would act as he's done until AFTER you voted him in".
No, you just wanted to get your jollies on slagging off Obama. Why? He's the first black (well only half black: the US couldn't go and vote a black man in, they had to get half way first and vote a two-tone in) president.
I mean, did whitey Shrub Bush get this when he acted like a complete twonk in his first term?
No.
Why?
The only difference (apart from Democrat vs Republican) is that Obama is mid-tone black guy and Shrub was white.
Terrorist! ...works the same way really when you question the government's right to snoop around.
>>>ACTA is being negotiated as an executive agreement, and thus doesn't require ratification by Congress.
Any law or treaty that is contrary to the Supreme Law of the Land (aka U.S. Constitution) is as if the law/treaty never existed. It has no force.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
He didn't hint anything racist, didn't have any racial overtones, hell he even bitched about bush, just because one study says that if you disagree with Obama on anything your a racist, doesn't make it true.
From your article:
"People high in anti-black bias were 43 percent less likely to vote for Obama than those with a lesser bias.
Really? Never would have guessed. (Please note sarcasm present)
And please note, I did vote for Obama, and support a good portion of his policies. Im just tired of hearing "racists" thrown back and forth, it really detracts from the conversation, and has absolutely nothing to do with the original topic.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
We will lobby Congress to keep this law in the penalty box for 90 days (one senator on a filibuster) once it is revealed so that the layperson can review it.
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
But I suppose you have to slam the black man, in case he slams your women, huh?
He isn't black, he's mixed race, mulatto, half-caste or $whatever. His mother is white.
a bullet in Ron Kirk's head seems "necessary"..
We did keep voting Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank into the senate, where they helped create the mortgage crisis.
How did they help create the mortgage crisis? Even if they can be accurately described as the single factors that are responsable for deregualtion, that means they simply stopped prohibiting risky and shady business practices. How is that 'helping to create' the mortgage crisis?
If I deregulate machine gun ownership, am I responsible for you opening fire on a bus full of nuns with one? I wasn't aware that not prohibiting a behavior was actually enabling it....
We did vote Barak Obama into the white house, believing that he would somehow SAVE us money by giving everyone government-funded health care
wait, what? who said anything about saving us anything on health care? I though the goal was just to get everyone health care. Saving might occur because of economies of scale and not having to subsidize uninsured people anymore, but I don't recall that being the goal.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I hope you recognize the irony of just how incredibly racist it is to call "racism" when nothing racist was even hinted at.
That's ok, he'll call you a pedophile in his next post. Nothing racist about that, and the effect is most likely to be the same.
How can ACTA possibly be anywhere close to a 'national security' concern???? If you look at the excerpts so far, there is nothing there to even hint at it. The ONLY possible reason for the secrecy is they don't want people bringing up public furor over a 'world' copyright police act. If that drives countries away from it, then it probably isn't a good idea in the first place. To hide something so that the people can't have a say... sounds like Iran.
They are traitors. With any luck the table will violently explode.
Of course, to get to that point (where it never existed), that means that someone has to have been caught under it, and successfully appealed their case before the Courts, all the way up to the SCOTUS if need be, and they need to agree that it is contrary.
Secrecy is necessary because the process is fundamentally anti-democratic. Much of the electorate of most of the participants would be offended by the process and the elected officials would be embarrassed by what is going on. They would not be able to explain what they are up to and might have a hard time living it down. Some would be unelectable in future based on their sellout. Therefore secrecy is imperative.
As long as all the negotiations are behind closed doors, the elected officials can continue to cash their donation cheques and can pass the required legislation with a straight face. Even unpopular legislation can be forced through by pleading that they are bound to the legal constraints by an international treaty.
Secrecy is the means by which the industrial lobby can carry on its efforts. If any of this was exposed to the light of day, virtually all the participants would be forced to walk away from the table and the lobbyists would crawl back under the furniture like the cockroaches they are. None of this process could stand up if it got 1% of the scrutiny it deserves.
Just one question... If Ambassador Kirk said the treaty would be made public once finished how is it possible for ANYONE to cry "national security" while expecting not to be laughed at while not being labled a moron and liar?
Really people need to start pushing back against this sort of nonsense. First order of business needs to aimed at preventing businesses for paying congress to pass the laws they want. How this remains a legitimate activity in any country boggles the mind.
I don't see how his argument carries any validity whatsoever.
And always came back to that old Chinese curse:
May you live in interesting times.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
It's not the national representatives that Kirk is worried about "walking away from the table": it's the corporate lobbyists that have been hiding UNDER the table. He's worried that if the treaty is made public that they'll stop playing footsie with the national reps and stop the flow of money into the Swiss bank accounts of certain people.
Obama and his change.
i voted for him. thought he'd better than Bush or McCain.
"To stop the terrorists."
I say we all flood them with FOIA requests for the ACTA treaty. If enough people are sending in these requests, they'll have to cave in. Either that or it will tie their office up to the point where congress realizes that the people want to know and will haul Ambassador Kirk in and force the treaty into the open.
the more you bury things like this, the more people try to dig it up
Perhaps it's better if we stopped the charade here.
Umm, I don't see a charade, but I do see an endless line-up of SlashDotters who haven't been doing their homework;
Asian governments using Linux will be sued for IP violations, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said today in Singapore. He did not specify that Microsoft would be the company doing the suing, but it's difficult to read the claim as anything other than a declaration of IP war.
According to a Reuters report (which we fervently hope will produce one of Ballmer's fascinating 'I was misquoted' rebuttals*), Ballmer told Microsoft's Asian Government Leaders Forum that Linux violates more than 228 patents. Come on Steve, don't hold back - what you mean 'more than 228' - 229? 230? Don't pull your punches to soften the blow to the community. "Some day," he continued, "for all countries that are entering the WTO [World Trade Organization], somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property."
This reference is possibly more interesting than the infringement number scare itself, because it suggests that Microsoft sees the wider implementation of corporation-friendly IP law that is part of the entry ticket to the WTO as being a weapon that can be used against software rivals. More commonly, getting WTO members to 'go legit' is viewed as having a payoff in terms of stamping out counterfeit CDs, DVDs and designer gear, but clearly Microsoft's lawyers are busily plotting ways to embrace and extend this to handy new fields. It could be used to throttle emergent OSS companies, and it could conceivably be used to take the new generation of US (and maybe EU too) anti digital piracy and IP laws global.
Use Linux and you will be sued, Ballmer tells governments, Posted in Operating Systems, 18th November 2004 10:34 GMT
Ya got something against assholes? Racist.
What better way to revive your failing business models than by destroying competition by using a Secret "Government" Treaty that you have funded?
Who can blame the bloated record companies and overpriced distribution companies pushing DRM compromised media?
After all it wasn't them that slammed a repressive set of draconian laws down on once-free countries! It was their pawns the Congress! It was their pawn Obama!
So hurry to buy the wares of these companies and blind your eyes to the "special" new prices that have sprung up overnight (and that is part of the plan).
It's all just a special deal to make bigger fortunes more quickly for the rich - presumably with our bewildered cooperation.
And of course Obama feels it's Change We Can Believe in! Gotta love that man.
And that's a bad thing, how?
If I were busy giving away the rights of citizens I'm supposed to represent I would think twice before continuing with that to avoid an untimely death.
Lets start a revolution! Tear down the powers that be!
Or we could request a debate on this issue...
Or toiletpaper their houses...
Maybe I'll just write a polite, angrily worded letter filled with contempt. That will convice them, right?
Man, what's happened to us?
1. Release a fake treaty on the internets that contains outrageous provisions which would make things that common people do on a day-to-day basis criminal. ...
2. Bait fringe cable news outlets to the story.
3. Government officials refuse to comment.
4. The story gets the spin: "OMG ITZ TRUES. THEY WANT TO TAKE AWAY YOUR YOUTUBE AND FANFICTION.NET."
5.
6. Profit
According to Wikipedia, the latter two types are often prefered because they lack the permanence of Constitutional treaties:
Excuse me? So the other countries have to sign and ratify the treaty and are bound by it, but for the proposer, the U.S.A, it can be dropped when it "becomes too inconvenient"?
There's no difference between that and an imperial decree. Did Dick Cheney make this one up or something.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
That's not true. The US Constitution has a clause treating treaties as part of the supreme law of the land. The amendment to prevent treaties from being used to circumvent constitutional law never passed (I wonder why).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Be fine "national security" as "protecting corporate profits".
That is the very definition of fascism.
Despite being the former mayor of Dallas, it sounds like Mr. Kirk should permanently move to Washington or Chicago where he'll feel more at home.
When you cast a vote in a two party system, that's when you lose for sure.
Blar.