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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?
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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.
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!
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
Oh, treaties concerning the military powers should be secret, except of the most general gist ("we are cooperating", "we have a non-aggression pact" and such.)
But this is a treaty about the fucking entertainment industry. Using the "national security" excuse here is a sign of the absolute abuse of power.
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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.
Oh please. Our system is "working" just fine. 95% of American's get plenty to eat (too much, including me). We get fresh clean water at a moments notice - even the poorest among us can get free clean water. We can even manage jobs for 30+ million illegal immigrants.
America has problems, but to spout revolutionary rhetoric over copyright laws is just as silly as the mountain men in Montana holed up with 100s of guns and 10 years of canned food. It's just that, rhetoric. Stop being an ostrich, a sheep - get involved, get your friends involved. Let your elected officials know exactly how you feel. You are but one voice, but one voice among many - motivate them.
Politics isn't just for the politicians, you know.
The League of Nations (1919-1946) forbade all secret treaties, especially military ones, since they lead to the Great War (WW1) - outlawing secret treaties was pushed by Woodrow Wilson. It was broken by the Hoare-Laval Pact in 1935, which effectively killed the League of Nations.
Sadly, you seem to have missed the entire point.
If you are merely satisfied with having enough calories per day and enough clean water to continue surviving, that's fine. Some of us, however, feel that more than mere physical necessities are necessary for our happiness. Free discourse, without threat of retribution or harm, the freedom to travel as we see fit without the Government saying who may or may not go where based on how politically 'risky' they may be (as the TSA watch-list brings back memories of McCarthy era communist-blacklists), and the ability to be allowed to live our lives in peace so long as we harm no one.
The Government may not punish us for what we may do. It may only punish for what we have done. You cannot lock a man up on suspicion of likelihood of his committing murder, only once he has in fact attempted or committed said murder.
The attitude of the common people, the faex populi, is that security can be purchased. We have been lulled into believing that the world can be made 'safe.' Life in inherently unsafe. Being 'free' means that you give up security.
We are coming all too quickly to a nation where papers are required to move about, where every single aspect of our lives is monitored by the Government for 'suspect' information exchange, and where we, Human Beings, are being treated as commodities and resources to be traded, purchased, and sold, instead of being treated as Human Beings, with inherent dignity and with respect afforded to us.
One need look no further than any modern corporation and its "Human Resources" department to see this mindset. I am not a resource. I am a human being. We have been desensitised to the callous manner in which we commonly treat each other. We have lost, as a nation, the concept of personal responsibility for our actions. There is always someone to blame.
The death of Democracy (which we are, in fact, not -- we are a representative republic) is that of scapegoating.
The People want their bread and circuses. They want someone to blame when things seem bad, be it the Anarchists, the Communists, the Pinko-Commie-Sympathisers in Hollywood, the Hippies, the Socialists, the Terrorists. These targets are paraded in front of the people to drum up the necessary excuse for the acquisition of greater and greater power by the Government. The Government does not need to read my e-mail, or tell me what weapons I may and may not own. If people truly wanted to be safe from gun-totting madmen, the easiest way to do so would to arm everyone so that as soon as a man opened fire on a crowd, everyone in that crowd would be able to respond in kind.
If people truly cared about the lives and living conditions of prostitutes/sex-workers, they would legalise prostitution so that pimps cannot beat their girls without fear of the girls going to the police, so that prostitutes would not be raped in back alleys because their trade would take place in safety and not in secret.
The right to swing one's fist ends where the other man's nose begins. Likewise, the right to dictate correct behaviour ends where your body ends. Murder is not a curtailment of one's freedom (as something being illegal does not stop anyone from doing it), but is a protection of the freedom of others to remain unmolested in their person.
You, and the people like you, are what have driven this country to the dire straits it is in. Government is not a good, sir. It is a necessary evil. It must necessarily, therefore, be kept as small, impotent, and powerless as it can be.
We need no great standing army to defend our nation. If every man and woman who has reached the age of majority was required, as in at least one country I can think of, to keep in their home a fully automatic military weapon, then any invading force would be met with resistance the likes of which our standing army with its tanks and planes and bombs could not match.
The only true way to security is through freedom -- the freedom of the
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
(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.
While I do agree with many of your sentiments, technology has rendered the citizen-militia / obscenely-funded-military balance untenable. Other nations can muster weapons of such power that assault rifles become a laughable response. Your assumption that an invader has to occupy - and therefore engage in the kind of warfare which USA is waging in Iraq - is false (also note that even though Iraqis had a lot of AK-47s in pretty much every house, their "liberation" was crammed down their throats despite of that, with millions of refugees and hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed). I case of vast riches hoarded by a population armed only with anti-personnel weapons, a nation-state enemy has only to employ a sufficiently powerful WMD system with reasonably short lived post-effects. Then there are also issues of naval blockades etc.
So clearly something beyond the home-kept assault rifles and RPGs is required.