Adding Up the Explanations For ACTA's "Shameful Secret"

Several sources are reporting on a Google event this week that attempted to bring some transparency to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that has so far been treated like a "shameful secret." Unfortunately, not many concrete details were uncovered, so Ars tried to lay out why there has been so much secrecy, especially from an administration that has been preaching transparency. "The reason for that was obvious: there's little of substance that's known about the treaty, and those lawyers in the room and on the panel who had seen one small part of it were under a nondisclosure agreement. In most contexts, the lack of any hard information might lead to a discussion of mind-numbing generality and irrelevance, but this transparency talk was quite fascinating—in large part because one of the most influential copyright lobbyists in Washington was on the panel attempting to make his case. [...] [MPAA/RIAA Champion Steven] Metalitz took on three other panelists and a moderator, all of whom were less than sympathetic to his positions, and he made the lengthiest case for both ACTA and its secrecy that we have ever heard. It was also surprisingly unconvincing."

Comments

I still don't see...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell a trade treaty is secret. From anyone... let alone the people of the countrys involved in the agreement.

If you can't tell people what's in it. It's most likely not a good thing and we'd like to hang you for it.

Avoid Snake Bites

[b4upoo]

These creeps are not dead and they will try other approaches to take away freedoms that we should all have and cherish. They have redefined piracy in order to make normal and usual human activity a crime. Unless copying is blatantly commercial in nature it should be permitted. The notion that because it is easier to copy because we use computers is no excuse for the current plague of laws. This is almost as absurd as telling drinkers that they could not use a device to lift a drink to their lips because it makes getting drunk easier.

Industry lobbyists hint at the truth of ACTA?

[NimbleSquirrel]

This only goes to prove that ACTA is utterly driven by lobbyists for the entertainment inductry (MPAA, RIAA and such). Politicians aren't doing this for the people, just big business, and keeping this secret is really about hiding their shame. If people knew what was really going on, talks would probably break down from public outcry alone.

...it's clear that many governments don't actually want their own people to see the proposals being made and to shape their outcome.

It goes to show that it really pays to be a lobbyist:

Keeping negotiations secret is how "you get big fees to be a lobbyist," since only the "insiders" have access to the process.

Re:Industry lobbyists hint at the truth of ACTA?

[PopeRatzo]

This only goes to prove that ACTA is utterly driven by lobbyists for the entertainment inductry (MPAA, RIAA and such).

It also demonstrates that transnational corporations have been more powerful than any government(s) on earth for some time now.

Really, it's too late to expect government to help us when it comes to standing up to corporate power, because money trumps votes every single time. Any time someone who might pose a threat to corporatist hegemony even comes close to running for national office, they are immediately painted as being nutty, fringe, dangerous (pick your negative smear of choice).

It happened to Dennis Kucinich most recently, and Howard Dean a few years back. If you bring up his name, lots of people will immediately start to say that stuff about him, but if you ask them for an example of a fringe or weird policy he has advocated, at most you'll get "his wife is a hippie" or something equally inane. Howard Dean had his candidacy destroyed because he hollered. Remember how that one noise he made was used by every mainstream media outlet to indicate he was crazy?

There are others: Ralph Nader, even Ross Perot, who, while a businessman himself, had a distinctly populist approach to the balance of government and big business. The press had a field day tearing him up.

In Europe, the situation is just as bad. If you can't demonstrate that you're going to be very friendly to the transnationals, you'll never get near a national election.

Any international trade agreement is going to be a disaster, just as NAFTA, CAFTA, and all the others have been. Poor countries will stay poor and the citizens of rich countries will get poorer.

It almost makes me a little optimistic about the teabagger movement in the US. If you can get these people to come out and express their anger at "big government", all you have to do now is fill them in on who the real enemy is and then you've got something. Once they figure out that nobody in government so much as scratches their ass without the corporate elites giving them the OK, and no amount of partisan politics is going to change their situation until there is a big thick wall put up between corporate power and government. There is something very transgressive about going out into the street with a sign and hollering, and it's a waypoint on a continuum that ends up with lighting a torch and a molotov cocktail. The trick now is to dissuade them from their hatred of educated people and their racism, and you've got a group that could be a great ally in what will ultimately be a fight by the working class against transnational corporations who are the real "New World Order".

Re:I disagree

[cstdenis]

At the other extreme we are moving towards, technologies like restrictive DRM will also make literary and artistic works become lost in the future.