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Leak Shows US Lead Opponent of ACTA Transparency
An anonymous reader writes "Throughout the debate over ACTA transparency, the secret copyright
treaty, many countries have taken public positions that they support
release of the actual text, but that other countries do not.
Since full transparency requires consensus of all the ACTA partners,
the text simply can't be released until everyone is in agreement.
A new leak
from the Netherlands fingers who the chief opponents of transparency
are: the United States, South Korea, Singapore, and Denmark lead the
way, with Belgium, Germany, and Portugal not far behind as problem
countries."
right now the score there is 59-41 giving the Republicans only the power to filibuster and not pass anything without the help of at least nine Democrats.
President Clinton, a Democrat, signed the Bono Act and the DMCA in October 1998. He didn't send it back to both houses for a roll-call vote (which requires 67% assent); instead, he let the voice votes in both houses (which require 81% assent) stand.
As a resident of one of the mentioned problem countries, I think it might be helpful to point towards an organization to rally behind to oppose the secrecy:
ACTA workgroup of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure e.V.
I'm sorry.. In so many ways
It's still under negotiation. It's less a question of not telling you the law, and more a question about whether they want the general populace to know the terms of the agreement _while_ they're working on it.
(i.e. whether they tell you before or after it's too late to complain about the laws they'll have to pass to support the treaties).
In the U.S. Congress, a voice vote allows a legislator to neither confirm nor deny to his constituents that he voted for a controversial bill. It takes 20 percent of a house to force a roll-call vote. From the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 5: "the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal."
IDG covers the latest Dutch leak that reveals the transparency position of many ACTA participants. Particularly telling is the view that both France and Italy favour greater transparency, but fear U.S. retaliation.
Here's an important block of text... Moreover, the U.S. has remained silent on the issue.
This is a more telling block of text :
IDG covers the latest Dutch leak that reveals the transparency position of many ACTA participants. Particularly telling is the view that both France and Italy favour greater transparency, but fear U.S. retaliation.
Who's representing the US in the ACTA negotiations. If it's just the usual **AA people
Once again, the USTR is, ostensibly, the US representative for negotiating ACTA. Currently this position is held by Ron Kirk. The official positions of this office can be found at their website here. Contacting the office via official channels can be done by reading through this contact page. The official USTR position and stance regarding ACTA can be found here. Finally, if you search for, "US Trade Representative ACTA," on google then you can find a link on the page titled, "US Trade Rep wants your input on ACTA Boing Boing," which is supposed to be a place that discusses how you can give the USTR input regarding ACTA. Unfortunately, I cannot access boing boing from work, and cannot link to it directly.
Any other questions?
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The Democrat-controlled Senate just reapproved key provisions of the Patriot Act that would otherwise have expired. If you wanted any indicator that they're worse than useless, that was it.
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