Slashdot Mirror
EU Parliament Rejects ACTA In a 663 To 13 Vote
An anonymous reader writes "'The European Parliament defied the EU executive today (10 March), casting a vote against an agreement between the EU, the US and other major powers on combating online piracy and threatening to take legal action at the European Court of Justice.'"
Read draft leaked on March 1st to know why.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Heh, this is a case where the inappropriately-effusive slashdot story is actually less exciting than the glum reality. This vote was a parliamentary resolution urging the European Commission to (among other things) fight the veil of secrecy that's kept ACTA out of the mainstream press for the most part. That's way cooler than "rejecting" some secret draft that we didn't know about anyway, and that would have been swiftly replaced with another secret draft.
since lisbon treaty last year, Eu parliament has the power. they canceled the swift agreement with usa that allowed cia, nsa to gather info about swift users.
Read radical news here
since lisbon treaty last year, ANYthing that is done by Eu commission has to be approved by parliament to be valid. Parliament can also cancel anything Eu commission did before they had to take their approval. Like the SWIFT bank transfer treaty that required eu to give out private about people doing bank transactions with u.s.
Read radical news here
I don't want to bring the mood down, but this is just a good summary of a bad article. The parliament did not vote against ACTA per se, they voted in favour of resolution RC-B7-0154/2010. Much better summary is the press release from the parliament itself.
In brief, they are mostly pissed off about the secrecy of the negotiations and lack of transparency. The resolution calls on the negotiations being made accessible to the public and the MEPs in a timely manner. So it's not against ACTA, it's against how negotiations are conducted. However, the resolution does also call out against the 3-strike rule and personal searches at EU borders. Regarding warrantless searches, they merely want a "clarification" of clauses that would allow such things.
http://www.votewatch.eu/
Data isn't up yet though.
If we were to be highly sceptical we could point out that these guys weren't involved in the talks so could just be actioning their annoyance, or negotiating for their cut.
You don't need to be cynical -- they specifically state that that's the issue. From the RA:
In a statement released today, MEPs Lambrinidis (S&D, Greece), Castex (S&D, France), Alvaro (ALDE, Germany) and Roithova (EPP, Czech Republic) "deeply regret the fact that the Council is continuing its secretive stance, despite the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, which stipulates that the European Parliament should have full and immediate access to information at all stages of international negotiations".
It's the secrecy that they're objecting to, not the content (which they don't -- officially -- know).
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Do you really believe that anything the EU does is going to prevent the US from rather forcibly letting the world know that the IP manuactured in the US isn't going to be passed around for free? Dream on. You are talking about a huge economy that is responsible for the well-being of nearly a half a billion people.
Yeah:
GDP (Nominal):
EU - US $14.51 trillion (2009 est.)
US - US $14.266 trillion (2009)
Population:
EU - 491,582,852 (July 2009 est.)
US - 307,212,123 (July 2009 est.)
Sorry buddy, the days are over when the US could unilaterally dictate it's whims to a fractured Europe. The EU has already surpassed the US in size and economic power, and the odds are very good that trend will continue.
To be honest, I wasn't surprised by the strong support of ACTA from the UK.
You should. All UK votes for the ACTA treaty (all 10 of them) were from UKIP (UK Independence Party - they are anti-EU). Even Labour (who are the "brains" behind the Digital Economy Bill - ie the "All rights go to Big Media" Bill) voted unanimously to reject the treaty. "Strong UK Support" for ACTA is bollocks, as 55 UK MEPs voted to reject the treaty. On the other hand, this is slashdot, so UK bashing is an easy way to get mod points.