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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.'"
Good to know that the voice of the people is being heard.
Do not get your hopes up. I just see 663 politicians who are about to get visits from copyright lobbyists, it remains to be seen how easily these people can be bought.
Palm trees and 8
...how the world has changed in recent 150 years. U.S. corporations push draconian laws and European countries are praised for standing up to protect freedoms and privacy.
Personally I think there's a lot to be said about keeping these votes anonymous. You end up with 'flags for orphans' situations where a piece of draconian legislation gets snuck in a popular bill and people are too scared to vote against it for fear of seeing their name in negative headlines.
No. Those who were elected into power should never have anonymous voting. Only those not in power (that would be the regular people) should have anonymous voting. Those in power should be doing the will of the people that put them there. The regular people need to be able to vote without fear of being arrested, fined, etc. for voting against something that those in power want.
We also need to be able to hold those who we put in power accountable if they are found to be voting against our will. It's fundamental in weeding out corruption.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
We were told that ACTA had to remain secret for "National Security Reasons". We were told it had to remain secret or other countries would walk away from the table.
But the truth is that most of Europe will walk away if there is no disclosure. And none of the countries that have supported secrecy have threatened to leave the talks. And the US hasn't even claimed to take a position (though we all know that is a lie).
And to top it all off, despite all the leaks so far, we do not have a single terrorist organization that has been able to leverage the revealed all-so-dangerous-information commit any terrorist act.
At least, as long as you don't consider Michael Geist a terrorist.
"one rule for us and one rule for them" then?
The problem with public voting is in today's politics is that they're not accountable to 'their voting public'. They're accountable to the press.
What's the headline likely to be "Senator John Smith is the lone person against giving orphans flags" or "Senator John Smith refuses to vote for the flags for orphans bill as he feels some unrelated legislation has been added by stealth and he thinks it's against his voter's wishes"?
A well run government often requires passing bills that voters would dislike for the good of the country (tax increases, spending cuts etc.). Fear of voting in line with your views and policies at both top and bottom levels results in a failure of democracy.