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US Rejects Demands For ACTA Transparency
An anonymous reader writes "The US Trade Representative issued a release just prior to the launch of the New Zealand round of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations that has left no doubt the US is the biggest barrier to official release of the ACTA text. Unlike most other ACTA countries that have called for transparency without condition, the US has set conditions that effectively seek to trade its willingness to release the text for gains on the substance of the text."
http://www.stopacta.info/alertbox
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
'i wont let anyone see. but if i let anyone see it, i want what i want to be done'.
get a load of that. can any of the americans explain this to us here ?
Read radical news here
they actually said it. one member of this 'trade house commitee' assured corporations recently that 'consumer groups' participation would be kept to a minimum'.
Read radical news here
The proposed ACTA is far more restrictive than the current copyright/patent/trademark fiasco we have now.
If people found out what the companies were trying to force down our throats, there'd be an uprising.
Which is why they don't want it released.
As an Alaskan, I'm appalled by what my neighbors to the south are doing.
Also, as a natural-born Alaskan, I'm so glad that (import) Sarah Palin is no longer here. May she stay away forever.
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
The US needs the cooperation of many other nations, they simply can't afford to play hardball. This just goes to show how out of touch with reality they are.
We hope that enough progress is made in New Zealand in clearing brackets from the text so that participants can be in a position to reach a consensus on sharing a meaningful text with the public.
Hey, how about letting the people decide what is meaningful?
It's very simple, no conspiracy required. The situation is as follows:
1. Large IP holders' lobbyists are applying direct financial pressure to the gov't in general and undoubtedly the negotiators personally
2. The public reaction is only important if it is large enough to affect an election outcome. This is blunted by the fact that the negotiators are appointed, not elected. In the US, even the election pressure is largely blunted by the nature of the winner-takes-all system. In Europe individual votes matter far more to the politicians. Here in the US, they don't care as long as they get their 50.1%
3. The negative reaction from the public will only come about if they find out about it, and most will not waver from mainstream media.
4. Mainstream media is largely owned by large IP holders, and will not only avoid stories about the ACTA, but will create a massive campaign to smear any protest that becomes public.
That's it. There's no conspiracy. Just self-interest all around.
Luckily for democracy, the process is leaking like an old bucket anyway.
swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, help in documenting this is very welcome.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
I Hope the Transparency of administration's insistence on this shows there has been no Change in the administration.
I Hope the Slashbots will Change their votes, but the Transparency of the moderators indicates otherwise.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I feel strangely about this. It's kind of like getting divorced, and hiring a very effective, but unethical and evil divorce lawyer. You want effective representation, but if you weren't interested in the outcome you'd despise the person who chose to employ such a lawyer.
That's how I'd feel about this, if the US trade representative was working in my interests. But of course, he/she doesn't. They're working for Disney / Microsoft / Viacom / Appple / etc. interests.
So now I feel like somone really is acting really sleazy in my name, even when they don't represent my actual interests. I'm pretty disgusted.
I think that we have seen more than enough evidence that the Federal US Government is beholden only to those who have bought its politicians.
But what's to be done about it, other than sitting back and watching the nation gradually sink into oblivion?
...the US has set conditions that effectively seek to trade its willingness to release the text for gains on the substance of the text."
Not true-- this is what was said:
“In this upcoming round of ACTA negotiations, the U.S. delegation will be working with other delegations to resolve some fundamental issues, such as the scope of the intellectual property rights that are the focus of this agreement. Progress is necessary so that we can prepare to release a text that will provide meaningful information to the public and be a basis for productive dialogue."
This says if we work on scope our release will be more meaningful-- it by no means says no release until scope issues are resolved.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Could our administration possibly act in a more corrupt manner on this issue? It seems unlikely. At least this removes all question of whose interests the Obama administration has at heart. I only good I can hope to see from this is that the DNC will lose significant goodwill with people who get their news online, harming their electability in November as people choose to stay home, or cast their vote with a 3rd party. Personally, I refuse to give my vote to a political party that could promote this kind of legislation. I don't care how "bad" their opponents are; the DNC can go to hell.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Now what? You couldn't stop the health care fraud. What makes a small group of people think they are going to have any influence on this? This is like watching the AOPA trying to keep Meigs Field open. Copyright has already successfully balkanized the net. You're on the corporate wire here. You people are OWNED!
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
What is this "US" and why is its gain my loss, even though I'm a citizen and still live in the country?
There is also the obligatory Facebook group (Act On ACTA): http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16582417478&v=info
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
...that the new Administration is still running the country for the benefit of corporations, the way a country ought to be run.
Gotta help those billionaires become trillionaires - the rich don't get richer fast enough without government help.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Perhaps we should differentiate between explicit and implicit conspiracies. Generally in the popular conception of conspiracy, the conspirators actually conspire together. Meaning, they get together to discuss plans to achieve their ends, and then carry out those plans. That is an explicit conspiracy, and TheMeuge was hypothesizing that perhaps the interested parties here never needed to sit down and discuss plans together. Perhaps they were all acting individually, in an implicit conspiracy. In fact, this type of 'conspiracy' is far more common. Very few people are comfortable believing they are the bad guy. Explicit conspiracies require some kind of an acknowledgment from the conspirators that they are engaging in a conspiracy. Because implicit conspiracies require no active conspiring, people engaged in them don't even need to admit to themselves that they are doing so. The oppression of the lower classes by the owning class is an example of such an implicit conspiracy. Far from having to admit to themselves or each other that they are oppressing the lower classes, the owning class has the privilege of believing they are in fact helping them.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
FUCK YEAH!
Coming again to save the motherfucking day, yeah!
AMERICUH! Fuck yeah!
Suppression of information which would negatively influence world opinion of us is the only way, yeah!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
How are all those Obama promises of change working out for you folks that supported him and voted for him?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/
"My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use."
"Public engagement enhances the Government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government."
"Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperateamong themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector."
I beg to differ. I read "progress is necessary so that we can prepare to release" as saying that the order of events is "progress" -> "prepare" -> "release a text" , thus progress must precede releasing a text. The definition of "progress" seems to be defined as "... issues, such as the scope of the intellectual property rights." I'm pretty sure that most of us believe that the U.S. position on scope is going to be in favor of large IP holders.
It's very simple, no conspiracy required. The situation is as follows:
[...]
4. Mainstream media is largely owned by large IP holders, and will not only avoid stories about the ACTA, but will create a massive campaign to smear any protest that becomes public.
That's it. There's no conspiracy. Just self-interest all around.
Yeah, that #4 right there? THAT IS A CONSPIRACY!
# Conspiracy (civil), an agreement between persons to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of their legal rights, or to gain an unfair advantage
# Conspiracy (crime), an agreement between persons to break the law in the future, in some cases having committed an act to further that agreement
# Conspiracy (political), the overthrow of a government
conspire Look up conspire at Dictionary.com
c.1300, from O.Fr. conspirer, from L. conspirare "to agree, unite, plot," lit. "to breathe together,"
You can't take the sky from me...
so, then, we should change to the earlier gop administration which cooked up acta, because there has been no change in this one.
is that it ?
Read radical news here
see, this is the u.s. position :
i come up with a new proposal, and try to force everyone to accept it.
when people say that they want everyone to see the proposal, i start stomping my foot, refuse, and say that i will only let everyone see it, if you accept some of my proposal.
isnt this beyond 'kindergarten' grade, and silly ? i mean, there are some people calling this 'negotiation method' but, you can only bluff or play hardball when you have something other people actually want. if you are the one who came to the table with all demands, you cant stomp your foot.
Read radical news here
"Nefeterius McPherson" - us gov trade representative. a name which sounds out of 60s comic book villainery.
now all that us needs is to get lex luthor (the old one) and dr. octopus as signatories. dr. octopus can be referenced in the acta text as 'an expert on digital economy'
Read radical news here
I read and re-read the statement, then read what Michael Geist post about what it is supposed to mean and I don't get it. It seems Mr. Geist is twisting the words to try to make a hoopla where there is none.
Just read the whole thing with a cool head: The U.S. Trade Representative is saying "lets agree on some language to put in paper so we can allow the public to review it"... Geist translates it to "no public review until everybody sign the treaty"
If you think about it: there is no final draft, they haven't agree on final language yet. Allowing public intervention on terms that are being negotiated is counter-productive. Remember, this needs to be approved by Congress after it is signed.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
Obama is a corporatist. I knew it from the start. He is much more corporate than even Bill Clinton, who at least acknowledged after the fact that NAFTA was a huge screw-up. John Stewart interviewed Obama's law school adviser on election night, and said adviser admitted that Reagan was Obama's favorite president. Obama is not even close to being a socialist. He's barely a liberal at all.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"In a 5-4 decision, the supreme court ruled that the legislature does not need to vote on treaties."
hey, american acta representatives: you are my representatives. you cannot adequately represent me if you won't even tell me what you are representing in my name. as such, you are not a true representative of the will of the american people, nor are we bound to any agreements you make
your intentions have been revealed to be malicious due to the secrecy you wish to cloak yourself in: there is no honest reason for the secrecy
negotiate in good faith or don't negotiate at all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
ACTA is clearly an American problem. Big media in the US are pressing lobbyists and greasing the palms of under worked over paid legislators to be un-democratic, to break oaths, to break laws, so that these companies can have not just corporate welfare in their own country, but in all countries of the world. Its bad enough these companies have Americans prostrate, paying homage and fealty to their corporate bank accounts, now they want everyone else to be just as stupid. Its stupid, and in most countries (Democratic ones, real democratic ones), this kind of shit just won't fly. You can whelp and belly ache about how "The US is strong, either the Left Party is in or the Right party is in, and therefore, the US is strong". In other countries, with multiple parties, coalitions make up who runs the country, and with coalitions, its more an issue by issue basis. Blank checks are much fewer. The Dutch government fell about 1 month ago because of disagreements over whether they should be in Afghanistan. New election, and they are pulling out. Most other countries are in a similar boat (Canada has been in that boat for about 5 years now, its a good bet that Britain will be heading in that direction). Nice, polite government assemblies go away. Someone shouting "Liar" is TAME. As one British Legislator observed, he hoped that Britains legislature wouldn't turn into the bear-pit that Canadas has become. Its a nasty transition from two party to multi-party. You have to get along with a lot more people and make them happy (and things like 'party-whip' don't fly here). Don't think it can happen in the US? Only Democrats and the GOP? Really? What about Libertarians? What about Tea-Partiers? What about the Green party? It could happen faster than you think! ACTA? Even if it gets passed, the greedy corporations will go broke paying everyone off, and some they won't convince.
I'm not a big fan of how this process has been handled but the point that it's pointless to talk about ACTA because there is no such thing as ACTA until some of the major discrepancies are reconciled (i.e. "clearing brackets from the text") is reasonable.
Furtive was my favourite word in Junior High. I named my cat Furtive. As the link to the free dictionary points out furtive means "secret and sly or sordid", but I always thought it had to do with being a cat or a cat burglar, and, of course, there's the fur bit at the beginning. Furtivology is my take on futurology. The Japanese English newspaper Asahi has an interview with Mathew Burrows, expert of geopolitical futurology. I've always thought futurologists are well served being furtive and circumspect.
Mr. Burrows makes a number of interesting point by one is, I think, particularly germane to this thread.
"Small is no longer beautiful
Q: Throughout the 1990s, when very dynamic globalization was under way, there emerged the perception that small is beautiful.
Small countries like Singapore, Ireland, Israel, Estonia and Finland are clearly much more agile and much better at adapting to globalization.
Would I be wrong in saying that an era will come where the perception that big is powerful will gain ground over the next 15 or 20 years?
A: No, I think you're essentially right."
What is of note is the perception that big is powerful and highly centralized, large states like China will be in a better position to put in place the infrastructure necessary to compete. As noted in the linked article we, the world population, are facing a population bomb and the rise of states like India, Brazil and China. Intellectual Property is just one barb when it comes to grappling with the problems the next 5 or so generations are going to face. One of the cornerstones of democracy is the checks and balances founded upon the temporal and geographic dispersal of power. The idea of Intellectual Property as a stopgap against losing ground to a country like China is appealing only until it runs up against our basic rights; but federal agencies are obliged to protect the interests of the country in the world at large. It generates a double bind that probably won't be resolved in our lifetimes, if at all, if we fuck it all up big time.
ideopath @ play
The USA wants some language in ACTA. But they don't want to tip their hands to certain parties outside of the process. Or these parties might call 'bullshit' on the whole thing and bring their countries negotiators home. So what's in question? Its not patents or copyrights. Everyone knows the negotiating positions and national interests involved with these issues. And the representatives from various nations are well prepared to defend their own interests in these areas.
It appears that the USA is interested in keeping any outside eyes off their proposals. This would seem to indicate that the language they want added is aimed at something other than the standard IP issues one would associate with such a treaty.
Have gnu, will travel.
The word "Furtive" is derived from the Latin word for "thief".
That seems about right.
As Americans we are responsible for this run-amuck government of ours. Just like the German people were ultimately responsible for letting the Nazis run unchecked until the rest of the world had to come hammer them all into the dirt, we are responsible for this out of hand government. I think the rest of the world should come to the realization for it's own good that the average American people aren't ever going to grow any backbone and do the right thing. Corporations own us heart, soul and mind, as they will everyone else they deem worthy of the effort. Democracy here is a failed experiment, it's downfall being we have the finest politicians, bureaucrats, and officials that money can buy.
My advice for the rest of the world hoping to make democracy work. Make your politicians, bureaucrats and officials work for ONLY what they are paid. Anything else, "campaign donations" "soft money", all that is a bribe, and treasonous by all parties and you brutally execute everyone involved publicly, swiftly without a slight hint of mercy or long trials.
Try to remember when all of you other countries take enough and at last come here to blow us all to hell, that not all of us are evil. We are just brainwashed and dumb and just want happy lives not bothering or hurting anyone. Ironic isn't it that the "land of the free and the home of the brave" is now land of the enslaved and home of the lemming cowards. Our founding fathers must be turning in their graves like gyroscopes.
Call me if we have a revolution, I am far too cowardly to start one myself and probably will hide under my bed anyway if we did have one. My best excuse is; It's too late to do anything about it anyway...oh well.
Take the Red Pill.
for accepting a sucky status quo, and therefore becoming a part of the problem with your complacency
i don't accept this status quo, and plenty others don't. we are the ones who will prevail, because what is right is on our side
but go ahead and bet against us. however you should know that cynicism is a poor replacement for real intelligence. the words you have written are impotent: you have no power when you openly and freely, with your own words, disempower yourself and choose acceptance of your own slavery
don't for a moment think how you relate to the world on your cynical terms has any meaning or validity about how i relate to the world on my terms
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I know it's a bitter pill for some to swallow, but anyone who was paying attention could've seen this coming.
So, once again we Americans managed to elect another stiff that breaks his campaign vision? Hell, we on the right threw everything we had into Bush's vision of a "humbler America" and "limited government" only to find ourselves compromising our own very values in support of an administration that pissed off the entire planet and ironically, laid the groundwork for the very federal activism that is taking place now.
The great foolishness of American political fans is that they always fail to see that neither party ever really rolls back the excesses of the other's usurpations of power, but merely sanitize them for their own side's uneasy palatibility. If Democrats and Republicans from 50 years ago were alive today, they would be sick at what either party has become. I highly doubt Adlai Stevenson or Jack Kennedy would approve of Obama's budgetary mess and forgive me foreign policy any more than Richard Nixon or Dwight Eisenhower would have approved of Bush's interventions and his budgetary messes.
This is my sig.
If you're only concerned about border searches, then ACTA contains nothing that the USA doesn't do already. They're not the big problems of ACTA.
The big problems are liability for ISPs and people in the supply chain or transmission chain of software and music, the mandatory enforcement of DRM, and the enforcement of local laws by people in foreign countries.
It will lead to "rights holders" being able to control society through fear - each time people get organised (like the way the free software movement formed), the copyright and patent holders will have enough power over them, the ISPs, promoters, distributors, and service providers.
Think of SCO, but this time SCO wins, multiple.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
not in canada, not in all parts fo tehworld they dont have uber control
just cause your LAME american country has no democracy left doesn't mean we dont ahve some in the rest fo the world.
AND THIS IS WHY IT WILL NOT HAPPEN EXCEPT IN UK,FRANCE,AMERICA, AND maybe italy
all these countries democracies have been subverted.
ITS OK guys we can do without you
go ahead BUILD THE WALL
just like soviet russia did
You think like a ReThuglican Jew
I'm actually looking forward to ACTA and other corporate abuses of human liberty. As Leia said, "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers!" I think this is certainly true of information freedom. First they killed Napster, and everyone went to Limewire, which provided slightly more anonymity. Then Limewire got bought out / corrupted, and everyone switched to pirate bay / utorrent. Then torrents started getting throttled and letters got sent, and encryption has been added to the protocol.
We have the technology right now with onion routing and freenet style network systems to provide true anonymity and freedom for all. The corporations and their slave governments (the US in particular) continuing to push people into digital slavery will only proliferate and strengthen these technologies.
Eventually I'd like to see everyone's cell phone and wifi router work as an anonymous ad hoc p2p system, bypassing the corporate ISP model altogether. Try throttling that, Comcast (et al)!
I agree with all the above posters though, Obama is definitely a corporate whore, no different than Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr, Carter, Nixon, Ford, Johnson... EVERY president since they shot JFK in the face has been acting completely against the interest of the American people and FOR the interests of large corporations and special interests of that ilk. Like Robin Hood, though, our technology will make that entire system irrelevant eventually. It's just up to a few of us geeks to pave the way for mom, and all the other technophobes.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
All the ACTA articles up to a year and a half ago made sure to say some varient of "The Bush Administration is..." but now its "The US trade representation delegation is..." instead of the more honest "The Obama Adminstration is...". Setting direction and lines in the sand for treaty negotiations of this magnitude come from the very top of the Executive Branch, e.g. from the President's desk, e.g. Barack Obama made this decision.
This is Slashdot, and if you want to state a blunt political opinion, you're going to have to take the heat from moderation, and not necessarily in moderation.
I was, for quite a while, just one mod shy of being modded Troll, merely by pointing out that Obama is no different than other politicians in that he's made a lot of promises which he hasn't all kept. And I even am fairly satisfied over his overall performance, personally (being the cynic I am).
BTW, an AC who replied to me sent an interesting link
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/
but I haven't managed to look through it that much...
The whole point of American trading policy was to have free trade and in doing so allow the third world to take up manufacturing in exchange for remaining a more intellectual property based system.
A history lesson is in order. This mess has been almost 150 years in the making...
This basic vision was actually invented by Southern Democrats in the runup to the Civil War, who preferred to import cheap manufactured goods rather than buy more expensive goods from the North. Indeed, Northern imposition of tarrifs to protect its industries was in some ways a bigger driver of the civil war than slavery itself. That's not revisionism - that's the Tariff of Abomination and how I think it was South Carolina almost bailed on the Union even in the 1830s simply because of tariffs.
After the war, Republicans were a protectionist party and the economy frankly boomed as America became a manufacturing powerhouse, essentially doing everything to Europe that China does to the USA today. Free Trade became a plank of the Democratic Party in the 1920s as Progressives in the North cut the unholy deal with the South to get their support and form Roosevelt's Super Coalition. Once Progressives broke with the South in the 1960s over the civil rights act, the Nixon strategy was really to offer free trade back to the south, explicitly, coupled with some not-so-subtle race baiting.
Thus, the American policy of free trade is really just a national appeasement to red state farmers and miners looking to import tools as cheap as possible, so they can sell produce on the world markets as cheap as possible and make a killing. If wages crater, what of it, as these people were all slave states anyway and who cares what happens to the urban centers filled with unemployed people when your state has plenty of food to grow and coal to mine.
Thus, you can't really say free trade and its decimation is the fault of Bush / Cheney. Rather, its the fault of every administration since Wilson scrambling for red state electoral votes. The historical aberration is that World War II produced an un-unnatural demand for American manufactured goods, but the policies that wrecked American manufacturing were put into place by Roosevelt, and extended all the way through the present administration.
If you want to curb environmental abuses, re-establish a middle class, and have American manufacturing, then the thing to do is to slap a big tax on imported manufacturing goods. What puzzles me is that Democrats of today do not even see this or do this, despite their own constituencies demanding this ever since the first Toyota rolled off of the ships in the 1960s.
Instead, you have Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and company, that have made free trade the gospel of the Democratic Party, which is not too surprising since both are Southerners. The basic difference they offer is that, they would tax the profits of those to dole out some welfare to everyone getting gutted from waves of cheap imports, like, at least ask Walmart to provide health insurance for its workers. The reality is, Democrats need to let go of free trade, and understand that blue states are not resource rich and can never compete in this arena. Instead, they had foolishly hoped that they could get the world to pay an IP tax, as you said, and that's simply not going to fly. Koreans are unimpressed by American patents on inventions they can discover for themselves.
This is my sig.
The possessive "its" does not have an apostrophe anywhere, either before or after the "s".
And the reason that you've heard not a peep, my good fellow, is because your regular media outlet wants ACTA soooooo bad, they're not going to publish anything that might inform you or encourage you to rebel against the current secret process. You can thank Mr Murdoch for that personally, if you so wish, but there's plenty of other groups on the same side: the banks, the insurance companies, the pharmas, the stock market....