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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."
"We're afraid of our own democracy, it tends to interfere with corporate interests"
can any of the americans explain this to us here ?
You wanted hope and change? You got it. Hope you like it.
can any of the americans explain this to us here ?
As an American, no i can't. We the public did not create this, have no say in this and have nothing to do with this. I wouldn't even know where to send a strongly worded letter to.
Corruption. Next question?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
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
As an American, I will explain it. We are no different than anyone else who becomes corrupted by money and power. In fact, throughout existence it has been this way. Regardless of any viewpoint of morality or sense of right regardless of country, money talks to these people. Its the only thing they answer to. Sad, but true from the beginning of human nature. What can be done to fix it? lol
Voting against every incumbant is easy, but it's not really going to help. If a politician thinks "no matter what I do, I'll be voted out" there's not much reason for him to care about the voters, is there? We can fix the current system by establishing a simple feedback loop - act in the interest of the voters, and we'll keep you; act in the interest of campaign contributors, and you're out.
Of course, the only reason why politicians care about these campaign contributors is the need for huge media buys. If we all just ignored political ads entirely, they stop working, and the expense vanishes.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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
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.
Except that what will actually happen is people will vote Republicans back in and those Republicans will gladly forge ahead with ACTA just as much as the Democrats are.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
However with ACTA, and basically every other big content initiative, Obama is openly and completely on their (big media's) side and shows every indication that he'll fight as hard to take away our rights as he did to pass health care.....
Yeah, but the problem is that not all the taxpayers agree on what is in their interest. If we did all agree, I think this would already be the system, but we don't. Instead you have Joe over there and John over here fighting about everything themselves, and Mr. Politician on Capitol Hill hearing both of them, as well as hearing what some big rich corporation has to say, and having to make some sort of decision. But Mr. Politician doesn't really know anything about the subject at hand (nor do Joe or John, probably, and the corporation is only giving one side of it) so he makes a decision based on the info he's given. More money (from the corporation) means more ability to convince Mr. Politician that they're right and Joe or John (or both) are wrong.
If people (including politicians) were better informed and could agree about what's right, this wouldn't be an issue. But we aren't, and we can't.
There are people participating in such groups, but every time they turn around, someone calls them a teabagger and tries to point to some nut-job racist calling him the leader trying to discredit the movement even though he didn't start it.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
We the public did not create this, have no say in this and have nothing to do with this. I wouldn't even know where to send a strongly worded letter to.
You are wrong, you DID create this, you HAVE a say in this and you have EVERYTHING to do with this. You are guilt by omission when you don't vote and mainly when you don't follow up on your elected officials. It is not enough to just cast a vote every odd year and hope things will be OK, you need to make sure that your congressman/senator/"whatever elected official" is representing you and not just himself and his friends.
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.
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.
I don't know, some options are:
- Send letters to your elected official;
- Assemble groups of like-minded individuals and pressure your elected official;
- Go to de media;
- Use the internet to expose whenever your elected official votes/acts against the people who elected him
And this are only some ideas, I bet there are many more options if you search for them. So please take the time to find out and help your country be a better place.
Corporations may have free speech, but they don't have the right to lobby.
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
Could our administration possibly act in a more corrupt manner on this issue? It seems unlikely.
Could we ever have a worse President than Carter? It seemed unlikely. Then we got GWB.
Just when you think things can't possibly get any worse, they always do.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
The USA wants some language in ACTA. But they don't want to tip their hands to certain parties outside of the process
Parties like "the voting public" and "peoples of the world".
You can't take the sky from me...
Here's what to watch for: In a political environment where Republicans have been completely unified in opposition by every single act of President Obama, there will suddenly be wide bi-partisan support for ACTA. It will be sloughed off by the media as an aberration, and you'll hear how "It must be a good treaty since there's bi-partisan support".
Then you'll know that in fact the people who get commonly laughed at with claims of "Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same" were right all along.
But nobody will see it that way, because like with NAFTA and the PATRIOT Act, there will be some trivial partisan issue that will pop up immediately after its ratification that will wipe ACTA right off the front pages so the people who use political parties they way sports fans use home teams can get all exercised again and never realize that they've just been bent over a chair and dry-fucked.
Just watch.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Obama is a statist overall. It's about power and control. A direct reflection of his modus operandi.
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