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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
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"We're afraid of our own democracy, it tends to interfere with corporate interests"
they actually said it. one member of this 'trade house commitee' assured corporations recently that 'consumer groups' participation would be kept to a minimum'.
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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?
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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?
I wouldn't even know where to send a strongly worded letter to.
Try this guy:
Barack Hussein Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
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.
No, I personally voted for the other "other" guy. And I voted against pretty much every incumbent in the race (sometimes on moral grounds, sometimes due to political views) ... As an American who's sick of the system the way it is, I vote and encourage people to vote to remove all 535 from office and to replace them by rounds every 2 years. I realize we need party leadership and we need people who understand the system, but guess what, when every citizen CAN hold office, nobody needs to be shown HOW to hold office.
A handful of men realized this 250 years ago, when they started a new country, and they figured that everyone who had any education could hold office. (granted, I'm not saying all their practices were right: I'm just as against slavery and the oppression of women as anyone else ~ I'm just saying the political concepts were much better suited for citizen self-governance).
However, given the massive tie-in and buy-in of Corporate America inside the beltway, I'm not sure how we can really revert the damages of our fathers and our fathers fathers.
tl;dr: Hey AC, we don't all want the hope and change that's being shoveled down our throats, mkay?
2^3 * 31 * 647
Luckily for democracy, the process is leaking like an old bucket anyway.
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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.
...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.
Tune into Entertainment Tonight or MTV for political news?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
What part of "no change" did you not understand?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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
The important difference is that people voted for Obama, even though they disagreed with many things he called for, because he promised them "change" and "transparency". It is one thing when you vote for somebody because they claim to be for a bunch of ideas you support and then learn that they aren't going to actually support half of them. It is another thing entirely to vote for someone because of one or two ideas that you think are very important while you disagree with most of what they say they want to do and then discover that they aren't going to do the things you liked, but are going to do the things you were at best ambivalent about.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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
But this president was going to usher in a new age of transparency, and produce "change we can believe in". Obama has the power to order the US negotiators to push for more transparency, but he has done nothing (or worse than nothing) to open up the process. At least we were able to see the final health-care negotiations televised on C-SPAN, as Obama promised. Oh, wait...
Too many people drank the Obama kool-aid during the campaign and can't bring themselves to see that he's just another lying politician, from the left this time instead of the right.
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.....
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
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."
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.
I voted for the guy and I agree. Change?
Meet the new boss......
However, I think the real kool-aid is believing that voting Republican or Democrat really gets you want you want. The whole damn thing looks like a sham at this point.
>>>Obama has tried new approaches but was shut down by various people
True but the president could just veto everything, if it does not line-up with his view of "openness" or "constitutional" laws.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
But this president was going to usher in a new age of transparency, and produce "change we can believe in". Obama has the power to order the US negotiators to push for more transparency, but he has done nothing (or worse than nothing) to open up the process.
Absolutely. Assuming he is aware of what is going on with this, he seems to be breaking a campaign promise. My real question is, where are the opposition politicians on this? I mean, when the president breaks campaign promises, shouldn't Republican, at least a few of them, be calling him out on it publicly? I've heard not a peep, even from folks like Ron Paul. Are they all so badly in the pockets of lobbyists they won't even bring this up to attack their opponents?
Once again we devolve back down to "because of Corporate America" in any base form. How does politics devolve to this?
Don't get me wrong, I understand the whole shebang in "how it happened, why it's here", but what I wanna know is can we get away from it, or do I need to figure out how to get to the head of DOW or something and then try to effect change? (yeah right, like that would ever happen)
2^3 * 31 * 647
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.
"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'
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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.
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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
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
My real question is, where are the opposition politicians on this? I mean, when the president breaks campaign promises, shouldn't Republican, at least a few of them, be calling him out on it publicly?
they are busy making sure nothing changes.
If they called attention to the lack of change, people might look to them to make a change.....they don't want change
Or, possibly, they voted for Obama, because the idea of Sarah Palin being the VP to a 72-year-old president was scarier than having Joe Biden being the VP to a 47-year-old president.
Or possibly they voted for Obama, because the Republicans decided to go for a guy, who was worse than George W. Bush back in 2000? Or maybe they figured the Republicans had already done enough damage to mess up the country, and that anything but a Republican would be good, but the only viable choice was a Democrat? Sometimes it's a matter of picking the lesser of two evils.
I got a Flowers By Irene van parked outside my house 24/7 now. Maybe my letters were too strongly worded.
The whole damn thing looks like a sham at this point.
I've been voting for 8 years now in the USA. I've never voted for a democrat or a republican for any office above state-congress level representation. After my poly sci class my senior year of high school I just couldn't bring myself to support either of the candidates fueled by so much, 'special interest money,' (read rich man's bribes). Everyone I've told this to has always criticized me for throwing away my vote, but so far as I see it, voting for third party candidates or write-ins is the only viable means we, as Americans, have to stand up and say, "None of the above," on our ballots. I'd mush rather tell my government, "Screw you, you're all doing it wrong," and be ignored than know that I cast a vote for an idiot, a sociopath, or a psycho.
The only reason I bring this up is that, if you ask me, it's looked like a sham from the beginning. Then again I am very young, and perhaps there were some decades before my time where politicians and the electoral system didn't suck nearly as badly as they do today.
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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.
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.
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.
You don't actually slap a big tax randomly on things, that cost should reflect fair trade, where imported goods are subject to the exact same cost impacts of, fair and reasonable wages, safe working conditions, environmental protection costs, realistic taxation basis and, acceptable conditions of employment. In line with normal competitive practices, companies can still be required to compete whether local or foreign, but that competition should be done upon an equal basis. This is ultimately fair and humane, if other countries want to avoid the duty impost, they simply need to improve conditions so that they equal or exceed local conditions. So you are not just rebuilding the politically stability of the US middle class, you are building that politically stable middle class across the globe.
This is very important as it has already clearly be demonstrated political strife in other countries will always end up having a local impact and modern exotic pollutants know no boundaries, it is impossible to produce clean and safe products in a polluted environment.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen