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."

Comments

People are fighting ACTA

[click2005]

http://www.stopacta.info/alertbox

Re:Then fuck it.

[Austerity Empowers]

"We're afraid of our own democracy, it tends to interfere with corporate interests"

Re:Then fuck it.

[hypergreatthing]

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.

Let me decide

[UninformedCoward]

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?

People are fighting ACTA = Useless

[TheMeuge]

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.

Re:People are fighting ACTA = Useless

[Shotgun]

Now, that's some change we can believe in. Let's all hear it for the most open government in the history of the United States.

Re:People are fighting ACTA = Useless

[causality]

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.

That actually is a conspiracy for it requires many people to cooperate together to accomplish a shared goal. Self-interest is assumed in a conspiracy since it is unusual to form conspiracies for purposes of charity. It's also a conspiracy because the same small (compared to the whole US population) group that owns the large IP also owns the media. That's evidenced by conducting a smear campaign which by its very nature is not terribly interested in factual accuracy.

There's nothing magic about the word "conspiracy" except in the minds of people who are desperate to dismiss a notion without actually finding fault with it. "You said 'conspiracy' therefore you're automatically a nut and I'll ignore your ideas without actually investigating them" is how that goes. It's a weak mind that uses such tactics to shelter itself from ideas that it would rather not consider. It's a tool of marginalization and nothing more.

If you're interested, I believe the fifth definition of "conspiracy" is most relevant here. From dictionary.reference.com:

conspiracy
/knsprsi/ [[ask.com]] Show Spelled[kuhn-spir-uh-see] [[ask.com]] Show IPA
–noun,plural-cies.
1.
the act of conspiring.
2.
an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot.
3.
a combination of persons for a secret, unlawful, or evil purpose: He joined the conspiracy to overthrow the government.
4.
Law. an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.
5.
any concurrence in action; combination in bringing about a given result.

As I have explained from time to time on this site, if you work at a company that produces widgets, you and all of your co-workers are conspiring to make widgets. To put it mildly, it'd be extremely poor form to read that sentence and then dismiss without examination the notion that the company exists, that you work there, or that you make widgets. But that's generally what people want this magic keyword "conspiracy" to be -- an automatic way to end any discussion with zero effort, zero evidence, and no good reason.

documenting it on http://en.swpat.org

[ciaran_o_riordan]

Luckily for democracy, the process is leaking like an old bucket anyway.

• ACTA overview
• 201001 acta.pdf as text - the big leak, pretty much complete
• ACTA-6437-10.pdf as text - earlier leak, including comments from the EU representative

swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, help in documenting this is very welcome.

Good negotiators

[DoofusOfDeath]

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.

Re:maaaan

[commodore64_love]

Corporations (or tress or rocks or other non-humans) should not be allowed to lobby the People's representatives.

And yes I know corporations consist of people. They are still allowed to speak, as individuals.

Implicit and explicit conspiracies

[spun]

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.