India Attempts To Derail ACTA

Admiral Justin writes "Ars Technica is reporting that India is attempting to gather support from other large countries that have been intentionally left out of the ACTA process to actively protest it. India fears that ACTA will eventually be used against it and other countries that were given no chance to be a part of the process of drafting it. Among the primary concerns are the possibility of medical shipments being seized if they use a port in transit that is controlled by a country with a patent on the pharmaceuticals."

Comments

India in. Now we only need china, and russia.

[unity100]

that will constitute approx half of world population.

versus, hollywood.

who do you think will win ?

what i'm wondering is

[circletimessquare]

how do these assholes actually expect to enforce acta?

you can pass all the laws you want. but in terms of actually stopping the spread of pirate media, they would have to fundamentally alter the internet in such a way as to also negate any value anyone attaches to the internet. in other words, they would start a revolt. not an armed revolt, just a sort of utter rejection of their vision of complete centralized control

it would also be extremely expensive, and they would also have to somehow control the internet internationally AND completely. they would, paradoxically, turn those outsider countries that aren't on the usa's bff list, into outposts of internet freedom

acta, to me, it seems like a completely desperate ploy, or clueless (or both)

really, in terms of enforceability, acta is a fucking joke

i understand what you are saying

[circletimessquare]

they would basically turn the west into the corporate equivalent of the bullshit that goes on with the internet in china or iran: centralized monitoring and control, for the sake of $ (rather than political control)

in other words, they would force a conflict: the ideals of western liberal democracy, versus the corporate imperative to strangle everything to make a buck

now you can be a complete cynic and pessimist about this conflict, but personally, talking completely out of realism i think, they're fucking out of their mind: people won't stand for it. some of us will make it their passionate life pursuit to circumvent such controls, and those who are successful at routing around the controls will be folk heroes

i really don't see this weak ass acta subsuming the ideals of western liberal democracy. i'm sorry, but every goddamn teenager will take it as a personal joy to render acta a joke, and they'll be able to do it: all you need is technical knowhow. it beats all the lawyers, all the laws, all the international agreement

acta is a form of delusion, its doomed. but let them try, just see them crash and burn

Quixotic Attempt I'm Afraid

[TuballoyThunder]

I'm glad India is taking a stand that supports its national interests and that position coincides with my belief that intellectual property rights have gone to far. The big "however" is that India does not have a great success rate of stopping a treaty. They did not sign the NPT nor the CTBT and the NPT is in force and the CTBT would be if it was not for the Annex II requirement.

The only thing that will kill the ACTA treaty is if a significant number of countries refuse to sign it or reject it during ratification. Unfortunately, I fear that any US administration would gladly sign the treaty and the US Senate would readily ratify it. If only the treaty would harm the gay unborn whales...

Re:Yep. Yer boned.

[cenc]

Yea, you are going to want to spend some time digging through all the supreme court rulings in that last 40 years or so regards Indian treaties. Granted, the Indian treaties are a very different legal animal from say treatise over copyrights with other countries, but treatise do in fact carry more weight than the constitution in at least very important cases.

If you are not up for the time to do that here is the basic legal theory upheld by the supreme court on the subject (and I am sure there are better ways of putting it):

The territory that the U.S. occupies was found by recognition of a set of treaties that in many cases predate the territorial space of the United States. Thus, the existence and enforceability of those treaties makes everything else contained in the constitution possible. The most important of which is the territorial definition of the U.S., along with lots of nice things like mining rights, water rights, hunting rights, and so on.

For example, this is why Indians have casinos and the individual States in most cases can not really do a whole lot about it. Essentially, most of the United States is under some sort of lease to another government, and if you ignore those "rental" agreements the whole legal mess called the U.S. starts falling apart. Even when the U.S. breaks those treatises, they still have to pay up in court for the damages. One that comes to mind would be things like the Black Hills land claim at the moment. There are hundreds if not thousands of other rulings, and why the U.S. government tends to get its rear eventually handed to them in a court room over breaking those treatise sooner or later.

Re:What the?

[mdielmann]

And this is what makes me chuckle at free-market economists. The invisible hand only works when people have an informed choice, and give a damn. What tends to work better for managing the market is a big fucking stick and the warning, "You can make as much profit as you want, but when you start treating humanity as a source of profits and nothing else, we're going to start spanking." That's what any reasonable government would do, but governments are made of people, and people tend to be greedy...