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European Parliament All But Rejects ACTA
An anonymous reader writes "European Parliament today adopted Written Declaration 12/2010 which basically tells the Commission to all but drop the negotiations. From the article: 'Citizens from all around Europe helped to raise awareness about ACTA among Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) by collecting, one by one, more than 369 [of the MEPs'] signatures. With Written Declaration 12/20103, the European Parliament as a whole takes a firm position to oppose the un-democratic process of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and its content harmful to fundamental freedoms and the Internet ecosystem.'"
EU has been impressing me lately. They seem to actually care about good governance sometimes. That's one hell of a lot more than I can say about the USA and the "land of the free".
Now that we know where Paradise is, when do we leave?
Really? They couldn't be bothered to count more than 369 signatures?
Slagborr
A democratic institution representing the desires and best interests of it's electorate?
What gives?
unilateral declarations that work out to "agree with our stance on copyrig^H^H^Hcounterfeiting or else."
Now that the EU has "all but rejected ACTA", how likely is this to impact the enactment of this blatantly evil trade agreement in the US of A? Speaking as a concerned citizen of the US, can I breathe a little easier now, or is there more that still needs to be done to grind this horrible blight on the internet out of existence?
You should turn signatures off.
RTF summary. 369 signatures from the Members of the European Parliament. In other words, a majority.
Now all we can hope is that the US government decides its a bad idea as well. And while I'm wishing for the impossible - I'd like a solar powered corvette and world peace.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. " -Voltaire
The 369 signatories (377 now) are all MEPs (members of the European Parliament). 369 is significant because it is a majority of the eligible votes.
The linked page is just one of the relevant pages - you have to follow the links on the left to get at the rest. Here's a couple of interesting pages:
http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Written_Declaration_12/2010_signatories_list
http://www.laquadrature.net/en/ACTA
Yay!
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
Can we get a better source than a wiki page that anyone can edit and was last updated on March 8th?
... European Parliament has begun international negotiations on a new counter-terrorism and anti-child molestation treaty.
Negotiations are not on public record, but trust us, the treaty is for your own safety.
Now that Europe has more or less said FU to ACTA, can/will Canada and Mexico drop it too?
Calling a +1 deciding vote a majority is technically true, but still dishonest. A candidate who wins election by 50.1% percent isn't popular even though he won.
Who would have ever thought that European nations would ever be more concerned about liberty and due process than The united States of America? We were once called the "land of the free" and "the land of opportunity" but we're running headlong toward becoming the fascist, socalized nanny state that everyone hates to live under.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
WTF does "all but drop" mean? If you look at it grammatically, it means "to do everything but drop", which is the opposite of what the submitter implied.
/pedantic
He is popular, but his adversary is almost as popular as he is. But that's why the first guy won, and the second didn't.
WTF does "all but drop" mean? If you look at it grammatically, it means "to do everything but drop", which is the opposite of what the submitter implied.
"All But Rejects" in the headline indicated to me that the European Parliament had expressed its disapproval in every way short of a formal final rejection.
As a European I am glad to read this. However, I am no sure if this is over yet. The cynic in me says: there wasn't enough money flowing to some representatives or some representatives want to advance their own agenda a little bit more. I guess it is time to negotiate behind closed doors a little bit more until we reach an agreement.
A big THANK YOU to all the MEP's who signed this. Way to grow a spine. Let's all hope ACTA dies the brutal death it was always destined for.
Unfortunately, the EU Parliament is a pitiful powerless entity and "Written Declarations" are just words without substance. The EU Parliament site describes what a Written Declaration is: (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/plenary/writtenDecl.do)
"A written declaration is a text of a maximum of 200 words on a matter falling within the European Union's sphere of activities.
Written declarations are printed in all the official languages, distributed and entered in a register.
MEPs can use written declarations to launch or relaunch a debate on a subject that comes within the EU's remit."
Nothing to see here my friends, the real power stays with the EU Commission.
Oh come on now... it worked for GW Bush. Hell, he didnt even have a majority, just the electoral votes. I would say that if they have more than half, its honest to call that a majority.
What's dishonest about it?
It's more than half of the people, so it's the majority. Not an overwhelming majority, yet still.
And in places where voters can/have to choose between more than 2 candidates (that is: almost everywhere except the US), candidates who get an actual majority of 50+% instead of only a relative majority are considered popular.
Reading the text, I'm worried that the European Commission will be able to argue that the current process is already complying with those demands.
There's a lot of "You can't do X unless it complies with existing EU law!" or "This better not have side effect X!" - to which the European Commission could say "Ok, we're already obliged to comply with EU law, so that changes nothing, and of course we've no intention to cause side effects, so let's continue and sign this thing.".
I'd love to see a document showing what sentences of the latest leaked draft are unavoidably shot down by this declaration.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Now let's all just watch the commission ignore the requests of the parliament. Unless it's really not important at all, of course.
Power in the EU is not with the parliament, but with the commission. Even after the treaty both executive and legislative power remains with the commission, and they threw in a part of the judiciary to match.
I think the GP meant dishonest as in throwing the other voter opinion under the bus so to speak (and I hate that phrase). I kind of agree with him on supermajority (or 3/5ths) needed to qualify for "popular" status. In your example, I think the best decision would be to do a re-vote with the two highest candidates, but I won't argue voting methods. I would probably determine popularity by the voter margin between the winner and the next nearest candidate, i.e., if they are close apart then he isn't a popular choice.
I wrote that the Commission withdrew the proposed directive. Seems I misremembered. What happened was that they changed the directive to a 'compromise' version that basically threw out all the amendment, and it ended up getting rejected.
Point still stands anyway, the Council dumped all over parliament on the SW patent thing, and I've no reason to believe they'll do differently now.
Common sense in politics? ;)
Wasn't the end of the world said to be in 2012?
A candidate who wins election by 50.1% percent isn't popular even though he won.
You are limiting your own imagination if you only assume two candidates when talking about an election. I hope that is not the case, that you just worded yourself so that it possible to interpret it that way.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
Switch to Yahoo Search. The search results are just as good, it has that little more tab (the blue tab under the search box after you query) that gives you plenty of easy jump off points, and no irritating "instant search" baloney.
As for TFA, considering from what had been leaked it was so one sided pro USA media cartels it wasn't even funny, I'm surprised it took this long. They'd have to be seriously bought and paid for to screw themselves so badly on a trade deal.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Many great classic rock bands seem to be composed of 4 or 5 Englishmen. :P There's that, at least. :)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
laquadrature is not the EU Parliament. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/focus_page/008-80686-195-07-29-901-20100714FCS78876-14-07-2010-2010/default_p001c001_en.htm mentions there will be talk on Wednesday but nothing more.
I wasn't being serious. A lot of ignorant people actually don't know that bands like the Beatles are from the UK. It has to be painfully obvious for them to realize non-locality, like with The Police for example.
As for my "nothing of worth" comment, I think many foreign movies are better than ones produced here in the states. Off the top of my head, three are Mongol, The Red Baron (for fun, not accuracy), and North Face. A common mention is Let the Right One In. Foreign action movies like Ong-Bak and Chocolate probably got heavily pirated here. Plus, due to the foreign talent involved in music and films today, I think it's silly to call most productions as belonging to one particular country.
In the UK, you can probably count on one hand the number of politicians who won an election with more than 50% of the vote. My MP got 34.7%, while the next-closest candidate got 33.2%. 50.1% means that you are more popular than all of the other candidates combined - it's a very healthy majority.
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President Obama won't get target GDP that he promised now. ACTA was the only way he could grow the economy without actually creating jobs by ... er retaining the Bush tax cuts or lowering taxes so small biz can afford to actually hire people.
A big THANK YOU to the EU ... again!
Yes, the sobriquet "lads from Liverpool" doesn't help if you don't know where Liverpool is. :)
anyway, I sometimes tend to respond in kind to sarcasm and the like.
I am not making the England/UK mistake BTW; none of these musicians happen to be from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. :P
The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Judas Priest for more examples. Freddie Mercury was born outside England but lived in England, probably Queen too. :)
I've been meaning to gather statistics on the national origin of my music collection
Foreign films? Being extremely impressed with Kurosawa's ouevre comes to mind; I specifically saw Rashomon, 7 Samurai and Hidden Fortress, but I haven't gotten around to watching many movies since then of whatever nationality.
You're right, there are definitional issues, my Freddie Mercury example being one.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
other than pass them to customers? How else can it handle liability other than include its costs in the price of the product? How else can it pay license fees?
It is a simple arithmetic fact that all of these raise the cost of the product. So would "drafting" the corporation to do anything other than the usual make-product-and-sell-it - the costs of doing this service on the side would raise the cost of the product. How do you expect these increases in costs NOT be reflected in the price?
Of course, governments can fix prices, which results is worse, less or no product being made. If an activity is not profitable, why would people engage in it? They would take their energy and money elsewhere and do something else. The only way to prevent it is make the latter impossible, through economy-wide price controls and restrictions on production. Worked really well for the Eastern Bloc, too :-)
must be a new European invention. Up next: moist fire, dry water, alcohol that makes you smarter.
Look at a map and read an history book...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Political campaign spending is severely limited in most EU countries (in the UK political parties can't advertise in the media, which means parties are not in need of corruptive donations from corporations).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
commodore64 love is a special kind of stupid.
They must pay a bunch of people to post here, judging from the volume.
Added to the S/N ratio a few years ago; one troll tribe among many, I'm afraid.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani