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European Parliament All But Rejects ACTA

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the actaing-out-loud dept.

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.'"

10 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. About Fucking Time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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".

    1. Re:About Fucking Time by jvillain · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The EU blows hot and cold but there are times that I am very grateful that they have the back bone to stand up to the US. Our prime minister has taken over from Blair as the one who gets on his knees and blows who ever is in the White House.

    2. Re:About Fucking Time by Hylandr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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 corporate free reign".

      Here, let me fix that for you...

      - Dan.

      --
      ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
    3. Re:About Fucking Time by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The USA is the land of the free. The free are very happy there, and they have a ready supply of serfs to keep them that way.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    4. Re:About Fucking Time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      without any of the obligations...

      Taxes? pass them on to customers.
      Service? Who do they draft?
      License fees? pass them on to customers.
      Liability? We bought laws to protect us from our own greed and sins.

      All the *priveleges* without any of the responsibility.

    5. Re:About Fucking Time by Teun · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Your posts of today mainly show how incredibly ill informed you are yet you voice a strong and by consequence wrong opinion.

      Norway is not part of the EU and they won't be until they in about a century from now run out of oil and gas.

      Opera is a well respected but very much niche browser, in the EU and even in Norway, supporting it in this manner would be a bad investment.

      It's only since this year that the EU parliament has some real legal teeth and they love to use them against the somewhat old fashioned/conservative European Commission.

      Because members of the EU parliament are at home often little known they tend to be more independent than their national counterparts.

      Today's action demonstrates this independence and has next to nothing to do with 'EU vs US'.

      --
      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
    6. Re:About Fucking Time by uniquename72 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So America can't join.

  2. Re:Wait, what? by JohnBailey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A democratic institution representing the desires and best interests of it's electorate?
    What gives?

    Too many people to effectively bribe.

    --
    It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
  3. Now just watch by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:This isn't over? by Halo1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Repeating the standard pub arguments about politics is not the same as "insightful", mods.

    The whole ACTA thing is already being negotiated behind closed doors. It's unlikely that anyone is trying to bribe MEPs at this point since the European Parliament is not directly involved in the negotiations itself, and the European Commission is trying its best to keep them as far as possible from the negotiations. Not to mention that it's pretty hard to bribe that many individual MEPs with so many different political backgrounds and nationalities so as to block a written declaration from passing. It would be one of the most expensive and idiotic strategies ever.

    And of course MEPs do this because it advances their agenda: they don't want to be kept out by the European Commission from negotiations like this only to be presented with a fait accompli later on. Well, that combined with the fact that several of them also don't like the inclusion of patents in it, and all the stuff about cutting people's Internet access for copyright infringements is also not very popular there.

    Note that I'm not saying that it *is* over now. However, that is unrelated to any alleged bribery or selfishness.

    --
    Donate free food here