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ACTA To Be Signed This Weekend
We've been following the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement for over three years, from its secretive beginnings, to the controversy and debate that followed, and to the document it eventually evolved into. Now, Japan has announced that the agreement will finally be signed on Saturday during a ceremony that follows an anti-piracy symposium on Friday.
"The negotiation has been carried out among Australia, Canada, the European Union and its Member States, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States, and reached a general agreement at the negotiation meeting held in Japan in October 2010, followed by the completion of technical and translation work in April 2011. ... The signing ceremony will be attended by the representatives of all the participants in the ACTA negotiations, and those that have completed relevant domestic processes will sign the agreement. The agreement is open for signature until May 1, 2013."
and the republican candidates would've been better? president is a figurehead, don't' be a fool and think he's anything else.
Well damn someone pass the lube I guess it's that time again.
Mexican Senate has already voted to not let president sign ACTA, yet, mexican IP officials and the content industry local representatives frequently make public statements about Mexico signing ACTA.
They will be at the Japan's signing ceremony as witnesses, but a few congress members haven't officially informed about recent developments concerning ACTA.
It's still as obscure as it was at the begining of the negotiations.
Don't be shocked if this follows the pattern laid out in the case of the WIPO anticircumvention treaty. It did not require anything nearly as strong as the DMCA, but the content industry kept waiving it in congressional faces, demanding that we pass something far too draconian to be justified by the treaty we had actually signed. In principle, this is set up to be in line with extant US law, thus not requiring a full Senate confirmation, but I wouldn't be shocked if (a) the content industries rammed down much stronger interpretations down other countries' throats, and (b) they then came back to the US and demanded that we "harmonize" with these stronger interpretations.
Has anyone heard about this in the Canadian media? No.
Is Herr Harper going to have it signed anyways? Of course. No need to discuss with the plebes what rights are being signed away. The elite have already been consulted.
Historically the Democrats have been more in bed with the entertainment industry. Obama has hired a good number of former RIAA officials/lawyers to work in his administration. It's pretty depressing, actually.
... how's that 'representative democracy' working out for 'ya? Feel represented yet?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Obviously. That's why you don't vote for the guy who can only give canned answers and fancy speeches.
The Republicans are bad, but they can't get away with as much. If Bush or another Republican was pulling this BS the major media would be crucifying them. That's pretty much the only difference between parties. If it's a Democrat, the media ignores as much as they can, and tries to spin everything to be positive. . .if it's a Republican, it's the only time the media does it's job, making sure that every action is brought to public light.
My criticism isn't as much that I think Democrats are worse, they just get away with a lot more. If you hate wars, corporate welfare and a police state under a Republican administration, you are a good American freedom lover who stands up for civil rights. If you hate wars, corporate welfare and a police state under a Democratic administration, you are a racist, extremist, and a danger to democracy.
As bad as Republicans are, it's downright dishonest the double standard that the media in this country has. . . If Bush had run as a Democrat, he would have likely been hailed by the media as the best president ever in American history. I bet you.
America's top exports: pornography, hamburgers, movies, economic instability, and, of course, imbalanced copyright legislation. Damn it America, keep your garbage to yourself! We all have our own special interest lobby groups! The last thing we need is for our governments to feel the influence of YOUR lobby groups, too. There's hardly any highly developed countries left where people can live quiet lives with *sane* copyright legislation.
I didn't vote in 2008 but I would of voted for Obama if only because I was worried McCain would get us into another war either with Iran or some other state. Plus Sarah Palin didn't help.
That is what the US will become. The warriors of intellectual property. If we can't manufacture, create, and export tangible things, then god-dammit we'll charge for any intangible a lawyer can serve papers on.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Are you serious??
Obama has been bombing Libya for months now without invoking the war powers act.
If Bush had done that the Democrats would have organized marches with millions of participants protesting.
Those millions just sit at home because it's "their guy" that is doing it this time.
By the same token many of the Republicans that supported Bush's actions with respect to Iraq are now pissed off at Obama. Sure he's violating the war powers act and they can catch him on a technicality, but you sure as hell know they'd have been fine with Bush if he had violated it.
Its all about "my team" vs. "your team" anymore. Americans don't stand on principle, they just proudly wear the label for their side that they belong to. And they belong to that side because they've always belonged to it.
Its sickening.
And of course both of our political sides happily sell us out to the Movie and Music industry, even though they're small potatoes compared to industries that'll be harmed by these brain dead laws and treaties.
You should get into the fertilizer business with that amount of bullshit. Bush kidnapped and tortured people on a whim, stole hundred of billions of dollars from the nation in the form of unfunded wars and mandates, and still got reelected. Obama told schoolchildren that they should stay in school, and was excoriated in the media for Soviet brainwashing. He tried to reimburse doctors for helping patients write a living will, and was accused of setting of Nazi Death Panels. The guy can't get away with doing good things.
Republicans can do whatever the hell they want, because their wing of the media owns the party and would never do anything to hurt them. The liberal wing of the media still takes Democrats to task when they do something wrong (watch Rachel Maddow for a week if you don't believe it), while the conservative media makes shit up to criticize them for whenever they try to do something right.
I disagree. Republicans would generally support this, since it helps corporations and punishes the low to middle classes while benefitting the upper class. Plus, the media benefits from stronger copyright laws.
Invading Iraq on a WMD/Terrorist pretext is wholly different proposition to providing air support to an in-progress popular rebellion.
I'm not American, I don't care for Obama particularly, but the Libya actions seem to be attracting praise from people *worldwide*, whereas the Iraq debacle has ruined the reputation of the US the world over. This particular area is not something that you can or should reduce to partisan politics.
Civil disobedience.
No, I'm not a "pirate" and I don't steal stuff from "Rights Holders" and "Intellectual Property" evangelists. However, I do advocate boycotting them and everything they're selling for pushing draconian "legislation" such as ACTA. This sort of crap is not adding value to the world.
Nobody *needs* anything they're selling.
Don't buy it. Don't use it. Find other suppliers. There's plenty of them if you'd only look! Teach 'em how to rot in hell. Don't go there or play their game, and convince your friends not to as well.
They're slime, they're acting like slime, and you need not put up with actions such as theirs. They're also co-opting your government and legal system against you.
Just don't buy their !@#$. Watch 'em fade into history as they should.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
So you are saying democrats are better in politics
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
The President is very much a figurehead - he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
In love, war and slashdot discussions, everything is allowed.
how's that 'representative democracy' working out for 'ya?
Its working out extremely well if anti-counterfeiting legislation is near the top of our list of concerns.
Liar, liar, liar.
[Torture] is continued today under Obama.
Lies. Rendition is still occurring, which is bad, but torture is not.
Are banks and automobile companies really so different? Not to mention there is Libya...
Banks were bailed out by Bush, liar. The car companies paid back most of their loans, and even if they hadn't, the money would have gone towards employing Americans during a recession instead of sabotaging Medicare with an unfunded prescription drug benefit. And Libya has cost the US about $1 billion dollars, compared to Iraq which has cost over $1 trillion.
Methinks you have dropped all context [regarding Obama speaking to school children], as well as misunderstanding what "the media" did.
By all means, liar, explain how Obama talking to school children really was an act of brainwashing.
The Death Panels part came not from doctors writing wills but from forming, well, panels deciding how much care people would get - or not.
LIAR! The Death Panels crap started over a section of the bill that would have provided optional will-writing services to people over a certain age, or with life threatening conditions. They then kept the lie going even after that section was dropped from the bill, because imbeciles like you were eating it up so well.
Honestly, it is mind-boggling the way Republicans throw up a wall of lies when faced with criticism. Do you really believe that repeating your lie enough will make it true?
The Obama administration has made it possible to create petitions which, if they get sufficient signatures, will be
responded to and potentially acted on. I've created one at http://wh.gov/4PW which I encourage all to read and
sign if they agree with it. We can defeat this!
Obama has been bombing Libya for months now without invoking the war powers act.
And Pakistan. And Yemen. And Somalia. And who knows where else...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Are all our bitches now.. You'll enforce our IP laws and fucking like it. And we might pretend to enforce your IP laws if it suits us. But i wouldn't bet on it if an american company is involved.
Don't bet for it for the future, though. It's not like the creation of new IP is a monopoly of US... and while US companies will be busy fighting among themselves and the rest of the world (Apple, Oracle, Google, ) the rest of the world won't stop, watch and eat popcorn, "Berne convention" or ACTA be damned.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
China
we're all out.
i wish this would have worked out and that we would won. but it seems "democracy" is only useful when we need to bomb the hell out of a nation we don't like.
http://www.stopacta.info/about
maybe there's still time to reverse that idiocy. suggestions?
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
Iraq debacle? You mean the successful invasion of Iraq for the purpose of deposing the convicted mass murderer and general crackpot Saddam Hussein
Oh, was that the lie they eventually settled on? I lost track after the fifth time they changed the pretext for Bush and Cheney's Excellent Adventure.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
That's the one, the one where various parts of the US government and military scrambled for as many cooked-up reasons as they could grasp in order to justify a military campaign against a country that was no threat, with a rag-tag band of allies who were drawn into it largely under the protest of their people and pretty much present just to make it look like the US wasn't taking unilateral aggressive action.
The Iraqi people are probably better off now. Probably, after tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths. The number of allied deaths is irrelevant if we were doing this out of the goodness of our hearts, the fact you quote that statistic is very telling of your attitude.
Anyone wanna join me in Norway? Wealthy, non-EU state with lots of jobs!
Fuck You.
Put me in jail.
I defend the second amendment with cold hard steel.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Done. I had to reload the page a couple of times for the "petition tool" to display correctly. Probably the server is overloaded...
Of course, we are naive to believe that the O'bummer administration (or any administration) will pay attention to opinions that it dislikes. Don't expect this to change anything...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Missing from the list. Too bad that the west can't get some backbone and go after the biggest counterfeiters and really protect western interests - all our interests and not just the entertainment industry.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Saying "representative democracy only works when people pay attention to government" is like saying "communism only works if people aren't lazy and greedy". Ignorance is just as inherent quality of human beings as greed. Hence democracy/capitalism is also flawed as communism/planned economy/other forms of government.
Until we design a decision making process that works with selfish lazy greedy ignorant people, we won't get anywhere. I believe it can be done, using ideas like ant colony optimization or error detection or correction. We can make electronics work with a certain percentage of flaws- so why not human systems?
--Coder
http://flowingdata.com/2009/11/26/fox-news-makes-the-best-pie-chart-ever/
I love Fox news. I'm so sad I cannot receive it here in the UK!
Politicians, lobbyists et. al might actually understand what post-scarcity means.
They'll never change anyone's behavior. The genie is out of the bottle, people have no qualms about sharing things.
All they're doing is challenging devs to create better p2p mechanisms.
Anyone who thinks the other guy wouldn't have signed this is living in fantasy-land.
I doubt there was a single person in the last election cycle with a realistic chance of becoming president who wouldn't have signed this. And I doubt any of the serious people in the current election cycle are any better.
and you get out too. dont poison that predominantly social democrat country with high standards of humanity and living with your shitty, destructive american right wing capitalist mindset.
Read radical news here
I'm surprised Google isn't at the forefront of this odious pice of drek.
At first I thought you were delusional. but no, you're just trolling.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
This conversation is about ACTA. I know your petty partisanship seems mighty important to you, but the reality is it is not relevant to the wider picture at all. I believe there are numerous partisan argument forums on the web, please retire to one of those and let this thread be about something that actually matters at all.
You can't blame this one just on the US. The EU was also involved, but unfortunately, the EU isn't really all that democratic. The Europarliament may have objected to ACTA on various occasions, the negotiators continued anyway.
I hope this still requires parliamentary ratification. No idea whether it'll be the national or EU parliament, but I hope they take a very critical look at it. I think it'd be a very constructive signal if they rejected ACTA. I hope that'll prevent these kind of secret, uninformed negotiations in the future.
If you look at campaign donations those evil banks gave more to democrats then republicans, the evil healthcare industry too. Republicans want to make it easier to be successful by eliminating many of the government barriers, these barriers do two things, they give the impression that the rich are be burdened with high taxes when in actuality they are not because they all ready accumulated wealth which will not be taxed and they keep too many people from becoming rich and diluting the amount of wealth the rich have.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
So cholera was replaced with pest.
Did anyone expect anything else? C'mon, be honest...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Really?
I don't see Fox News, which is traditionally not really a big backer of Obama, go apeshit about this ACTA signing. You think it would have been the other way 'round if a Rep was in charge?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually it was about preventing future acts of terrorism. Saddam never took sides accept his own. But that's not to say he wouldn't have had supported one group over another if he personally had something to gain from it. Let's not forget what kind of man he was. Legally, it was about WMDs spearheaded with a testimony given by Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi. AKA "Curveball". So not only were the facts BS, but many UN members were already knee shit in corruption (Oil for Food for example). These members had a benefit to keeping that dictator in power to act as their proxy agent and pimp. As for the Iraqi's themselves? No one ever cared for their well being. Not before, and certainly not after. Those clamoring for support only do so to get back at Bush.
Life is not for the lazy.
Possibly because a Treaty "signing" is pretty much meaningless under US law.
We signed Kyoto remember?
Until the Senate ratifies it, Obama's signature means nothing at all. (and in the case of Kyoto, after Bill had Al sign it, Bill didn't even bother to present it to the Senate for ratification, knowing it wouldn't be ratified).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
There they will be represented by a life size screen and a 100 W speaker.
And all without leaving home-town and electoral district!
Exactly. There should be no reason for these guys all to fly to Washington DC, all to assemble in one room.
Get them onto the Internet, connect them into a virtual room, have this thing broadcast over youtube.
NO MORE PRIVATE BS CONVERSATIONS.
Record everything they do. Anything that's not recorded must be illegal for them. Force them to live in places that they are supposed to represent.
Have a huge ass LCD screen in every city of the State, constantly showing what the elected officials are doing.
They better get used to this, because that's what they want to perpetrate on every one of YOU.
You can't handle the truth.
Worse than that - the "Death Panel" was originally proposed by Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia - Republican. Something similar had strong Republican support as early as 2003, but the Republican mantra for last few years seems to be to be against anything the Democrats are for, even if it was their idea in the first place.
Yes, where politics is defined as getting people in the media to trumpet your cause and agree with everything you say.
And most definitely Bill Clinton was far better at politics than either Obama or Bush. Although this is partly because he realized that "his team" wouldn't come after him for things like welfare reform and that by giving the republicans much of what they were asking for with said reform, he could neutralize complaints from their base. Although being thwarted with respect to debating Clinton on policy, the Republicans decided that fussing about his personal life was necessary.....
So now you know the countries that are part of this. Consist of less than half of the world population. Hardly what the people wants.
New Economic Perspectives
That's because people 'worldwide' (*and it's not actually true*), don't understand what is really happening in Libya and what this is going to lead to.
You get all these 'articles' in so called 'news' papers with some 'rebel' sitting in front of a large 20-30 mm automatic cannon or aiming a large gun, or whatever, and it's clearly staged.
What is really happening on the ground is much different than what the papers are telling you. There are troops there, on the ground, from all over. The reason for the fighting are the oil wells, and JP Morgan (and GS with them, just not with their name out) are trying hard to set the grounds for their financial take over the place. They have sent on of their mercenaries - Tony Blair there. He was there meeting with Kadaffi in case the 'rebels' lose, at the same time the gov't hired mercs are there, fighting the so called 'rebellion'.
There was NO KILLING of CIVILIANS in Libya prior to this invasion. This entire thing is staged in order to set a different gov't regime there to get easier access to oil ONE way or ANOTHER, whether Kadaffi wins or loses, JP Morgan and GS will be making money on contracts.
At the same time USA finds one more distraction from the economic situation at home. This is not at all the same as what happened in Iraq but it's also not at all the same to what happened in Egypt.
Also now they are reporting 20,000 ground-air missiles have been stolen from military bases there, and the people who can access those things now will have capability to take down civilian jet liners.
This is going to get worse and worse, and those people who you believe are 'cheering worldwide' may all of a sudden find themselves on the short side of this trade, being killed while taking an airplane going to a vacation.
You can't handle the truth.
Really, since when is torturing people by order of a head of state not considered to be a crime against humanity? And seriously, considering the fact that he's owned up to ordering the torture, it takes some pretty substantial delusion to believe that he isn't a war criminal that needs to be brought to the Hague for trial.
Iraq debacle? You mean the successful invasion of Iraq for the purpose of deposing the convicted mass murderer and general crackpot Saddam Hussein,
You probably should turn of Fox News Channel. The President and his administration did not sell the war to the American people "For the purpose of deposing Saddam Hussein."
after receiving proper authorization in the US gov't, international approval in the UN, and including a large multinational force?
Cheney through Bush LIED to the world claiming weapons of mass destruction. "There are stockpiles we know where they are" "Mobile chemical factories" "Niger aluminum tubes" etc etc the list goes on and on. All a bunch of lies.
You mean the debacle that has resulted in less than 4800 allied deaths in 8 years?
That is the number being diseminated by Fox News. But if you get your head out of Fox News nether regions you will see the more accurate figures here
The debacle where the Iraqi people are no longer under the thumb of the fascist Ba'ath party and out of the revolutions happening in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, etc... has the best bet for a fair and reasonable government?
But I guess none of that counts since Bush did it.
Do you have any proof that the Iraq war triggered the Arab spring? You have no clue what fascism is. The ba'ath party is an autocratic regime. I don't know how corporations play a part in propping up that regime. The Syrian people are still under the thumb of the Ba'ath party how many American lives should we sacrifice to free Syria from the Ba'ath party there? How about you be the first American to invade Syria? And what about the regime in Iran, Sudan, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Turkmenistan and others. How much should we tax the American people to depose these murderous dictators? How much American lives should be sacrificed?
Firstly the war powers act doesn't apply to this situation, that's not just the current Presidents view that's been the view going back to at least Clinton. Secondly, tens of thousands of people died in the ethnic cleansing that follow President Bush's incompetent and ill advised conquest of Iraq where he didn't send enough personnel in to prevent it from happening.
And it might be sickening, but it doesn't make the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib, GITMO and numerous black sites any less crimes against humanity.
And what about the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis that died when the US government wasn't able to prevent the ethnic cleansing that occurred when Saddam was deposed? Or would you rather ignore that problem?
"Sign this petition" is greyed out for me, IE 7 or FireFox 6. It says to sign in, but at the bottom is says Welcome {me} and I can't sign in - only sign out. Is this what everyone else is seeing?
Honestly, it is mind-boggling the way Republicans throw up a wall of lies when faced with criticism. Do you really believe that repeating your lie enough will make it true?
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
So much for the "transparency in government" that the Obama Administration had promised us. ACTA is nothing more than a Hollywood Democrat backed hand-out to 'copyright holders' and corporate media.
One of the bigger reasons I didn't vote for Obama was because of Joe Biden and his absolutely terrible track record when it comes to tech privacy and kissing ass to Hollywood. Same with Clinton and Feinstein. They have been bending over backwards to their Hollywood MPAA/RIAA financial donors for many years now. Wikileaks exposed this as well, but it's something most of us have seen for years.
It's back to six of one, half dozen of the other when we vote these days.
Put down the meth pipe, go get some sleep. The world will look a little less conspiratorial in the morning.
It's just 6PM here, too early to go to sleep and too late for the pipe.
You can't handle the truth.
Your claim that the media turned their eyes away? Ludicrous. GW Bush endured 8 years of relentless media attack on EVERY subject and area of interest. Unending, continuous, and intense condemnation.
Whether or not he deserved it. To claim the media missed any opportunity to condemn, ridicule, or excoriate him is to deny the obvious.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Want to boycott the major record labels and their affiliated music publishers? Good luck walking into a grocery store without hearing major-label music.
I wanted to vote for Ron Paul, but he was mathematically eliminated from the 2008 presidential race before the primary even got to Indiana. But even if he had won, a states' rights platform wouldn't make a difference in this case: the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive right to grant patents and copyrights.
i am opposed to political freedom as such. there should be no freedom to perpetuate ideologies that end freedoms.
Read radical news here
if you had the mindset i talked about, it would mean you were more american than norwegian.
Read radical news here
I don't understand the problem. IANAL but looking at the treaty it doesn't allow the US to do anything more than can be done today.
For Example:
in accordance with its laws and regulations, its competent authorities with the authority to order an online service provider to disclose expeditiously to a right holder information sufficient to identify a subscriber whose account was allegedly used for infringement
Maybe I'm missing something, but this doesn't give any more permission to do anything.
He's just not mincing words. It's time we started calling lies what they are. You're ignoring his facts because they're inconvenient for you and blaming your willful ignorance on the fact that he's calling a liar a liar. If you have a problem with that, prove him wrong. Otherwise, you're just lying about your motivations for not wanting to consider his argument.
Well maybe should start thinking of a better one then. A lot of systems have been tried, but never before in history of humankind we had capability to do automated information processing and cheap communication. Hence some systems that were unfeasible in the past can be implemented using todays technology, and maybe new ones can emerge.
Yes, I know I have no specific solutions. However we should realize democracy+capitalism DOESN'T work as advertized, and I doubt it ever will with corporations and mass media and education being the way they are. We should start the effort to design something better. It won't be easy though...
--Coder
you are living in a world where freedom of enslaving is banned. not only that, but the proliferation of that idea is also banned. yet, you are talking about freedoms.
with your proposition people who would want to enslave people or preach that are being ripped off their freedoms. its censorship.
Read radical news here
it just means that you people in the west dont know shit yet. you think if you let people talk and preach, but ban practice of what they preach, 'freedoms' will work out.
it doesnt work out. the parties wanting to end freedoms increasingly gain supporters, and start demanding an end to the freedoms you though everyone was going to have for eternity. the simplest of these examples from europe are the proceeds of islamist groups in europe, and from america, the fact that the right-wing sources have now started to give speeches and statements evaluating to 'slavery was not bad' on governorial level in midwest states of america.
it was no different with fascism in italy, or nazism in germany. once let out of the bottle, the movements that want to end freedoms do not stay in 'talking' level.
and im no right wing. just, you are naive.
Read radical news here
China does not seem to be very concerned with this "problem" and, oh well, they just manufacture more stuff than anybody else and their economy is booming.
Immigration to Canada