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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."
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.
... 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)
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.
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.
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
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!
Let them have their fun. It's not entirely irrelevant, but near enough. For decades, sharing has been villified as piracy. And bans on the activity have proven time and again to be impractical to enforce. ACTA doesn't change any of that. If you aren't already, get used to being thought a criminal. And don't sweat about the possibility of being accused and threatened. The odds of it happening are low. Numbers are on our side.
We'll just have to wait for the older generations to lose power. They won't admit that sharing is not evil and not theft, not unless they take one hell of a beating over the issue, which they probably won't. Once they're gone, we'll ditch these idiotic laws. Be nice if it happens sooner, through the election of Pirate Party politicians, but it will happen eventually, one way or another, as mortality catches up with them.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
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.