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EU Parliment To Vote On ACTA Soon; Take Action Now
sTeF writes "Laquadrature du Net releases 3 videos on ACTA: Every citizen can help defeat ACTA by spreading this video across the Internet, urging their fellow citizens to mobilize, and contacting their elected representatives. ACTA is a threat to Internet users' fundamental freedoms and to EU Internet companies' competitiveness and free competition. The European Parliament will soon decide whether to give its consent to ACTA, or to reject it once and for all."
"Reject it once and for all"?
I find your naivety charming but have no need for your newsletter.
That video generates more questions in my brain than it answers. "ACTA is bad, nnkay?" it says, which is not enough. The extremely one-side view on ACTA the video provides sickens me. It doesn't even tell me who "The Negotiators" are. I can't say "No" to ACTA based on this video alone.
-- Cheers!
Without the video link. https://www.eff.org/issues/acta
Sigs are bad for you...
Why should I bother my representative (Christian Engström) with this?
In these times of economic turmoil it is the perfect moment to pass controversial but silenced legislation like ACTA. Main stream press, who could maybe represent this information in a non-ridiculous, non-propagandist manner unlike this website are just not going care. Still, after years of tech-news fuss I do not know what is ACTA, why do some people so vehemently oppose it, and why should I care.
Please stop making a fuss about ACTA if you can not objectively tell us what is it going to do and why should we even oppose it.
The problem with legislation is that, even if you defeat one, it can simply be reintroduced again and again until it is passed. There is no provision for forbidding anything to ever become a law (for a reason, otherwise we'd never be able to undo bad decisions). I hate ACTA as much as the next guy, and I really don't want to see it in use, but if the politicians have decided that some form of law like this will be in place, there's no stemming the tide simply by expressing our displeasure for it. Do you honestly think that politicians listen to the people who elect them? That's not how it works. We listen to the politicians, and elect the one we believe best represents our interests. It's (almost) always a one-way street.
Move sig!
I hope you're joking. :)
Cause ACTA is not EU specific. In fact, EU might be one of the last chances to stop ACTA.
USA, Japan, Australia, Canada, North Korea, New Zealand and Singapore already signed ACTA.
Mexico and Switzerland didn't want to sign the text. EU couldn't sign the text because this case never happend (who will sign the text in the name of the 27 member States?)
On the other hand, UK has been one of the worst State in the EU on this topic (filesharing, making isp become private police, etc.). Blair was a crazy puppy found of Bush. We though I might change with Cameron. Well, it didn't.
We though I might change with Cameron. Well, it didn't.
Speak for yourself, but while I hoped it would change with Blair, but I have no delusions about Cameron.
Just to be clear, I'm not a UK citizen. So by "we" I didn't mean "we, fully informed UK citizen", but more "we, foreigners that don't know anything", were glad Blair was out, and hopped it will be better with the next one. But I had no clue how bad (or even who) Cameron was.
Do you mean go in another country?
So, in this case, in a country that didn't signed ACTA?
And where would that be?
Ok, so you don't like "parliamential dictatures", I supposed you also don't like plain dictatures. So let's take all the countries, and remove all the dictatures and countries that signed ACTA.
What's left?
Has ACTA been ratified yet?
USA, Japan, Australia, Canada, North Korea, New Zealand and Singapore already signed ACTA.
Mexico and Switzerland didn't want to sign the text. EU couldn't sign the text because this case never happend (who will sign the text in the name of the 27 member States?).
That's why we need to ACT as soon as possible.
I said ratified, not signed.
You know, that thing in the constitution about treaties requiring a 2/3rs majority?
Argh! Unpronounced "aitches" (and yes, that's the correct pronunciation of the letter H - don't put a "ha" on the beginning of it).
So annoying: "Would you like some erbal tea?"
1) I'm English. Get that crap out of my face.
2) Pronounce the damn word properly and not like you've had a mini-drop-out on your mobile phone while talking.
You do realise that other people can't read your mind? If your question was specifically about the US Congress (and here I'm making an intelligent guess, because you still haven't made it explicit), you should have said so in the first place.
The purpose of treaties like this is to bypass such requirements as amending constitutions and getting a democratic majority. This way, a very few individuals of merit (bribed) can create and institute regulations that supersede national constitutions without bothering you or your elected representative with details until the enforcement phase. It also allows elected representatives to claim plausible deniability when the political fallout hits and since you do not know who the original negotiators were, no one is held accountable.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
I did an internship at a patent law firm in the UK, and I was told during the interview never to pronounce it pay-tent, as that's a sign of someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. The accepted pronunciation within the legal profession in the UK is pah-tent. Pay-tent is largely common among people who saw the word written before they heard it spoken.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Maybe, but you're a fool to assume that in a conversation primarily about the EU, and in a reply to a post which names 9 countries, everyone knows that you're talking about the US.
And other comments on here from people working with other patent lawyers in the UK indicate the exact opposite in identical situations. Nothing to do with absolute pretension by any chance, borne on the back of one pronunciation being more "UK English", one being more "US English"?
I don't think so. But the point is that everything is done so that ACTA can't be undone.
Once ACTA has been signed, there's no way back. All countries agreed to transpose it in their local legislation.
So if it fails to do so, they'll try again. And again, and again. And if it fails, they may be weakened when talking to other countries.
That's also a mean of pressure: "See X didn't vote for ACTA, but we signed it. So (s)he's making us look stupid, (s)he's threatening our cooperation with other countries".
That's (also) why we have to stop ACTA now. The sooner, the better.
Does anyone know if ther's a chance that thing will pass?
The E.P. seems to have a pretty good track record with regard to striking down this kind of special interest, anti consumer legislation. This, and previous statements from it's committee's leads me to think the ACTA has no chance of passing a vote.
If I thought there was a chance of this somehow passing under the radar, I'd write my "local" MEP http://www.europarl.europa.eu/members/expert/groupAndCountry/view.do?group=2965&country=DK&partNumber=1&language=EN&id=96703. I highly doubt that it'll be nescessary though - as she's in:
1) Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection and
2) Delegation for relations with the countries of Southeast Asia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
- I'm sure she's very aware of the ACTA.
Run with the lemmings, and you'll get your feet wet.
For what it worth, the speaker is both French and Australian.
I suck at English, so I can't say if it's Australian way of speaking or if he pronounced it how British would pronounced it.
Maybe we need a law to prevent countries from forming cartels?
What about patents? It's very easy to accidentally infringe on dozens of patents of obvious ideas without even trying.
You're way off base there, dude. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/patent#Pronunciation makes it fairly clear. One is a US pronunciation, the other is UK. Anybody using either pronunciation is potentially equally well-informed. You're reading way too much into a situation based on your own (or others') idle supposition (or did you really question everybody that you heard saying "pay-tent" and establish clearly that they had taken the pronunciation from a misreading of the word....?)
UK:
http://www.writetothem.com/
UK:
http://www.europarl.org.uk/section/your-meps/your-meps
Rest of Europe:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/members/public/geoSearch.do;jsessionid=EAF5D554A71EBE16A5E8A71092CD2DB9.node2
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Herbal? The French word came from Latin (herba) originally, used by French without the h in the 12th century, the h got reinstated around the 15th century but the h got muted at that point until the 19th century. What you're claiming is more that the English stole the word solely from the French when actually it was more likely to have come from the Latin originally into both languages (given that Britain was under Roman and Anglo-Saxon rule long before we needed to pinch words from the French, and the latter from whom we get the language).
The Latin having an "h" on it means that the original pronunciation was not, in fact, h-less (because they pronounced their h's too), because the Latin was the original, not the French.
Similarly for "patent" which comes from "patentum" into both languages and pre-dates both English and French. But you may be *closer* on the ancient pronunciation of patent being "pah-tent" but then depends on finding someone who speaks fluent Ancient Latin and proves little (because I already said that both are accepted pronunciations).
It's not a question of which country is more significant: it's a question of which country is in the scope of a conversation, and making it clear when you change the topic of the conversation.
Even if we do succeed to convince them not to vote for this shit, it's high time for a public network accessible by anyone for free. A true peer network. The technology is there. What's missing is a public (non-government, fully democratic) body that agrees on open standards, tech ( network structure, access, protocols, etc.) to create a network that mostly (of course the optimal would be completely) bypasses anything that can be controlled by government (ISPs, DNS servers, etc.) . These should be optimally applicable by anybody (even those who are not tech savvy) aka. the general population.
Just a thought...
No. I don't find it shocking at all, but thanks for failing to guess my opinion.
I'm quite familiar with a host of variations in spelling and pronunciation of identical words that exist within the language(s) we call English. "Patents" is simply one such word which I had not encountered before.
Here in Ohio, we have a particular egregiousness when it comes to intentional mispronunciation. From the top of my head, here are some towns near me which are never uttered "correctly":
Lima (pronounced lyme-ah)
Cairo (kay-roe)
Toledo (toe-lee-doe)
Nevada (nah-vay-dah)
Kid-proof tablet..
Does any of this actually matter? Last I heard the European Parliament was just a toothless talking shop, cynically set up by the unelected EU bosses for the express purpose of convincing gullible Europeans that they live in a directly elected democracy, which they clearly do not. No, I have not read or understood the latest EU rulings as, like the British politicians who looked at the original treaties, I simply do not have endless years with nothing else to do than try to make sense of the hugely complex and obfuscated bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo that has been deliberately formulated so as to prevent the European people from realising just how much power the unelected EU bosses actually have over them - just like ACTA really.
It seems to me that the only solution to this hideously unjust and destructive copyright extortion is mass worldwide civil disobedience. If everyone who receives a threatening letter from the MAFIAA or one of its fawning acolytes just throws it in the bin I suspect the whole corrupt, creaking edifice will collapse like a pack of cards, blown down by the inexorable winds of change. Even the EU bosses cannot imprison everyone - how will they get to lunch with no-one to polish and drive their top-of-the-range black Mercedes? And how will the American economy prosper if all the people are made bankrupt by ludicrous fines for listening to an infantile pop song?
"Intellectual Property" is surely something of an oxymoron anyway, is it not? It seems to me that intelligent artists are finding many ways to benefit from the Digital Age and the ease with which it enables them to connect with their audiences, to their often considerable profit. And I don't think many will mourn the inevitable loss of the grasping, parasitic middlemen. As Canute wryly demonstrated to his fawning courtiers, we mortals cannot stop the changing tide from washing us away if we fail to adapt to it.
You're damn right. They haven't even tried to tack this on to the tail end of a Child Protection bill yet.
Why the hell would a government that isn't democratic feel the need to do such a thing ? This will pass, because the commisionaires (not a reference, actual title) of the EU have high-paying side-"jobs" in big companies. And for no other reason.
The EU doesn't even pretend that the passing of this law has any democratic component (the passing "or non-passing" will be done by the aptly-named commission, irrespective of parliament's decision, which is merely advisory). It is not requested by any specific European political party, it is just the initiative of one of the commission.
And when a dictator hands a piece of paper to be rubber-stamped at a powerless "parliament", why is there any doubt what will happen ? The Duma never once refused Stalin, and the "parliament" will not refuse Barosso.
This legislation was initiated straight from the offices of the head "ex-"(?)socialist/communist currently occupying the top post in the EU. This is the ONLY position in the EU government that has sovereignty (can decide to make -and break- laws of it's own accord). He "proposed" this law, and has done so for many other laws, implementing some of them regardless of the parliament's opposition, others without even asking parliament. Not that there is much opposition from parliament at all.
And when our little ex-communist decides to implement anti-workers policies, and there was some token opposition from parliament, he went ahead anyway.
Other than dissolution of the EU, there is no way to stop this.