EU To Sign ACTA Later This Month

rysiek writes "At a meeting of Polish Government officials with Polish NGOs and business representatives it was confirmed that the European Union is poised to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement as soon as January 26th. But all is not lost. The Treaty still needs to be ratified by the Euro Parliament and member states individually. The ratification vote is important, as it is an either-or vote — if not ratified there, ACTA gets rejected in its entirety. The Ministry of Administration and Digitization is not amused and has asked the Prime Minister (who promised this May to hold ACTA adoption until the kinks are worked out) to cancel the signing authorization for the time being."

Comments

someone's pressing their agenda

[tebee]

So who's bribed who to get this pushed through ?

Re:someone's pressing their agenda

[TheLink]

The industry will always try to push it through, there's no significant penalty/cost for failing. So they can just keep trying till one day it gets signed.

They may not need to bribe (directly anyway)- don't be surprised if many people just look at the title see stuff like "anti counterfeiting", "stop online piracy", "protect intellectual property", and then think yeah good idea.

Re:someone's pressing their agenda

[ultranova]

So who's bribed who to get this pushed through ?

Do you need to be bribed to help your friends? The aristocrats, even if they fight for power amongst themselves, still side by each other against the peons.

Democracy is long dead. It's far past time to stop deluding ourselves and concentrate all efforts to develop various ways to circumvent control while it's still imperfect. Not just software, mind you, but hardware too - the current structure of the Internet makes it too easy to cut individuals or whole regions from it, so it needs to be augmented through mesh networks and ubiguitous open Wi-Fi. Freedom is far too precious to be left up to the goodwill of whoever happens to hold power at the time.

Failure will hasten ongoing collapse towards a new Dark Age, while a success just might arrest it.

Blackout?

[bfandreas]

Will Wikipedia, Google and TotalBiscuit black out for us?
No?
Damn, we're screwed.

Picketing the EU Parliament won't work because most representatives don't show up anyway

:(

Re:Blackout?

[Seumas]

Of course they won't. People blew their wad on SOPA. They didn't give a fuck about the initial ACTA. They didn't give a fuck about NDAA. Hell, they didn't give a fuck about the PATRIOT Act. The flurry of activity against SOPA was an aberration.

Explain this to an American programmer

[MrEricSir]

These types of EU processes seem very convoluted to an outsider, as lawmaking processes often do. Can somebody give me a flow chart or a UML diagram? Or even pseudocode is fine.

Re:Explain this to an American programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

And European lawmakers.

Re:Explain this to an American programmer

[VortexCortex]

I thought women were covered under the "programmers" moniker, considering the first one was one.

That is to say, If you follow history: Ada Lovelace, the first programmer, was a woman; If you follow the bible: Eve, the first woman, was a programmer (of Adam)... It's told she used an Apple.

Re:Explain this to an American programmer

[Hognoxious]

If Eve was made from Adam's rib then genetically she's male. So yes, probably an Apple user.

Re:Explain this to an American programmer

[Zarhan]

Here you go:

http://ec.europa.eu/codecision/stepbystep/diagram_en.htm

Technically, we are about to complete step 1.

Re:Explain this to an American programmer

[reve_etrange]

That only makes sense if Adam was made from Eve, since the Y chromosome is essentially a degenerate X with the SRY (sexual selection) gene and a handful of others. Over time the mammalian Y tends to shrink, so that eventually it only holds the SRY - witness the kangaroo.

Even genetically male humans are physiologically female during the first weeks of development.

Anyway, does ancient Hebrew even have another word that just means "rib?" If not, then you're just interpolating.

ACTA bad, Piracy good.

[metrix007]

Stuff like ACTA is bad, because piracy is inevitable. I don't think we should be trying to prevent piracy at all, as piracy is actually a good thing.

Firstly, it is copying. It isn't stealing. If it was just stealing the term piracy would not need to have been invented as distinct from stealing. Keep in mind that the word Piracy has existed for about 500 years, and only in the last decade or so has come to be taken as stealing.

Why is Piracy good?

1. Guaranteed DRM free content - I don't want someone else in control of something I own
2. Availability, instead of waiting up to 1.5 years if the studios decide that it should be available in my country.
3. I believe it's good for society. Allowing people who can't afford something to be influenced and give back to society.
4. It helps the artists. Almost every study about piracy posted on /. shows it leads to an increase in sales

Keep in mind piracy is legal in many countries, for good reason. This is an important point for people who rely on the piracy is stealing argument. Those countries tend to be smarter about such matters than the US and western Europe.

Piracy is not going away. Piracy is inevitable. Why waste so many resources on what is arguably a good thing?

Re:ACTA bad, Piracy good.

[Stormwatch]

When did the ruling elites ever give a fuck about the common good?

Re:ACTA bad, Piracy good.

[Mashiki]

Never. But then again, Cicero figured that out 2000ish years ago. I always figured that the classics should be required reading if you're going to be a politician.

Re:ACTA bad, Piracy good.

[Hognoxious]

Now all that being said, there are quite literally millions of ways for a creator to make money in a world with out copyrights. One very obvious way is through the use of commissions. Others include public performances, merchandise related to the idea, ect...

Literally? Really?

In any case, would you do your job on that basis? No, so you have no right at all to tell others that they should.

Re:ACTA bad, Piracy good.

[metrix007]

It no longer makes sense to have a business model that doesn't take piracy into account. It isn't telling people how they should choose to profit, it's making them realize that some people are going to copy their shit and they cannot stop it. So they should use that to their advantage as much as possible.

Re:ACTA bad, Piracy good.

[Xest]

"In any case, would you do your job on that basis? No, so you have no right at all to tell others that they should."

Not sure about the AC, but I know I do. I turn up to work each day, write code, and get paid for being at work to write code. What happens to that code when it's left my desk and gone to clients I really don't care about, it could be copied and reused as many times as they want it to, the point is I've been paid whilst I've been actually working, not continued to be paid long after I've stopped working. This is the case with public performances too.

See the point is the vast majority of the world's working population (like on the order of 99.99% of it or maybe even more) already work around the "public performances" type concept - they get paid for actually turning up and doing something. The problem musicians have is they're too lazy, they don't want to work the hours people in almost every other profession do, they just want to do a few hours every few weeks, with the option to take a few years out, and still make millions.

They complain if it's not profitable for them to do this, but so fucking what? It's not profitable for me to sit playing CoD online all day every day, but it doesn't mean I still have the right to do it and make millions in the process - life isn't like that, if you can't provide something the market wants then you need to retrain to do something you can, the world doesn't owe you employment doing your preferred task, in your preferred way.

So excuse me if I have zero sympathy for the whining artists, it's not my fucking fault they're lazy layabouts who refuse to do what most of the rest of the working population has to. So assuming the GP has a job like nearly everyone else in the working population has, then yes he fucking does have the right to tell others how to work - he has the right because it'd mean he's working his way through life, providing something the world wants and is willing to pay for and shouldn't have to subsidise lazy bum artists who feel the world owes them through all sorts of legislation set up to support their lazy lifestyles through lobbying and corruption.

I similarly have the right to tell artists to turn up and actually do some work for a living if they want money, because I provide something the world is willing to pay for and I do so day in, day out. The should also expect only money proportional to the work they do - i.e. if they only want to a few hours work every few weeks or months, then only expect a few hours pay every few weeks or months. The current system despite piracy, already provides them plenty more than that, if they don't like it they can change professions like anyone else would have to, this is why they don't have a leg to stand on whatsoever when they cry about piracy - because they're no more fucking special than anyone else, despite their belief that they are.

I'll start to have sympathy for the profession when there's no more new music in the world. I'll be waiting forever though, because people have always made music, even when there's no money in it, simply because to many, they do it as a recreational thing, rather than an expectation of something to live off.

Re:ACTA bad, Piracy good.

[metrix007]

It's more like fraud. And fraud is a criminal offence with substantial penalties in many places, because it is damaging to the victims,

You may be the first I have seen who compares piracy to being more like fraud than stealing. I don't understand your reasoning, could you elaborate?

is unfair to those who conduct their financial business legally, and can have severe economic consequences if done on a large scale.

How is it unfair to people who do their business legally? How is it unfair in a legal sense where piracy is legal? How are there severe economic consequences when piracy has been shown to have positive effects for the economy?

Well, the first recorded usage of the term in the sense we're talking about is given in the early 1700s by most etymological dictionaries, so you're only off by three centuries [etymonline.com]. Hey, at least you were close.

Wiki says at least since 1603, so at the most I was off by a century.

Well, given that Slashdot readership is obviously neutral on this issue, I'm sure that's a representative sample of the literature.

I'm also struggling to find all those studies, but I suppose it's just that my Google-fu is weak. Maybe you could help me out by citing some of them?

The slashdot readership is irrelevant, as they had no influence on the studies that Slashdot chose to report.

Some links to studies:

Do Illegal Copies of Movies Reduce the Revenue of Legal Products? The case of TV animation in Japan

Swiss Government Study Finds Internet Downloads Increase Sales

Canadian Study: Piracy Boosts CD Sales

I hope that helped. You're Google-fu must indeed be weak.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of abundant high-quality work created by people who have rent to pay.

You seem to imply that piracy will prevent the people who create high quality work from being able to pay their rent. That doesn't seem to match with the evidence. Care to elaborate?

Re:ACTA bad, Piracy good.

[SuricouRaven]

The production costs of music are tiny - the music video usually costs far more. The bulk of the expenses in an album are actually promotion costs: Getting the music on the radio, advertised on TV, posters, paying stores to place it prominantly in the window, getting the performer into TV interviews. Anything to raise awareness and thus sales.

Labels, like movie studios, tend to fiddle the numbers on that though. They'll pay a huge promotion cost to another division within the company and use such tricks to make sure that many albums and movies never actually show a profit, or show very little. That means lower royalties to pay the artist, and much less to pay in taxes.

Re:Could be good?

[gutnor]

The Eurozone is in quite a deep crisis right now, even if ACTA is bad, a lot of countries are facing worse right now. It is possible that the countries will no want to undermine the union right now when the rating agencies are looking at any excuse to downgrade another country.

It is also possible, especially in countries close to election, that politicians will want to show some backbone against Brussel on such an easy to hate agreement.

Time will tell, as a European, I don't hold my breath. Those agreements take an awful lot of effort to be rejected - look at what it took for the SOPA thing in the US - and they come back slightly changed over and over again. They will pass, it is just a matter of time, unfortunately.

Re:SOPA

[TaoPhoenix]

Nah, not a diversion, the politicians expected the same Blase mood that let them pass every other evil bill. It would have been a counterpart piece as a matched set for ACTA (one domestic, one foreign).

We did manage to scare them *just a little* but there's just so far to go still. The current score is something like Lobbies 97 People 3.

prime minister bit is about poland only

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ministry of Administration and Digitization is not amused and has asked the Prime Minister (who promised this May to hold ACTA adoption until the kinks are worked out) to cancel the signing authorization for the time being.

This bit, the last sentence, is about Poland only, one of the 27 EU member states.

There are no ministers in the EU government, I think the closest would the comissioners in the EU Comission (EU government/executive branch) whose head is the president. And there are several vice-presidents among the comissioners.

Though there is the Council of the EU aka Council of Ministers. This council consists of one minister from each member states depending on the topic of discussion. Agriculture ministers when discussing agriculture etc.

DCMA, SOPA, ACTA ...

[Taco Cowboy]

This world we live in - and I am not only talking about the cyberworld, - is turning into a place where every-single-thing gonna be monopolized by somebody

We can blame the governments.

We can blame Washington D.C.

We can blame the greedy politicians.

But IMHO it has passed time to point fingers.

It's *US*, yes, You and Me, who is responsible for this mess.

You see, it's *US* who have allowed the politicians we have elected to carry out all these bullshits.

The article talked about "all is not loss", WTF ??

What does it mean by "all is not loss" ??

We've given our politicians the blank check to pass all these bullshit bills, and still, we're saying "all is not loss" ??

Re:DCMA, SOPA, ACTA ...

[Digital Vomit]

It's *US*, yes, You and Me, who is responsible for this mess.

You see, it's *US* who have allowed the politicians we have elected to carry out all these bullshits.

I'm really sick and tired of this "blame the victim" mentality. The voting public has been under-educated, manipulated, and deceived by those who are either in or wanting power. Most voters don't even realize that it's happening, or, if they do, they feel powerless to change it (thanks, again, to those in/wanting power).

Stop trying to shift blame from where it really belongs: the people actually trying to enact these treaties and laws against the public's -- and human civilization's -- best interests!

Re:DCMA, SOPA, ACTA ...

[Taco Cowboy]

I'm really sick and tired of this "blame the victim" mentality.

I ain't blaming the "victim" per se.

The case I am trying to make is this --- Ultimately this mess will come to haunt us and our children, and their children's children in the future --- and what are we doing now?

Blaming the politicians, blaming the system, blaming every-single-thing but ourselves for giving the system/politician/whatever the blank check to do whatever pleases them !!

The voting public has been under-educated, manipulated, and deceived by those who are either in or wanting power

If the voting public been under-educated, who is to blame but those dumb-fucked and under-educated voters?

It does sound like I am playing the same-old fiddle, but it's the fact ---- It all comes back to us.

What are WE going do about this?

Or are we going to depend on/blaming others?

Take responsibility, people !!!

Re:DCMA, SOPA, ACTA ...

[N1AK]

I'm really sick and tired of this "blame the victim" mentality. The voting public has been under-educated, manipulated, and deceived by those who are either in or wanting power. Most voters don't even realize that it's happening, or, if they do, they feel powerless to change it (thanks, again, to those in/wanting power).

I don't care how much effort you put into trying to absolve the public but being ignorant, ill-educated and gullible is not a defence for the things we've ignored or allowed to happen in our democracies. If a voter still doesn't realise that Iraq never had WMD by now (and that's not rare in the US at least) that there fault. They choose not to go after news and piss their life away watching American Idol. We've got the governments we deserve.

How exactly do you hold the government to account for acting against the interests of the public if the public isn't even interested in knowing? Short of creating some kind of unelected 'public interest tzar' who could do something about it (which is hardly democracy...)

A flowchart would just hide the facts

[ciaran_o_riordan]

In the EU, it has to be approved by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.

I'm not sure if there's any diagram that would make things clearer. Diagrams present formalities that mask the political reality of the decision making process.

Remember when software patents were put on the agenda of the fisheries committee? Procedures include flexibility...

Blocking ACTA isn't about spotting something on a map, it's about talking to our representatives and saying "We don't want this". (Council of Ministers is made up of the relevant ministers from the national governments, and the European Parliament is made up of our MEPs).

Re:Suck it world.

[Taco Cowboy]

All the other countries are just little bitches for the USA now.

While all the other countries are little bitches for the USA, USA is a little bitch for the Hollywood moguls

Politicians we elected? You must be new here.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You see, it's *US* who have allowed the politicians we have elected to carry out all these bullshits.

The European politicians who are behind this sort of bullshit typically aren't elected in any meaningful sense. Indeed, quite a few EU Commissioners are very politically connected but basically unelectable in their own country; serial resigner Peter Mandelson was the UK's Commissioner for several years, for example.

There are also a few good ones, and I admit I'm a little surprised things have gotten this far with Neelie Kroes (who is normally well-informed and a voice of reason) currently serving as Commissioner for the Digital Agenda.

The only directly elected politicians in Europe are the MEPs. Let's hope they have a bit more spine than their colleagues. At least since the Lisbon Treaty one of the few significant improvements is that the MEPs do actually have real power, and seem to enjoy exercising it when it comes to getting in the way of the unelected Commissioners throwing their weight around.

Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here.

[Taco Cowboy]

I might be "new" here, but then ...

The European politicians who are behind this sort of bullshit typically aren't elected in any meaningful sense.

Well ...

Who puts them there ?

It might not be *US* who put them there directly but ultimately it's *US* who allow THE SYSTEM to put them there !!

In a democratic system - and I am talking about the *US* in democratic system - the SYSTEM ultimately falls under the control of the society - which is, the voters, like You, and Me, *US* !!

Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

EU Commissioners are appointed by their home government based on arbitrary criteria. Here in the UK, for example, that means the only way to prevent such an appointment is to not elect the entire administration that makes the appointment anything up to five years earlier. Clearly no-one is really going to change their one vote for the national government to another political party just so that the wrong EU Commissioner doesn't get appointed 4.5 years later, so there is really no democratic mandate or accountability at all.

Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here.

[Taco Cowboy]

EU Commissioners are appointed by their home government based on arbitrary criteria.

above emphasis mine

Well ... who are the "home governments" ?

Are those "home governments" elected government ?

Who elected the politicians who made up those "home governments" ?

As I said, ultimately the responsibility rest on *US* ----> You, and Me ----

We are the ones who have elected those politicians who supposed to represent us in the government.

We are the ones who are responsible for the mess.

Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here.

[bfandreas]

The EU Parliament is elected. But the election is very low-key. Almost under the radar. Voting for the local mayor has a bigger campaign. When have you last seen campaign posters with that blue and circle of stars logo? I don't even know if the UK sends MPs to the EU Parliament. Seems like a political dead-end to me, anyway.

The EU Parliamant is a rather toothless, feeble thing due to the EU member countries not wanting to sign over sovereign rights. There are a couple of treaties for signing EU stuff into national law but most countries simply drag their feet. The process how this EU law-making process works is also not quite ideal...

The EU Commission is elected by gorvernments who themselves are elected. That's barely legitimate when it comes to democracy.

Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here.

[Bert64]

Only most of the electorate is not sufficiently well informed to make a voting decision, and would most likely vote differently if they were in full possession of the facts.
Often the only, or at least the loudest source of "information" for most people, is media which is controlled by people affiliated with the two major parties, who therefore have no incentive to rock the boat.

Those of us who do bother to do our research are in such a small minority that our votes count for nothing, and because we do not control big media we have no way of making or voice heard by anyone, even if people would agree once being in full possession of the facts. Those who do control the media benefit greatly from the current system and have no incentive to change anything,

Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here.

[the_arrow]

There are also a few good ones, and I admit I'm a little surprised things have gotten this far with Neelie Kroes (who is normally well-informed and a voice of reason) currently serving as Commissioner for the Digital Agenda.

That might be because most of the ACTA stuff has apparently been handled by the EU fishery department.

Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here.

[TheRaven64]

The MEP that I voted for campaigns for the FFII and she is part of a coalition that opposes ACTA. Unfortunately, this is being pushed through without the approval of the Parliament.

Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here.

[unity100]

euparl is not toothless. any law/treaty needs to get ratified by them.

Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here.

[blahplusplus]

"and would most likely vote differently if they were in full possession of the facts"

See this on human reasoning, the enlightenment was wrong about the human mind and telling people 'the facts':

http://bit.ly/dYaWUc

Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here.

[SteveFoerster]

Or, as a famous European once remarked, the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter. And anyone who doubts this should just listen to American talk radio for, oh, about five minutes.

That said, I've lived in a country with 310,000,000 people and I've lived in a country with 69,000 people. Both were republics, but only the second one, while still far from perfect, was an environment where political decision makers couldn't insulate themselves from the people on whose behalf they supposedly made choices. Overall it made me a big fan of eliminating as much political power as possible, but also in decentralizing whatever was deemed truly necessary.

Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Aren't we, the voters, the one who put in those politicians in the first place ?

Well, no.

Here in the UK, I get to vote for my MP, on a "first past the post" (aka winner takes all) system. My constituency really does float so my vote means something under this system. Many other people's votes do not.

If we were only electing local MPs, that wouldn't be so bad, but unfortunately the government will normally be formed by the party (or coalition) with the most MPs. Their leader becomes Prime Minister, determined by an average-of-averages, which did not necessarily win (or even close to win) the popular vote across the country as a whole.

Other Ministers are then basically decided by the PM, so they are appointed by someone whose own authority is an average of averages. Conveniently, you can get someone into the House of Lords, where they have legislative powers anyway and can be appointed to executive powers as well, without them having to actually win any election at all, so there's no guarantee that these Ministers ever actually had anyone but their political friends vote for them for anything.

The EU Commissioner is then appointed by the officials of that administration, so the EU Commissioner is an appointee who may never have been voted for by any member of the general public, determined by a bunch of appointees who may never have been voted for by any member of the general public, who were appointed by a Prime Minister who was only indirectly elected via an average-of-averages kind of system and may not actually command the majority of the popular vote because we only vote for one local MP on a winner-takes-all system that "loses" a lot of those votes at national level.

But apart from that, yes, we the voters are entirely responsible for this, it's our fault that these politicians are in place, and we could obviously remove them on a whim. :-)

Well, this one is kind of lost...

[blind biker]

Unfortunately, the "rich cocksuckers" (just citing Carlin) are influential, and have been projecting their influence all around the world. An EU politician isn't any better than any US politician - in both cases, corporate psychopaths tend to percolate up the chain of power, and therefore, have no quibbles being bribed and acting in their own interest vs. the interest of everyone.

This *could* be stopped if there were a concerted action like the one resisting SOPA/PIPA, but there isn't. There is no time even to mount a half-buttocked campaign, at this point.

I would love to be proven wrong.

EDRi has launched: What's Wrong with ACTA Week

[Alain Williams]

European Digital Rights has launched http://www.edri.org/ACTA_Week with 5 one page briefings that you can send to your National and Euro member of parliaments. Please do so, it will not take you long.

Re:SOPA

[qbast]

More like throwing enough shit at the wall that something will finally stick.

Sharing is not distribution

[peawormsworth]

Piracy is a bad word because it implies theft. Sharing is not theft and it is godly in that sharing is wat allows humans to express humanity. Distribution companies would like u to lump the too together and then call it all immoral and illegal. We need to fight this because it should never be illegal for u to share wat u rightfully own. Not sharing is generally a selfish option. But it should be a choice of the owner not the manufacturer. I can choose to share my car, my shelter, my food, my tools. The problem is distribution. Providing free copies of ur owned goods to people u dont know. That is wat big corporations do and historically it costs a lot of money to do this. Thus large distributors could charge a lot of money for providing this service. Now that the Internet came along and provided a very very cheap mechanism to distribute, the corporations who do this are finding it difficult to justify the amount they charge for this service. Effectively it costs $0 to distribute now. This is a problem for those who depend on this expense in order to justify expensive products and subsequent huge profits. Instead of adjusting to the new paradigm, it is easier and more profitable for them to attempt to legislate it away. I feel we are doing great harm by introducing laws to stifle progress in an attempt to protect the profits of companies who are now obviously just trying to limit new channels of competition. In the end, I expect these old companies r just shooting themselves in the foot by not embracing these new efficient channels of delivery. These companies would be better served by reducing prices and improving access to content. They could be beating the pirate companies at their own game. Look at wat apple has done in the music distribution industry. If the major players in the music industry had of acted faster to give people wat they wanted legally, then they wouldnt have to be giving apple such a large slice of their pie now. Maybe I am naive, but I think the majority of people DONT want to steal movies and music... they just dont want to be ripped off. Because inside, we all know that is exactly wat is happening. And the "theft" is justified based on this gut instinct.

Re:Could be good?

[bfandreas]

Have you ever personally been voting for EU Parliament? Have you ever cared about voting for it? I never had.

We only notice the EU whenever we pay with Euro coins from exotic countries, some money seems to be missing in some Euro countries, there are new member states or there is some huge scandal within the EU Comission which will promptly be reported on page 5 of your newspaper. Somewhere in the Male/Male/Nutella classified ads.

No wonder that nobody will notice this. And it is an issue that is percieved as a technical issue and what do we care about technical issues? That's the silent majority for you.

Re:Could be good?

[Troed]

Have you ever personally been voting for EU Parliament? Have you ever cared about voting for it?

I have, and that's why we have Pirates in the EU Parliament who are actively fighting to get information about ACTA out in the open.

http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/acta-is-borderline-on-fundamental-rights-at-best/