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.

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.

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.

[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.

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" ??

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.

[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: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.