Slashdot Mirror
ACTA's EU Future In Doubt As Poland Suspends Ratification
superglaze writes "Poland has suspended its ratification process for ACTA, throwing the copyright crackdown into doubt for the whole European Union. ACTA is being handled as a 'mixed agreement' in the EU due to its criminalization clauses, so if a single EU member state (such as Poland) fails to ratify it, it is null and void across the entire union. If that were to happen, at least six of the remaining international signatories would have to ratify ACTA for it to apply anywhere in the world. Outside the EU, only eight countries — including the U.S. — have signed."
There's a great pic of about 15 Polish legislators, holding paper Guy Fawkes masks over their faces - as the vote is tallied.
http://static.arstechnica.net/2012/01/30/polish-mask-4f26f00-intro.jpg
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This day will hopefully be remembered just as September 17, 1939 is.
Maybe you can put them all in a plane going to Russia.
Maybe if enough Americans got out in the streets to protest ACTA like the Poles did, Obama would unilaterally rescind the agreement.
Plawski knew what he had to do – without the other destroyers Piorun couldn’t hope to face the Bismarck alone. Now that suprise was lost the Battleship was fast enough to keep Piorun out of torpedo range, the Piorun couldn’t stay in contact with her now. She should radio in Bismarck’s latest position and then, for want of another phrase, get the fuck out of Dodge.
They’d all just have to hope that another ship was close enough to make contact with her again before she managed to slip away again – although given the weather and the darkness Plawski realised that was increasingly unlikely.
It was frustrating and may ultimately mean the British missed their opportunity to intercept, but sadly, that was the only sensible option. Anything else was suicide.
Plawski though for a split second then sighed, smiled and gave his orders to his crew:
“Full speed ahead. All hands to battlestations. We attack.”
Greetings from Poland.
The whole thing stinks. Our whole political class was involved in an attempt to pass it as quietly as possible and ram this feudal law down our throats. Those 15 crooks were involved in this scam but - as they're formally an opposition - they weren't directly responsible for passing ACTA, so they could switch sides at any time and they did it as soon as they saw opportunity in it. Neverthless I'm happy to see they've helped raising (bad) publicity about ACTA fiasco with those masks. I'm definitely NOT happy with Tusk who ordered signing this crap despite huge protests and I'm not confident he really means to not ratify this - in my opinion he is a pathological liar. Just one day earlier one of his stooges (M. Dowgielewicz) acknowledged that they (government) are determined to ratify it despite of protests. In their (polish govt) opinion protests are "overreaction of manipulated young people". Geez. What a bunch of fucks (I told you they're all pathological liars).
Our media also didn't help much - media lied at first. Only later, as more and more known and respected persons took side of protesters - media acknowledged some of their concerns - but all reports in our mainstream media seems to be watered down and limited to internet/copyright issues. Not a single word about generic drugs or patented GMO crops - whole debate is as limited as possible.
And there is another thing that stinks even more than all things above combined. In the wake of these protests we had major hiccup in our parliament and reps in one of commision voted and issued a recommendation to suspend ratification process and start public consultations about ACTA. Next day some lady from US embassy started calling those representatives and asking why did they pass this and why party leaders did not enforce 'party discipline' to vote this recommendation down. While previous things did not impress me too much (as I'm used to our crappy political class), the last one made me really furious. If someone is still in doubt who is ruling my country - not President nor Prime Minister - It's some obscure lady from US embassy. (?!?) Few months ago (presumeably) the same lady in meetings of agriculture commision was pushing to legalize patented GMOs in my country ! It seems that we've got rid of Soviets but we haven't got our independence either. Our politicians stopped taking orders from Mockba but started taking orders from Washington and Brussels.
Last but not least I would thank everyone who attended anti-ACTA rallies regardless of cold weather we currently have. I was only on one of these and I feel I did too little. Thank you - all of you who made our lovely government reconsidering (or at least pretending to reconsider) this decision. My feeling is that we should not stop here. Every term our elected officials show disregard for us and do things that directly violate their fiduciary duties (at expense of citizens of course). I think that now as we've scored first meaningful success, we should go further and demand as many elements of direct democracy as possible. Technical means to cheaply perform referendums are in place, it's just politicians that are dragging their feet.