WSJ Says Pro-ACTA Forces Helped Drive Anti-ACTA Reactions

pbahra writes with commentary from the Wall Street Journal: "Europeans will take to the streets this weekend in protest at the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, an international agreement that has given birth to an ocean full of red herrings. That so many have spawned is, say critics, in no small part down to the way in which this most controversial of international agreements was drawn up. If the negotiating parties had set out to stoke the flames of Internet paranoia they could not have done a better job. Accepted there are two things that should never be seen being made in public—laws and sausages—the ACTA process could be a case study of how not to do it. Conducted in secret, with little information shared except a few leaked documents, the ACTA talks were even decried by those who were involved in them."

Comments

This is one scary law

[Anonymous Coward]

It's no wonder they had to do this in secret, giving companies the right to dictate to goverments is bad no matter which way you look t it

Re:This is one scary law

[offsides]

And that is EXACTLY why people are up in arms about it. The governments got together in secret, decided what was "best" for their populations, and then held the pile of papers close to their chest and said "Here it is, isn't it great!" And when the people who were ratifying it asked to see it, the were told, "You don't need to see it, it's in your best interest."

Unfortunately, it might have ended there, since the majority tends to accept that these days. Except that some of the people who signed the bloody thing then came out and said "Waitaminute! This is really crap, and I shouldn't have signed it!" And that got EVERYBODY's attention, and thankfully people who should have been paying attention all along started to pay attention, and now it's snowballing.

For better or worse, this may be the beginning of the end of crappy, business-centric, screw-the-people laws and treaties. I'm not saying that it'll stop them 100% right away, but after the pullback on SOPA and PIPA, and now ACTA, the people are starting to figure out that they can use the Internet to get real reactions from their lawmakers, and not just lip service on the campaign trail. Politicians may not want to lose all their "perks" from the lobbyists, but they want to lose their elected positions even less, and sufficient pressure applied by the people who elect them appears to be making an impact...

Leaked docs

[Anonymous Coward]

If anybody has any bad feelings towards Wikileaks, let the ACTA serve as a reminder that the only reason we even know of it is because somebody on the inside provided it and Wikileaks released it.

Re:Leaked docs

[g0bshiTe]

My thoughts, if someone on the inside thought enough to post it and people for it were so much against it being outed then there must be some bad in it. If you don't want the public to know of a bill being passed then there is something inherently wrong with the bill you are trying to pass.

Re:Leaked docs

[Tsingi]

If anybody has any bad feelings towards Wikileaks, let the ACTA serve as a reminder that the only reason we even know of it is because somebody on the inside provided it and Wikileaks released it.

Yes. At the end of the day, if a law exists that makes a criminal out of the majority, then it does not serve society, rather it serves to subjugate.

In a free society the primary intent of law is to safeguard the freedom of the people.
In a totalitarian society laws primarily exist to protect the ruling class from the people.

It is unlikely that a law will be passed in a free society without the consent of the governed. No such considerations are required in a totalitarian state. Wikileaks is a threat only to governments that have something to hide.

FTFA

[g0bshiTe]

“The agreement is seeking to address a number of very different issues of which some are serious problems of public health and public safety, for example trade in fake medicine,” Ms. Schaake said. “But that issue doesn’t compare to the alleged cost to society of online piracy

So human life that is damaged from taking a counterfeit drug is worth less than what rights holders lose due to piracy? Or did I just interpret that wrong?

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole counterfeit medicine issue is a red herring. Counterfeit drugs are not vetted and approved by the FDA/EMA and hence should be prosecuted based on that basis (whether or not they infringe on any trademarks or patents is irrelevant if you're talking about safety; in fact, one could argue the chance that they are dangerous in case they do infringe on patents may actually be smaller).

Apart from that there are the generic medicines, which are properly tested and approved. Issues surrounding those are purely related to intellectual property law without any relation to safety. And more often than not, those issues are (legal or not) abuse by rightsholders related to continuation patents, fighting parallel imports, or thwarting transport to countries where those patents are not valid through countries where they do apply.

Re:FTFA

[Joce640k]

RIAA group: 10,000 employees, profits in the single digit billions.

Internet: Hundreds of millions of employees, profits in the trillions.

a) Getting rid of which of them would cause more harm.

b) If everybody in the USA chipped in $100 bucks they could BUY the RIAA and get free music forever. If you did it at world level it would easily doable.

c) The RIAA has probably already cost the world than their net worth by wasting everybody's time through their legal/political shenanigans.

the chancellor was wrong

[at10u8]

'laws and sausages' is attributed to von Bismarck. Is it not the case that every RFC is basically an international trade agreement? The process of making them is very different than ACTA. Which produces the more effective result?

The main drive behind anit-ACTA reactions

[Hentes]

is ACTA.

I'm ok

[sakdoctor]

with it.

they don't go backwards.

[fedos]

At least

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, the TFA is the Wall Street Journal, which is (now) owned by News Corp. You remember: Rupert Murdock's gang of yellow journalists, criminals and corrupt police officers.

The article basically bashes anything anti-ACTA while trying to sound neutral. For example, it quotes 2 scholars who say that ACTA is a good thing, while admitting that their some paranoia out their about ACTA.

The whole article basically starts off with the premise that "copyright" is real property and that copying real property is "theft":

If you say copying other people's copyright is an OK thing to do, then you are saying that theft is OK. Everyone is very keen on sharing until it is their stuff that is being shared.

It's a VERY one sided article that sounds like it was sponsored and supervised by Rupert Murdock himself.

Of course copyright is not necessarily a bad thing, but demonizing the opposition to copyright and to ACTA in particular just demonstrates how useless Rupert Murdock's brand of journalism is.

Preference is irrelevant, purpose is the point.

[jpapon]

We were discussing the intended purpose of the subject field; and that is to give a short summary of what the full message contains.

This allows readers to skip over messages they are not interested in, and use their time more efficiently.

It's not about what I prefer, it's about efficient communication.

To follow your pointless analogy, it would be like not labeling containers of cold rice pudding (or labeling them as something else), forcing everyone else to waste their time checking to see what's actually in the container.