Germany Delays ACTA Signature, Wants More Discussion

First time accepted submitter willodotcom writes "Germany has joined Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia in delaying their signing of ACTA, citing 'time to carry out further discussions' as the reason."

Comments

Very reasonable

[i kan reed]

I never grasped how copyright changes could be considered legally urgent. This doesn't mean the treaty will be blocked(it won't be), but at least Germany is taking their time.

Re:Very reasonable

[mseeger]

Don't put your hopes to high. They are just waiting till the public's attention is elsewhere, e.g. occupied by a soccer cup.

Re:Very reasonable

[MightyMartian]

Pretty much. Further meetings just means "How can we sneak this past the public."

Re:Very reasonable

[dkleinsc]

If they don't act quickly, it's conceivable that Steamboat Willie might be legally distributed to people within the United States. The horror!

Re:Very reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so sceptical please.

Your democratic checks and balances might be absolutely fucked beyond all hope, to the extent that you live under a corporatocracy, but that isn't the case here.
Besides, the element of surprise is gone. All further attempts are going to be highly scrutinised, and there are countries that will never sign.

Re:Very reasonable

[nzac]

Don't put your hopes to high. They are just waiting till the public's attention is elsewhere, e.g. occupied by a soccer cup.

Your open pessimism helps to make it acceptable for politicians to do this.

Re:Very reasonable

[rtfa-troll]

And if you identify everyone who attends these meetings and concentrate on getting rid of them you will have struck a very big blow for clearing up politics generally. There are very few issues which as clearly come out as big corporation vs. people. Even better is that in this case it isn't because there are no big corporations on our side, just because they are new corporations which haven't yet worked out how to do corruption (that's why Microsoft is on the other side). This is a really really worthwhile cause and making a list of everyone who ever collaborated with the RIAA, MPAA and big media over this and following up on it to the end could set back the corporate control of government by decades.

Re:Very reasonable

[Kjella]

It may be a long time until the attention is elsewhere. Right now the German Pirate Party is the one with most popular support, far more than in Sweden. They scored a huge number of seats in Berlin and if it was national election today they would get anywhere from 4-8% of the votes, there's a 5% threshold but they'd pas it today. Unfortunately it's not election for another year and a half but a long drawn out fight over ACTA is just the thing they need...

Re:Very reasonable

[Asic Eng]

If you are in Germany, don't forget to join the demonstrations tomorrow.

Re:Very reasonable

[geogob]

Don't expect the public attention to drop so soon in Germany. People there are very careful about protection of private data and information. They have a somewhat bad historical background about state lurking into private lives and filtering/accumulating information... and they are not about to forget it. Anything that goes into that direction gets strong opposition - and the stage generally weights in favor of the private life protection.

Now, in Germany, is happening exactly what the copyright lobby feared : people are looking into it. They is a reason why they tried to push it under the table and they failed. Now there is a good chance ACTA never goes through in Germany. And if it doesn't pass in Germany, it loses a lot of interest within the EU.

Re:Very reasonable

[Joce640k]

The European Parliament (at the top of the food chain) is already deeply suspicious of what the Commision is doing with ACTA and asked them to clean their act up in March of last year.

Some quotes from the report:

2. Expresses its concern over the lack of a transparent process in the conduct of the ACTA negotiations, a state of affairs at odds with the letter and spirit of the TFEU; is deeply concerned that no legal base was established before the start of the ACTA negotiations and that parliamentary approval for the negotiating mandate was not sought;

3. Calls on the Commission and the Council to grant public and parliamentary access to ACTA negotiation texts and summaries, in accordance with the Treaty and with Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents;

4. Calls on the Commission and the Council to engage proactively with ACTA negotiation partners to rule out any further negotiations which are confidential as a matter of course and to inform Parliament fully and in a timely manner about its initiatives in this regard; expects the Commission to make proposals prior to the next negotiation round in New Zealand in April 2010, to demand that the issue of transparency is put on the agenda of that meeting and to refer the outcome of the negotiation round to Parliament immediately following its conclusion;

5. Stresses that, unless Parliament is immediately and fully informed at all stages of the negotiations, it reserves its right to take suitable action, including bringing a case before the Court of Justice in order to safeguard its prerogatives;

6. Deplores the calculated choice of the parties not to negotiate through well-established international bodies, such as WIPO and WTO, which have established frameworks for public information and consultation;

7. Calls on the Commission to conduct an impact assessment of the implementation of ACTA with regard to fundamental rights and data protection, ongoing EU efforts to harmonise IPR enforcement measures, and e-commerce, prior to any EU agreement on a consolidated ACTA treaty text, and to consult with Parliament in a timely manner about the results of the assessment;

I'm pretty sure the Commission hasn't done any of that, so if the Parliament gets involved again it's doomed. Hopefully this weekend's protests will help get that done.

Re:Very reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

ACTA is treated as a "mixed treaty" in the EU, which means that according to the rules of procedure it has to be ratified by the European parliament _and_ all of the national parliaments in order to be valid anywhere. If it doesn't pass in Germany (or some other member state) it doesn't pass anywhere in the EU. At all.

Re:Very reasonable

[rtfa-troll]

You aren't getting this entirely. Have a look at GoDaddy; they have a long involvement in DNS, which is one of the areas where corruption and politics meets technology. They aren't particularly big and powerful, but they knew enough to find out about the legislation and to know who to talk to to get their own name in there early. They were explicitly listed by name in the legislation so that only they could benefit from exclusions.

The list of people who support ACTA is invitation only. From their own point of view MS is in there because they benefit. From the general point of view they benefit because the *AA thought that without them the legislation might get blocked and that with them it would be more powerful. The next time this type of legislation comes around you may find something like a new copyright on search engine results being offered to Google in order to drag them in and get their support.

USA

[Anonymous Coward]

So with the USA's propensity to blackmail other countries into passing legislation they want, what are they going to do when an entire continent rejects this treaty?

Re:USA

[lennier1]

I heard they have some oil in the North Sea ... ;)

Re:USA

[Issarlk]

Sadly they really have them and so the US would never attack. See: North Korea.

Delaying

[ThatsNotPudding]

Meaning either they're too busy counting how many pitchforks and torches are headed their way..

or...

they are merely waiting for the mafiaa to sweeten their payoffs.

I am not aware of any country involved in the inital back-room negotiations that has announced their unequivocal refusal to sign ACTA, full stop.

OK, so...

[jamstar7]

They talk about this 'treaty' for months behind closed doors, cross all the i's, dot all the t's, get ready to roll it out, pick up on the groundswell protest against it, and NOW they say they need more discussion on it? Talk about spindoctoring at its finest...

That confirms

[jcreus]

Germany as one of the most sensible states in the world.

Re:That confirms

[jcreus]

Poland is definitely another great country. It once blocked software patents in Europe; now ACTA... Great!

Re:That confirms

[Asic Eng]

It's more of a "oops people seem to care about that and the Pirate Party got 8,6% in Berlin" response.

Re:China

[willodotcom]

It's a really cool place to live, and nothing I do in my day-to-day life is going to get me into legal trouble. I define this as freedom.

I prefer this definition by John Dalberg-Acton: "The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities."

Makes Me Sick

[MoldySpore]

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it really makes me sick how quickly and easily ACTA was pushed and accepted in other countries. MAFIAA must have a silver tongue, equally as silver as the object they use to fuck over everyone else.

Follow Finland's example

[Aggrajag]

EU countries should follow Finland's example and sign every treaty without any delay. Public discussion about government's decisions is done afterwards.

1st rule of the war is you don't mention the war

[Hognoxious]

Germany has joined Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia

This has happened before, and it didn't turn out well.

Re:emigrate to where?

[LaRainette]

Norway.
They have a small minority of maybe 5% of right wing nutjobs (but as you are american it is really nothing you can't handle) but other than that it's probably the most democratic place on earth right now.
Just to justify this : reaction of the US government after 9/11 => Patriot act and 2 wars
Reaction of the mayor of Oslo after the shootings this year by far-right terrorrist : "We need even more democracy".
Salaries are great, inequalities are pretty low, social tension is almost inexistant, and the welfare state is rock solid and financed for almost ever by Oil money and the $400 billions Strategic investment Fund the Norvegian governement created with it.
Oh and EVERYBODY speaks english. Literally.