Slashdot Mirror
European Parliament Committees Reject ACTA As IP Backlash Grows
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier today [Thursday, May 31st], three European Parliament committees studying the
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement — the Legal Affairs Committee
(JURI), the Committee for Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and the
Committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) — all voted
against implementing ACTA. Michael Geist reports
on how the strength of the anti-ACTA movement within the European
Parliament
is part of a broader backlash against secretive intellectual property
agreements that are either incorporated into broad trade agreements or
raise critical questions about prioritizing IP enforcement over
fundamental rights including votes and reports opposing these deals in
the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Mexico."
From some time now some guys decided that intellectual property is the new wealth. You do not accumulate anymore material goods such as gold, wood, grains: You now accumulate patents and extorts anyone who try to do something material using - even partially - some of these patents.
And patents is something perfect from the standpoint of the investor: The cost to generate one can almost get to zero but the profits can reach low Earth orbit (using the calculations of the RIAA)
(P.S: Damn you, Google translator. Brazilian->English translation sucks)
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Today is the sixth anniversary of the Swedish police's raid on The Pirate Bay, as evidenced by the "This Day on Slashdot" on the front page. That was not the reasons for the founding of the Swedish Pirate Party, which had happened 5 months earlier, but it was the first time they got any media attention and their membership grew by hundreds of percents on a single day. Three years later, in spring 2009, the case was being negotiated in the district court and the attention from that is probably what let the party enter the European parliament.
Now, another three years have passed and two Pirate Party MEPs have spent years inside the parliament. Today one of them had her draft opinion, which was extremely critical of ACTA and recommended the parliament to reject the treaty, accepted as the opinion of the ITRE committe. The other Pirate Party MEP was one of the votes against a pro-ACTA draft opinion in a very close vote in the JURI committee. The draft opinion was rejected, with the result that ITRE also recommends the parliament to reject ACTA.
Is this what they call "the long tail"?