Windows 7 - Don't forget about ACTA

   Quote: Originally Posted by syost

You obviously know nothing about US law. Perhaps you might want to read a bit before spewing misinformation.

   Quote: Originally Posted by syost

People might also try reading the bill to see its actual scope, and read about its history to see where it actually originated.

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Negotiated in secret, ACTA bypassed checks and balances of existing international IP norm-setting bodies, without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens. Worse still, the agreement creates a new global institution, an "ACTA Committee" to oversee its implementation and interpretation that will be made up of unelected members with no legal obligation to be transparent in their proceedings.
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In the U.S., there are growing concerns about the constitutionality of negotiating ACTA as a “sole executive agreement”. This is not just a semantic argument. If ACTA were categorized as a treaty, it would have to be ratified by the Senate. But the USTR and the Administration have consistently maintained that ACTA is a sole executive agreement negotiated under the President’s power. On that theory, it does not need Congressional approval and thus ACTA already became binding on the US government when Ambassador Ron Kirk signed it last October.
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The distinction between executive agreement and treaty should not be lost on this administration: as a Senator, Vice President Joe Biden used the same argument to require the Bush administration to seek Senate approval for an arms reduction agreement.

EFF
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/0...ous-about-acta

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ACTA establishes its own governing body outside existing international institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the United Nations.[1][3] With regards to the reason for not pursuing ACTA through the G8, WTO, WIPO or other formal existing structures the European Commission explains that a free-standing agreement provides the most flexibility "to pursue this project among interested countries", while stating that "the membership and priorities of those organizations (G8, WTO, and WIPO) simply are not the most conducive to this kind of path breaking project."[1] The draft treaty's title suggests that the agreement only covers infringement of patents, that is counterfeit physical goods such as medicines, however the draft treaty also covers infringement of copyright in the context of "Internet distribution and information technology".[2]

Wikipedia
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The agreement covers the copying of information or ideas in a wide variety of contexts. For example page three, paragraph one is a "Pirate Bay killer" clause designed to criminalize the non-profit facilitation of unauthorized information exchange on the internet. This clause would also negatively affect transparency and primary source journalism sites such as Wikileaks.
The document reveals a proposal for a multi-lateral trade agreement of strict enforcement of intellectual property rights related to Internet activity and trade in information-based goods hiding behind the issue of false trademarks. If adopted, a treaty of this form would impose a strong, top-down enforcement regime, with new cooperation requirements upon internet service providers, including perfunctionary disclosure of customer information. The proposal also bans "anti-circumvention" measures which may affect online anonymity systems and would likely outlaw multi-region CD/DVD players.
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The ACTA push was launched on October 23, 2007 by US Ambassador Susan C. Schwab and five U.S. members of Congress from the "Congressional Caucus on Intellectual Property and Piracy Prevention".
A copy of her opening remarks follow:

Wikileaks
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Proposed_US_ACTA_multi-lateral_intellectual_property_trade_agreement_(2007)

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But trade agreements are negotiated secretly, unlike legislation, which leads the FFII to wonder about the state of European democratic practice:
ACTA is a so-called "trade agreement". While technically it is therefore not a legislative proposal, its acceptance will nonetheless lead to legislative and executive obligations for the undersigning parties. Hence, indirectly it will have the same effect as a legislative proposal. Simply calling it differently and using different negotiation procedures cannot be used as an excuse in a democratic society to get around all transparency principles and requirements of said society. If, as currently planned, the agreement will only be made public once all parties have already agreed to it, none of the EU's national parliaments nor the European Parliament will have been able to scrutinize its contents in any meaningful way. We believe this to be a gross violation of the basic democratic principles the EU is supposed to stand for. The argument that public transparency regarding "trade negotiations" can be ignored if it would weaken the EU's negotiation position is particularly painful. At which point exactly do negotiations over trade issues become more important than democratic law making? At 200 million euro? At 500 million euro? At 1 billion euro? What is the price of our democracy?

Wikileaks
EU denies ACTA document request; democracy undermined? - WikiLeaks