[ZeroPaid]ACTA Falling Apart?

[Vation]

ACTA has been called many things over the years since it was first leaked online, but an all around failure was certainly not one of them until until the last few months.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been one of the biggest topics of discussion in the realm of internet user rights, intellectual property discussions and legal circles that deal with these issues. Early on, it was the ultra-secret agreement that virtually no one knew about until there was an explosion of publicity online when the documents leaked on various whistle blower sites including Wikileaks.

Things were never really the same since.

read the article at ZeroPaid:
ACTA Falling Apart?

[slikrapid]

Among the initial criticisms were that police officers would stop you and confiscate your property at the border for merely possessing a “digital storage device” (which can mean anything from a cell phone to a laptop or even an iPod). ... Then there was also the exporting of the three strikes law where entire households would be disconnected from the internet on nothing more than merely three accusations – no courts, no accountability, no opportunity to challenge any claims.

this is the kind of solutions that the big industry is trying to legally implement & is lobbying for - even more concerning is that such attempts aren't just localized at matters of copyright, it goes much further, into other fields, like food (GMO), health/medicine (vaccinations), media, laws,...where powerful industrial corporations & groups push legislation & regulations in directions of their own benefit, often in blatant disregard of citizen human rights

It was these and other claims which sparked a massive campaign to lift the veils of secrecy on this elusive and heavily redacted treaty through laws such as Freedom of Information Act Requests – legal procedures that are suppose to let citizens know what their own governments are up to....The European Union at one point refuted some of the suggestions made by the draft documents that leaked, but since there was no evidence to back up their position, it was extremely difficult to believe them.

the problem is that industry has certain defined goals, a machinery (legal/lobbyist/administrative/political/financial) preparing biased documents, uses global events as distractions/cover for (public) implementation - on the other hand, what do citizens have: non-transparency, bureaucratic and other obstacles to get the information which should be available for everyone to see, tons of legal documents that can be thoroughly inspected only with numerous educated eyes, rare non-governmental organizations with limited resources and so on - all clear disadvantages

It may be simply the way ACTA went about that might be fuelling a possible demise. We’re talking about a law that even law-makers don’t have access to it to even look at let alone have official authority to criticize or support it. Do politicians like it when there is a sense of them losing their own power to govern?...All in all, this might be a beginning sign that ACTA could end up being something very few even remotely predicted – a dud.

no need to water-down the issue, politicians aren't independent and certainly aren't at the top of decision making or ruling 'pyramid'

there are dozens of ACTA-like agreements & documents, being prepared in secret, waiting for the moment to be implemented into public, hoping that the public will pay little or no attention to it, best case scenario for them is to make the public believe its for their own good and actually support it themselves (patriot act for example)

does this reporter seriously think the industry would spend time & resources for nothing? to create a detailed agreement just so that it has no purpose and gets forgotten, whereas if successfully implemented could reap much sought-after results? on the contrary, what we may expect is that it just changes its name, gets a few corrections here & there and its pretty much ready to give it another try - a reason why there should always be someone alert & watching on what is being prepared & passed from sources with vested interests