ACTA Negotiators Still Claiming Secrecy Is Needed; Turn Off WiFi At Briefing
from the it's-not-war dept
EU’s ACTA negotiators apparently held a briefing about the latest draft, and apparently they ordered the WiFi in the room turned off, to stop real time reports from “leaking” to sites like le quadrature and Wikileaks. Apparently, EU negotiators are unfamiliar with mobile data and sites like Twitter, where reports of the meeting were posted in real time by folks like David Hammerstein.
So why would EU’s head negotiator, Luc Devigne, want the WiFi turned off in a meeting about an agreement that can impact everyone and should be debated in public? Apparently, he claimed “without secrecy, no trade agreement can be successful.” Huh? This must be from the secret negotiators handbook, because it makes no sense, and there’s absolutely no support for such a statement. And, he’s being willfully misleading in pretending that this is a trade agreement. It’s not. And if you want to know how an agreement will be unsuccessful? It’s by keeping out those stakeholders who such an agreement will most impact.
Separately Devigne insisted that Mexico will sign the document, despite the unanimous vote against the ACTA process.
Finally, he claimed that “ACTA text is finalized but not stabilized.” What does that even mean? It means it’s not finalized and negotiators are trying to sugarcoat the fact that there are still substantial differences between participating countries.
Comments on “ACTA Negotiators Still Claiming Secrecy Is Needed; Turn Off WiFi At Briefing”
Thankfully, there's 3G
Hopefully someone in there has 3G and can continue leaking vital information.
Re: Thankfully, there's 3G
OK, hold on a second here. They turned off the WiFi to prevent electronic documents from leaking…..
What prevents the electronic documents from leaving on the laptops/flash drives/etc that contain said documents?
It’s not like people can’t just go use the internet somewhere else.
Classic
This is almost surreal, stereotypical evil corporate interest, corrupts Democracy in an oppression for profit scheme.
at any rate, they got their way in the UK, just had to give parliament some kind of excuse, like, “I didn’t know what we were voting on” and va va voom, your now under the thumb on big content’s lawyers.
Re: Classic
The behavior of the negotiators has been so outrageous, surely it is time for quite a few of them to get sacked?
Secret
He would like to explain it to us all, but then it would not be a secret. sarc
Re: Secret
He wishes he wasn’t privy to some of the classified information that he is privy to.
and heres how it goes via secret recording
“is the wifi off …we’ve secured this…”
“ok now we can pretend to not have a doc with lots a teeth”
“we can get this watered down version and then after the stupid masses get used to that we’ll just add all the rest of this that we can’t now”
YEA exactly what EVERYONE IS THINKING TOO
Re: and heres how it goes via secret recording
Shit for that matter how many smart phones are there in the room?
I wonder how many MIFI cards are in the room.
This really is a train wreck.
Re: Re:
Yeah, pretty cool isn’t it? I was so hoping this thing would have gotten through with three strikes, criminalization of infringement, and maybe a death penalty thrown in for good measure. Now it looks like it may actually fail. Well there is always next time …
Re: Re: Re:
Don’t forget, the Asian version of the DMCA is going to begin right after this ends. If it hasn’t already.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Funny thing is after charting historical trends out towards the future for the Record Labels, TV studios, Newspapers, and magazines. Comparing that to trends for CC music and video. I am not very concerned about ACTA, the DEA, HADOPI, etc. The future is pretty gloomy for the monetized content distribution types. So an Asian version of the DMCA is now almost totally off my radar. I am unconcerned and I’m on a horse. 🙂
ACTA is looking more and more like a ‘dead bill’ and I’m really getting tired of all this secrecy around this agreement and the negotiations on said agreement.
It is a founding part of democracy that NO LAWS SHALL BE MADE IN SECRET! I.E. that every law from first draft to final version has to be totally public so that the public can chime in on the bill and tell their REPRESENTATIVES (key word there!) what they agree with in the bill and what they do not.
Translation
“ACTA text is finalized but not stabilized.”
It means that the creators of ACTA have compromised as far as their willing to and will have everyone agree to it if they have to take crowbars to people’s knees.
ACTA the vampiric “treaty” if it ever sees the light of day it will burn.
LAW
On the Issues of Patent Law, Internet Security, Piracy, and Privacy etc:
“NO PERSON (least of all a government) IS ABOVE THE LAW”.
Any “ACT” by any government, which interferes with the internet being used for the protection of people and planet (LIFE AND PROPERTY) from CRIMINAL ENVIRONMENTAL ABUSE, is in itself a CRIMINAL ACT, to be controlled by the Common Law, in accordance with the Principles of Equity.
Seriously, there’s still some issues with the bill such as damages and the security articles that need serious fixing.
1) Damages says that ALL of the impetus is on the infringer. They pay to have their things taken away and destroyed (if counterfeit items) or deleted (if it’s small infringement such as music)
2) Security is truly a joke. Basically, the rights holder gets to play the cop by telling law enforcement what’s good or bad. Very little of this is overseen through judicial review, it’s instead all about the rights holder and enforcement.
3) Judges are granted a little power, but there’s very little oversight on their part. Add to this the fact that there is little in the civil or criminal sections to say you are “innocent until proven guilty” and you have a text that reads totally against almost all parts of the US Amendment just to start.
Translation
No, it clearly means that it’s always going to be unstable. I guess they want to be able to change the wording at any time, whenever they need to be able to get the laws changed in a signatory country. Saves an awful lot of time that way.
From the article: EU’s ACTA negotiators apparently held a briefing about the latest draft, and apparently they ordered the WiFi in the room turned off, to stop real time reports from “leaking” to sites like le quadrature and Wikileaks. Apparently, EU negotiators are unfamiliar with mobile data and sites like Twitter, where reports of the meeting were posted in real time by folks like David Hammerstein.
Gregg’s respone: Well, shame on any reporters harmed by the WIFI being manipulatively turned off. Any reporter during the briefing who sat with a notebook/netbook on his/her lap, or who sat or stood with a smartphone in his/her hand, either of which relied on WIFI, ultimately gets exactly what s/he deserves.
At bare minimum, a reporter’s Internet connectivity should be by his/her own provision by whatever means which no one (except by unintentional/unplanned ISP system failure) could manipulatively turn off. Any reporter’s computer or smartphone should have its Internet connectivity be only via a mobile data 3G/4G internal card or external USB dongle whenever s/he’s not in his/her own controlled environment (home, or work… or at least someplace where no one’s likely to have a stake in stopping him/her fromm connecting).
Period.
Any reporter not so equipped is a doofus.
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Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com