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Dutch parliament rejects ACTA, prohibits government to sign or ratify.

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Re: Dutch parliament rejects ACTA, prohibits government to sign or ratify.

#31

Post by KoulMomo »

mtgx wrote: post #20
rsanchez1 wrote: post #3

Earth to Congress, Europe is starting to turn against this treaty drafted in secret, when are you going to come out against this on the side of the American people?

Well, Sen. Wyden has asked the Obama administration to send ACTA to Senate for ratification, but the Obama administration refuses to do so, and says ACTA, which is a global treaty, can be made and signed just by the president. Something about that argument sounds very wrong to me.

Sen Wyden has been great on these issues. See also http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120523/11415519051/wyden-... Where the Obama administration would not share the contents of the TTP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) agreement with congress or senate, while representatives of U.S. corporations are being consulted on the agreement.

Crony Capitalism at its worst.

Re: Dutch parliament rejects ACTA, prohibits government to sign or ratify.

#32

Post by stdbrouw »

gpvos wrote: post #22
nodata wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How strong are these "observes" and "requests"? Why not "requires"?

These are motions, which are not binding, and the government can ignore them if it wishes, although it may then have a political problem and parliament might send it home with a "motion of distrust", which the government cannot ignore. However, these motions were very broadly supported: only CDA voted against motion 286; motion 287 was accepted by general acclaim; only VVD voted against motion 288. (CDA and VVD are t…

FYI – "motion / vote of no confidence" is the term you're looking for. Thanks for explaining.

Re: Dutch parliament rejects ACTA, prohibits government to sign or ratify.

#33

Post by ajuc »

ktizo wrote: post #24
jwr wrote: post #9

Thank you, Netherlands! (from the Polish, whose Prime Minister initially thought signing ACTA was a good idea "because everyone else did")

Which is a marginally better excuse than the standard 4 year old's "someone else did it and ran away", but only just.

For the record - Polish PM backed off after few weeks of mass protests in Poland, and said he was wrong, and Poland won't ratificate ACTA.

I still don't like him for his other decisions, and the lies he told about ACTA before he changed his mind, but at least he can say he was wrong.

Re: Dutch parliament rejects ACTA, prohibits government to sign or ratify.

#34

Post by gpvos »

adavies42 wrote: post #29
wwwhizz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly speaking, there is no law dictating the government has to leave when receiving a "motion of distrust", although it never happened they did not.

is that in theory where the queen steps in?

Not sure; it has never happened yet and it would certainly get ugly, so she might. She does usually step in at a few other places, though. We're getting off-topic here; for a very nice but not yet complete overview, see http://www.quirksmode.org/politics/ .

Re: Dutch parliament rejects ACTA, prohibits government to sign or ratify.

#35

Post by snowwrestler »

mtgx wrote: post #20
rsanchez1 wrote: post #3

Earth to Congress, Europe is starting to turn against this treaty drafted in secret, when are you going to come out against this on the side of the American people?

Well, Sen. Wyden has asked the Obama administration to send ACTA to Senate for ratification, but the Obama administration refuses to do so, and says ACTA, which is a global treaty, can be made and signed just by the president. Something about that argument sounds very wrong to me.

ACTA could be signed in the U.S. without Senate ratification because it doesn't change a single thing in U.S. domestic IP law, so there really isn't anything for the Senate to ratify. Wyden knows this; his request is largely grandstanding.

This is not necessarily true in other countries, which is why their legislators are getting involved.

Re: Dutch parliament rejects ACTA, prohibits government to sign or ratify.

#36

Post by snowwrestler »

KoulMomo wrote: post #31
mtgx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Sen. Wyden has asked the Obama administration to send ACTA to Senate for ratification, but the Obama administration refuses to do so, and says ACTA, which is a global treaty, can be made and signed just by the president. Something about that argument sounds very wrong to me.

Sen Wyden has been great on these issues. See also http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120523/11415519051/wyden-... Where the Obama administration would not share the contents of the TTP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) agreement with congress or senate, while representatives of U.S. corporations are being consulted on the agreement. Crony Capitalism at its worst.

Without commenting on the TPP specifically, I will point out that this is the process that the Constitution sets out for international treaties: the executive branch negotiates them as they see fit, then the agreement is presented to the Congress for ratification.

If TPP makes it that far (no guarantee it will), the Congress will have plenty of opportunity to read and react to it--especially now that Fast Track has expired. Just look at how many times the negotiators had to go back to the table on the South Korea and Colombia free trade agreements to satisfy Congressional objections.

Re: Dutch parliament rejects ACTA, prohibits government to sign or ratify.

#37

Post by Kell »

snowwrestler wrote: post #35
mtgx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Sen. Wyden has asked the Obama administration to send ACTA to Senate for ratification, but the Obama administration refuses to do so, and says ACTA, which is a global treaty, can be made and signed just by the president. Something about that argument sounds very wrong to me.

ACTA could be signed in the U.S. without Senate ratification because it doesn't change a single thing in U.S. domestic IP law, so there really isn't anything for the Senate to ratify. Wyden knows this; his request is largely grandstanding. This is not necessarily true in other countries, which is why their legislators are getting involved.

Technically, you're somewhat wrong about other countries. For instance, in France, even if ACTA had no impact on the legislation, it would still require ratification by a law. Because, the list of treaties that require ratification is so broad in France (Art. 53 of the Constitution), that almost only symbolic agreements are exempted of ratification by the parliament (or referendum). And that's the case in most of European countries.

Re: Dutch parliament rejects ACTA, prohibits government to sign or ratify.

#38

Post by rickmb »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #25
joelhaasnoot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Little bit ironic BTW, seeing as The Netherlands has one of the highest phone wiretapping rates in the world.

The difficulty here is that NL has a strong oversight on wiretapping - so whereas in the UK, a single wiretap warrant can get other phone numbers on as riders (usually one cop doing a favour for another cop), which makes the UK numbers look smaller, the NL is more open and so has larger looking wiretaps.

That "strong oversight" has been hampered by a refusal to publish details (we have absolutely no clue why there are so many wiretaps, and it's been hard enough to get the authorities to publish the raw numbers), and the oversight fails when it comes to storing and providing access to the collected data.

The latter is particularly worrying, because we already know that in other areas, police access to private data collection is seriously being abused, and very badly organized.

The oversight basically starts and ends with granting the permission to wiretap. Everything else is murky as hell.

Re: Dutch parliament rejects ACTA, prohibits government to sign or ratify.

#39

Post by rickmb »

aerique wrote: post #2

Especially resolution 3 is pertinent: "3. Resolution of Member Verhoeven (21 501-30, No. 288), 29 May 2012 (original Dutch text in PDF) The House of Representatives, - observes that treaties like ACTA lead to a further formalization of copyrights rules on the international level, - observes that such treaties are very difficult to modify and as a result can be an extra impediment for future reforms of copyright law,…

> an extra impediment for future reforms of copyright law

This is the really important part (ACTA was almost dead anyway). The continued push for ever more draconian copyright enforcement measures is slowly creating a backlash that puts copyright reform on the political agenda.

Once copyright reform is seriously on the agenda, all ACTA-like initiatives that enhance copyright enforcement are likely to be shelved indefinitely, and we finally get some breathing room for a real debate on copyright.

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