The Victoria Times-Colonist features a masthead editorial on the ACTA negotiations that concludes that work on the treaty "should not be taking place in secret and it should consider the best ideas from wherever they might come, and not just from a small group of insiders."
Times-Colonist on ACTA Insiders
Tags: acta / anti-counterfeiting trade agreement / Counterfeit / counterfeiting / prentice / times-colonist
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OK, in principle, yes, everyone should have a chance to contribute. In practice, there are limits. It isn’t possible to have 30 million people in this debate. It’s way we have politicians and a civil service. And frankly, if the circle is widened it will still be, mainly, the elites who take part – just a few more of them, but elites nonetheless.
MIA
In light of ipod contraband, the U.S. border already seizes laptops, so this wouldn’t be too much of a stretch if MP3 players were also on the list.
I find a couple of things disturbing about this. One is the secrecy, as in, at least let the public know. The second, there is a huge hole where the communications industry is strangely absent, along with others that should be an obvious throw in.
One minor thing that the article states: “Creative people need to be compensated for their work otherwise they’ll lose the incentive to be creative.” – I don’t agree with that. Money, as it seems to allude to, is not a motivating factor for creativity and is too broad of a statement.
ACTA -> EU presidency
I am sure intellectual property journalists would get a lot of useful information from Henry Olsson who currently I think is working at the Swedish ministry of Justice as an expert advisor (switchboard +46 8 405 10 00). He has written extensively about the origins of and reasons for ACTA, and I am sure he will be the Swedish government’s primus motor in the conclusion of the negotiaions (which probably will take place during the Swedish presidency).
The content overlap of IPRED2 and ACTA also raises a lot of competence issues, and which in themselves are extremely interesting from a constitutional point of view. A goldmine for political analysts. Was it not only WIPO deadlocks but also IPRED2 jamming that initiated ACTA?