Petition - This Week We Kill ACTA - Or Get Locked Down In Monopolies For Decades

[IainB]

If you don't agree with the MEP in the EPP group – Marielle Gallo that:

“...the politicians should be doing the thinking for the citizens”

- about ACTA, then you probably need to do something pronto to hang onto what's left of your Internet freedoms. This is likely to affect the Internet community worldwide, not just the EU.
I guess it's what you could call part of a pincer move from the MPAA/MAFIAA - the other pincer coming from actions of the US government's and agencies' several SOPA/ACTA pushes (possibly also including the Dotcom affair).

A "call to action" from torrentfreak addresses the issues here, and gives some helpful information and links to email the MEPs from anywhere in the world:
This Week We Kill ACTA – Or Get Locked Down In Monopolies For Decades

This is it. This is the week when ACTA lives or dies, globally. We have seen it coming. Now is the time for the very final push in contacting the European Parliament. On Wednesday, in the session between 12 noon and 14:00, the European Parliament votes on ACTA. If the European Parliament kills it, it dies globally.

There has been no shortage of ugly tricks, and they keep coming. The latest is a rumor that the pro-big-business and pro-monopoly EPP party group is going to try couping the ACTA vote off of this week’s agenda, postponing the vote indefinitely rather than risking a defeat.

I say “coup” as the agenda is usually set in mutual understanding, and is not considered a place for political last-minute sniping if you can’t win your issue in the public and honest debate.

The agenda is set in a small Europarl meeting tomorrow Monday at 17:00, before most Members of European Parliament (MEPs) have arrived to the weekly plenary session. It’s supposed to be a matter of formalities.

But the good news is that all other parts of Parliament – and indeed even some parts of the EPP group – are listening to citizens. They’re seeing their inboxes fill up with mails urging them to reject ACTA, mails coming in from all over the world.

And this is where we need to get working in a final gigantic effort in mailing the European Members of Parliament. That’s regardless of where in the world we live – ACTA is a global concern. It’s even quite the statement for an American or Brazilian to ask the Europarl to reject ACTA.

I have taken the liberty of setting up a mail alias, [email protected], that resolves to all the official addresses of the 750-plus Members of European Parliament. This is your time to tell them why you don’t want ACTA, in polite, courteous, and personal words.

(If you want example letters to look at and send, I have three examples over at my own blog. Do not under any circumstances write in a threatening or aggressive manner.)

It is not readily visible from the outside, but the street protests and concerned mails from citizens in Europe and elsewhere have made all the difference in turning the tide on this treaty that locks in the incumbents and shuts out the next generation. Every mail makes a difference. A mail a minute is a torrent. We know we can do better than that, we can do much better than that.

The European Commission – the pro-incumbent-business administration of Europe – has been rumored to be contacting Members of European Parliament individually to get them to postpone the vote. The responsible Commissioner Karel de Gucht even went on record that he’s going to be so furious with a Parliament that rejects ACTA, he’s going to keep it in the desk and present it again to the next Parliament in 2015 if it is rejected this week.

(We’ll see about that, by the way. Parliament takes its dignity very seriously, and it’s Parliament that appoints the Commission. I’m not sure that a Commissioner with that poor a judgment and that much a disrespect for Parliament will keep his job when the next Commission gets appointed.)

This week, a half-decade of political trickery, sneakery and thievery comes to its end. Let’s indeed make sure it comes to an end. This is the political and business nobility against the rest of the people, against all of us. Fortunately, the European Parliament knows who to listen to when nobody else does – so we must make sure that ACTA doesn’t pass there.

Just to give an impression of how desperate the monopoly proponents have become, one MEP in the EPP group – Marielle Gallo – has called the citizen protests “a soft form of terrorism”, and says that “the politicians should be doing the thinking for the citizens”.

Did you mail the MEPs yet? What are you waiting for? The vote is on Wednesday at noon.

[zridling]

Good luck, but the powers that be will never ever ever give up on lobbying politicians to make it all illegal.

ACTA Info blog:
http://acta.ffii.org/

[IainB]

Good luck, but the powers that be will never ever ever give up on lobbying politicians to make it all illegal.
ACTA Info blog: http://acta.ffii.org/

-zridling (July 02, 2012, 03:49 AM)

Yes, sadlement, I suspect you are right.   

[IainB]

Well, I used the template, changed it to my own words, then sent it to the mail alias link.
I am hugely skeptical that it will do any good, but fingers crossed anyway. You never know until you try.

[IainB]

Good outcome: the European Parliament has rejected the ACTA (Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement).

Strasbourg 04/07/2012
ACTA defeat a triumph for campaigners, battle must go on
Voting by 478 votes to 39, the European Parliament has listened to citizens and shot down the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement despite last-ditch EPP trickery.

"This is a great day for participatory democracy and the power of campaigning" said GUE/NGL President Gabi Zimmer, saluting and congratulating the millions of people around the world who helped bring the necessary pressure to bear to defeat ACTA.
"Citizens put their hopes in MEPs to defend their interests against the Commission and big business interests - we have stood up for them in this vote" said GUE/NGL MEP Helmut Scholz.
"Commissioner De Gucht has suffered a defeat with his misguided attempt to extend corporate control on the internet" Scholz said. "Never has it been so clear that the internet is a vital element in the functioning of European democracy. The whole concept of dealing with information and knowledge is changing and legislation should reflect that or be binned. We urged the Commission years ago to establish transparency in the talks. They refused and continued to defend this awful deal, now they must face the consequences."
The GUE/NGL will continue to support the free exchange of information in the public interest and a model of knowledge-sharing that offers artists a reasonable and adequate income.
See www.guengl.eu/acta for more information.

Full vote result:

• Against ACTA: 478
• For: 39
• Abstentions: 169

GUE/NGL Press Contacts:
David Lundy +32 485 50 58 12

Gay Kavanagh +32 473 84 23 20
[email protected]
[email protected]
European United Left / Nordic Green Left
European Parliamentary Group
www.guengl.eu      

[J-Mac]

I really hope that the Europeans can stop it - or at least cripple it, because we don’t seem to be able to do a damn thing about it on this side of the pond unfortunately. And it's our reps/companies/idiots that are trying to impose their collective will on the rest of the world.

I am so disheartened that the powers-that-be are now more powerful than ever, or at least it appears that way. They seem to revel in their power more publicly now, as if to show-off that they have no fear of the American public at all. Sickening. I've been disillusioned with our reps for a long time but never quite so much as now.

Jim

[IainB]

Despite the success, here's somewhat disheartening news via Slashdot: Bye ACTA, Hello CETA

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Tuesday July 10, @05:10AM
from the hide-it-in-subsection-c-part-seventeen dept.

New submitter xSander writes "Is anyone really surprised by this? ACTA may have been rejected by the European Parliment, but it is far from dead yet. Apparently, the EU is trying to revive ACTA through the Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA)." The article contains a handy side-by-side comparison of the CETA clauses that are nearly identical to ones found in ACTA.

EDIT 2012-07-11 1531hrs (NZT) - possibly this CETA bill is not an issue? (from falkvinge.net)
Alarm over CETA appears premature

EDIT 2012-07-13 1842hrs (NZT)
Oh dear, looks like it is an issue. (from falkvinge.net)
Bad faith from European Commission indicates CETA may be ACTA episode II after all

[IainB]

^See edit above.

EDIT 2012-07-11 1531hrs (NZT) - possibly this CETA bill is not an issue? (from falkvinge.net)
Alarm over CETA appears premature

-IainB (July 10, 2012, 07:35 AM)

[IainB]

See edit above:

EDIT 2012-07-13 1842hrs (NZT)
Oh dear, looks like it is an issue - an issue of Trust for the EC. (from falkvinge.net)
Bad faith from European Commission indicates CETA may be ACTA episode II after all

-IainB (July 10, 2012, 07:35 AM)

[tomos]

^ from that

The showdown over this thing called CETA continues in late August or early September at the earliest [after summer holidays]

[IainB]

Yes, there's the holidays, but I'm not sure whether urgent bills can get passed under "emergency" provisions despite many voters being away...
There seems to be a secretive Dirty Tricks Brigade active here.

[TaoPhoenix]

I agree that CETA needs to be watched.

Meanwhile there's a new one:
IPAA
http://motherboard.v...these-copyright-laws

http://www.publickno...e.org/ip-attache-act

http://techdailydose...cry-foul-over-ip.php

[IainB]

It's rather like @Renegade put it in a separate, earlier discussion thread - "they're like cockroaches".