Cory Doctorow on ACTA where he puts the good old WIPO procedure into perspective:
Historically, developing countries have asked the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization for “technical assistance”…
“Technical assistance” is a great euphemism for bribes. Same applies to the WIPO ‘development agenda’. Anyway, the North-South scheme does not hold though the European Commission is very frank that this ACTA treaty is mostly about trading it on ‘problem states’.
“Lastly, if anyone tries to back out of the ACTA the excuse will be, “We can’t or there will be sanctions” so that ACTA will be law forever.”
Exactly, I coined it ‘Liquid Concrete’ recently. It cements controversial new standards for a fastly changing digital environment and access to medication ecc., without a proper democratic procedure, without an open and honest debate, without impact assessments and without opt-out options. It is hard to tell what national or European legislators gain from the process other than a loss of flexibility and powers.
Some members of the democratic fractions of parliament, European Peoples Party, Green Group etc prepared a cross-partisan Written Declaration WD 12/2010. So there are now three months for your Member of the European Parliament to sign up WD 12/2010 to preserve the very purpose of their public office in these confidential negotiations. MEPs can sign the written declaration 12/2010 by physically coming to a specific table, near the entrance of the plenary session.
Next week, 22 of March there will be another EU-Commission stakeholder hearing.
Sköne Oke 
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