Thank you India
I hop you win on this.
A secret trade agreement designed to harmonise some countries' intellectual property laws could destabilise existing international agreements and harm the economic prospects of developing countries, India has said. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a secret IP treaty being negotiated by the US, Japan, the …
... Microsoft from making their Office Documents formats as a standard, for a good reason, but failed?
something tells me that this argument will fail as well! The people supporting the ACTA have far more money (and powerful friends) then those who are arguing against it.
it is sad, but the time foretold, where the corporate entities have more power over the people then the people have over themselves, is already here.
"....as well as access to critical climate change technologies."
Presumably ACTA will also have a detrimental effect on the price of grilled octopus. They deserve a prize for most blatant shoehorning of nice, trendy Climate Change into a completely unrelated topic for this.
Shame really, that bit of topic-du-jour puffery detracted from what was otherwise a coherent and well-thought argument for me.
How many secret such deals trying to overrule people representatives are there?
The last I have heard was the infamous and thankfully failed (as far as I know) MULTILATERAL AGREEMENT ON INVESTMENT where investors' (read multinationals) funds were protected and above a country's laws.
Or the NAFTA tribunal.
And now this? How many other unknown ones?
Plutocracy by stealth is in its way if we don't pay attention.
The US "content" industry grew big by copying other peoples ideas. Disney, Fox, etc., all plagiarized the crap out of whatever they could lay their hands on, and it worked out for everyone. Then, once they got big, they started trying to stiffle others from doing the same. Disney leading the way with successful lobbying to keep increasing the time a work is covered in order to protect their lucrative rerun market.
ACTA is simply another step in the goal of these American giants remaining the biggest "content industry" while not actually having to create anything new, but instead resting on their laurels. Laurels the copied from others when the laws were more friendly to creators, not accountants.