European vote hammers another nail into ACTA's coffin The European Parliament's International Trade Committee (INTA) has voted decisively to reject the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and is recommending that the treaty be rejected in next month's plenary vote. "I welcome the result of today's vote. I am pleased that the committee has acknowledged the …
The rules only seem to get more restrictive, whichever area of law we look at, and laws are very, very rarely repealed. All the bad guys have to do is keep trying until resistance crumbles, or they can slip things through on a technicality.
Look at the software patents thing, that rears its ugly head in the EU every so often, despite having been slapped down multiple times in multiple ways. The last time I heard about it someone was trying to slip them through in a bill ostensibly on 'fisheries and agriculture'.
Might be good for passing of laws. Try to pass it and if its defeated by a certain margin it can't be bought up again for another X years. If its close then by all means put it back up again in a few months, I'm talking something which is beaten by a 70% majority being pulled until say 4 years have passed.
Very well said. I posted that same point elsewhere here and suggested that the fix is to prosecute the perpetrators.
The long-term and proper solution to this problem is to eliminate copyrights and patents and to refine Trademarks. Note that *unlike* copyrights and patents, trademarks make some sense. They promote the mutual interests of vendors and consumers (TM). I worry, though, that the rent-seekers will find some weaselly way to rip us of with Trademarks as well -- hence the notion of 'refining' them.
Jimmy Carr, U2, Bob Geldolf, and Gary Barlow who are costing the UK jobs by avoiding tax on the money they are earning in the UK.
I would love to see the amounts of money hidden from the UK tax man by these bastions of UK Industry that are asking for our sympathy and protection from the scourge on internet piracy.
What we need is a global law to protect us from the 'Globally Tax' compliant.
You do know official Register line is that only rich people deserve copyright and protection, and tax breaks don't you?
[For those who think I am taking the mick, I am seriously not in the slightest, see the articles by Lewis Page and Andrew Orlowski, the two head honchos here for proof]
re "Open Source code depends on good copyright."
Only to the extent it is required to keep the code out of the clutches of rent-seekers. That is the main purpose of things like the GPL. In this respect, 'copyright' is a weapon that we (I'm an open source author) use to *defend* ourselves against attack by rent-seekers using that weapon.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
-- John Philpot Curran -- speech upon the Right of Election (1790)
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