ACTA Negotiators Refuse To Set Up More Timely Meeting For Consumer Advocates
from the who-needs-consumers? dept
Following up on the news of how ACTA negotiators hid the information about the latest round of negotiations, including scheduling the only opportunity for consumer advocates to meet with negotiators until it was too late for those consumer advocates to get to Tokyo in time for the meeting, a bunch of those groups asked the Japanese delegation to change the schedule to allow for a meeting next week, rather than on the 24th. Sean Flynn passes along the note he received (and others got nearly identical notes):Dear Mr.FlynnFlynn also points us to the news that the Green Party in the EU also asked to meet with negotiators in Tokyo, and there was some hope that perhaps that the negotiators would agree to that, since the EU Parliament has made it clear that they are not happy with ACTA and may try to block it. But... no such luck:
Thank you for your contact.
First of all, we regret that we could not inform you earlier of the lunch meeting.
As we just settled our program of this round this week with other parties, we have not able to inform our schedule to public beforehand.
Please kindly understand our situation.
Actually lunch time on 24 Sept is the only slot for NGO meeting.
The purpose of the lunch meeting provides an opportunity to exchange views informally between the negotiating parties and the public, not a firm consultation.
All ACTA negotiation parties recognize the importance of transparency and we are to discuss any ways to promote transparency of ACTA negotiations.
Best regards
Yoshihiro Takeda
Dear SirsTalk about lip service to transparency while at the same time mocking it. Also, while some supporters of ACTA seem to claim that because the documents were shown once to such public interest groups everything's perfectly transparent, it seems pretty damn obvious that those working on ACTA have done their best to keep rather important stakeholders very much out of the conversation. Of course, the industries, who are such fans of ACTA, may discover that screwing over consumers and consumer advocates comes back to bite them. You don't have much of a business without consumers after all.
Thank you for your message.
We understand the Greens/EFA Group's interest in the transparency very well.
The Government of Japan also recognizes the importance of the transparency in ACTA negotiations and decided to arrange a lunch meeting with the public on September 24 as you know.
However, it is with regret that we cannot arrange the meeting during the week of September 27 due to purely practical organizational reasons.
We regret that we could not inform you earlier of lunch meeting as you pointed out. As we just settled the program of ACTA negotiations in Tokyo this week with the negotiating parties, we cannot inform our lunch meeting to public beforehand. Please kindly understand our situation.
ACTA negotiating parties share the intention to promote transparency and we are to discuss any ways to promote the transparency of ACTA negotiations.
Best regards
Yoshihiro Takeda
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Filed Under: acta, consumer advocates, eu, green party, japan, sean flynn, tokyo
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the little puppy has somehting to say
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last statement holds true for corporations too
All these anti-consumer decisions come around and bite companies in the ass after they're done subverting laws.
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A Shakespearean solution
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Re: last statement holds true for corporations too>> Blockbuster
The large residential ISPs (mobile and terrestrial) will be in a similar situation if true competition ever comes to those sectors.
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Short version:
Piracy is unimpressed.
Freedoms are being eroded but piracy goes strong.
Is anybody going to stop backing up their videos and music? sharing with other people?
Yah right LoL
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Transparency
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Re: Re: last statement holds true for corporations too>> Blockbuster
competition will happen in 2 years with the FCC whitespace decision yesterday. If its not to corrupted by the incumbent ISPs.
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dont vote at all
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Don't finance terrorism and the erosion of freedoms, don't give the industry and the government your money or respect because they sure don't give a f. about you.
Every time you buy a plastic disc you are financing this terrorists that call themselves business men.
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Good Try, EU
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I'm not sure people really understand what's going on here. They're not subverting the laws. They're subverting freedom of speech, expression and privacy that once were the fundamental foundation of Western governments. There is no democracy without free speech. Once information is controlled so are the minds of the masses.
They're is actually a law being considered in the Senate of the United States that allows censorship of speech based solely on opposition to certain corporate interests. And it has a large nonpartisan support base. That should scare the s**t out of everyone who actually likes having a modicum of freedom. This isn't the slippery slope. It's kicking the rock hold the avalanche back.
Hell, in the US in the past it was difficult to impose censorship even during war when a great many lives were at stake. Now it's being imposed in the name of a few corporate interests who's business is being undermined by technological advances.
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Re:
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Re: Re: last statement holds true for corporations too>> Blockbuster
I kept receiving obvious knock-offs of videos, like someone took the real movie and sent back a burned DVD instead, and they apparently just took the disk envelope and sent it off to the next customer without checking to see that the disk inside was correct. I don't think the postal service was doing this.
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