European Parliament Member Marietje Schaake Explains How Europeans Can Stop ACTA

from the don't-miss-it dept

Thu, Jan 26th 2012 4:08pm — Mike Masnick

As we've been discussing, there's been a lot of misinformation flying around concerning ACTA -- especially in the EU, where it has not yet been officially voted on. While we've tried to explain some of the problems with the agreement, there is still plenty of confusion over what to do about it. Thankfully, Marietje Schaake, a Member of the European Parliament (whose excellent work we've discussed before) has taken to Reddit to provide a lot more detail about the process itself, and what people can do to speak up. It's very useful info, especially for those in Europe (while also being a nice display of how politicians can use Reddit for good purposes). Basically, while ACTA has been signed by many members of the EU, it still needs to be ratified by the European Parliament. That's why there's still some time and why you should pay attention to what Schaake has to say. Here's a snippet:

So what can we do to stop ACTA?

If you are concerned about ACTA, you can convince the EP to vote against ACTA. In November 2010 we proposed an alternative resolution on ACTA, which intended to take away the main concerns. It was voted down by a very slight majority, please see here (the red section represents MEPs voting against our resolution). As you can see, the difference is only 16 votes, out of 736 (or 754 as it stands now). Another text was then voted in favour, which said the Commission should carry on its negotiations.

If you are concerned about ACTA, contact MEPs (from your country of political party), especially targeting the ones who are in the committees who will vote on ACTA in the coming months. You can find their email addresses on the EP website. Perhaps it won't have to come to a blackout!

She even includes a TL;DR version (it's so nice when politicians actually understand how the internet works). And, because that's all people want anyway, here's that one, too:

TL;DR: Important dates for ACTA in the European Parliament:
- 29 February/1 March: Discussion in international trade committee,
- April or May: Vote in international trade committee,
- 12, 13 or 14 June: Final vote in plenary (most important vote).
(Please note, all dates may be changed)

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Filed Under: acta, copyright, eu, eu parliament, marietje schaake, parliament, politics

29 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 4:51pm

I have one thing to say to IP maximalists
Phuck Ewe!
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One for all, 26 Jan 2012 @ 5:33pm

Hollywood junk vs Freedom of speech, your choice
This is the only way to win the war on our freedom. The media companies buy our politicians and will continue to push these bills until they kill the internet. We cannot protest forever hoping to deflect every bill, and if we do not take action now there will be a bill that will slip through and the internet will be gone forever. We can stop them, all it takes is self-discipline: DO NOT BUY RENT OR OTHERWISE PAY FOR ANY MOVIE, SONG, CD OR DVD FOR A PERIOD OF 6 MONTHS! This should be long enough to take out these big leaches, but if not � a further 6 months will do the trick. Once they�re out, anyone trying to kill the Internet, won�t be able to use the copyright as the excuse. During these 6 months, DO buy and pay for independent productions and show your support of local artists. If you lack the discipline, opt instead for joining Black March. Let your friends and family know the importance of this action.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 5:54pm

Definitely the worst thing you could do to MPAA/RIAA is boycott their product entirely, free or otherwise. Just make them irrelevant. Fortunately their overreaching has caused millions to wake up to them. It could happen.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 6:02pm

Marietje Schaake - wikileaks co-founder.

A few people sending the sheeple around in circles. Way to go sheeple herder Mike!
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 6:32pm

Re:
Think about this. What if we took away only YOUR freedom of speech. How would you feel about that?

From my point of view, if you take away MY freedom of speech, then the only answer is revolution, and Hollywood would not fare well in that environment.

To arms, to arms, Hollywood came and only dribbled.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 7:54pm

Re:
While the sheep run, please seed harder, don't be a leech.
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ken (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:03pm

Without Safe Harbors there is no Internet
Back in 2000 Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This was pre Napster. There was a provision in the DMCA called Safe Harbors that would shield providers from lawsuits if they registered with the copyright office and removed any material that copyright holders complained about. This provision was hotly contested by Hollywood, the media, newspapers and other content creators but the provision made it in just barely as a compromise. How important was that provision? If it had not passed it would have killed the Internet as we know it in its infancy. There would be no Facebook, Google, Youtube, blogs, Twitter, Flickr or any sites that allow user generated content.

Since then Hollywood, the music industry, and the media have vowed to either eliminate Safe Harbors completely or render it meaningless. Bills such as SOPA and PIPA are designed to do just that. Now we have ACTA and IPP and other international agreements that are designed to do the same thing without any input from the public, effected industries, or civil liberties groups and even sidestep Congress and government bodies around the world.

The gist of the matter is if we lose Safe Harbors we have lost the Internet.
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Violated (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:07pm

Ad Astra per Aspera
I have today come to believe for the first time that we can kill ACTA where this is a combination of two reasons.

First is that us opposition is getting very mobilized and very active like the 50,000 who just marched in Poland and then this beautiful STOP ACTA poster...
http://www.derechoaleer.org/images/2010/stop_acta-color_rgb-web.png

The second aspect is the long delays that ACTA has to go through which should be European Parliament vote around June and this should come in affect around the following March. So this is plenty of time for us to do whatever it takes to kill this ACTA beastie.

So I am now certain enough that we can win. We then need to focus our efforts and to reform copyright law in the good way.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:27pm

Re: Re:
Nothing for Hollywood to do. They just have to let you guys follow the pied piper off the cliff. The promise land is at the bottom, go for it!
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:48pm

Re: Without Safe Harbors there is no Internet
I think it would have happened just in another country maybe we would have all Baidu, Xunlei and other things, just like is happening with music where there is no American startups that are good only Europeans and they appear where copyright is weak and protect them so they can be nurtured into health and become Spotify's.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:50pm

Re: Ad Astra per Aspera
"Do not hotlink please!
Is to much for our resources..."

That is what your link shows.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 8:54pm

Re: Re: Re:
Are you sure?
Hollywood keep spending an awful lot of money just to let the sheep fall off of a cliff lately.
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TPBGirl (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 9:39pm

Where the hell have you guys been on ACTA!? lol The story came out in 2008, the leaked docs in 2010.

On TPB...
"ACTA Agreement leaked! " http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5425059/

Now these are the orginal ACTA agrrement. Over the past couple of years, lots of items have changed due to what Hollywood wanted, most of the countries would not agree to. So ACTA got shoved to the back burner for a long time.

CNET had a good article on it in 2010 after the leaks..

"Dear President Obama: Get ACTA out in the open"
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31322_3-20000480-256.html?tag=mncol;posts

Another good link for info..

"ACTA"
http://werebuild.eu/wiki/index.php?title=ACTA

ACTA was the only reason I joined twitter, to help fight it. Right now our USA politicians are trying to push the "OPEN" act and its about to move fast!

SOPA vs PIPA vs OPEN
http://keepthewebopen.com/sopa-vs-open
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Neppe (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 11:32pm

Re:
I'd like to point you towards the Techdirt Search function. It's towards the top right hand corner. If you enter ACTA in to the little white box there and then press the button next to it you'll see roughly 250 articles since 2008.

Welcome to Techdirt.
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Violated (profile), 26 Jan 2012 @ 11:33pm

Re: Re: Ad Astra per Aspera
Try again. It may have been overloaded when getting popular.

Also as luck would have it I found another one...
http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/images/7/76/Acta-infographics.png
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2012 @ 11:58pm

Re:
And she's a member of parliament. Of course, you can argue that parliament doesn't mean anything.

In which case, why all the money spent on politicians to pass these laws?
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Jan 2012 @ 2:03am

Re:
"Marietje Schaake - wikileaks co-founder."

Chris Dodd, Chairman of the MPAA. Your point?
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Jan 2012 @ 2:06am

Re:
That is right comrade she doesn't takes bribes from us.
We must show the sheep...aham...the people that they need to follow real men and not some freetard lady that got into some parliament in somewhere in the world.

People need to follow Mel Gibson drinking his way to prison or Tom Cruise affiliations with dubious religious scams. Chris Dodd is another one that should be followed he is the vanguard of respect after talking about how if the US government doesn't ask "how high" there would be consequences, what a man! The paragon of virtue.

Keep digging comrade you will win I guarantee, TRUST ME NOW!
Do not flinch in the face of adversity or the total lack truth we will fabricate a better truth then reality and it will be great.
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Richard (profile), 27 Jan 2012 @ 3:02am

Re:
Once again we see a Cargo Cult comment - taking the forms and patterns of our arguments but missing the underlying meaning.
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Marcel de Jong (profile), 27 Jan 2012 @ 4:14am

Re:
I'd vote for Marietje Schaake, even though she's in the EU for a different party, one that I'd normally don't support. But Ms. Schaake has often come up for the civil rights of internet users, and has been on the forefront of the opposition to the multiple hijack attempts by the software patent lobbies.
Also, she's actively looking for different business models for, for instance, the 'struggling' media industry. Hosted and presided many events regarding this subject.

She has done more for the betterment of our society, than your precious Chris Dodd.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Jan 2012 @ 6:08am

Re: Re:
This exactly.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Jan 2012 @ 6:16am

Re:
Are you aware that the idiom you're using 'around in circles' implies a lack of progress on a subject due to a lack of information or decisiveness? I ask because it does not appear that you understand what the words you're using actually mean in relation to one another. It doesn't make any sense to say that wikileaks sends people around in circles when their modus operandiis to provided them with formerly hidden information which is a solution to going around in circles, not a cause.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Jan 2012 @ 6:30am

Re: Re: Re:
Hollywood is behaving like a child who's bottle has been taken away, throwing a tantrum. They are too immature to know how to deal with this situation in any other way.

BTW, so are you.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Jan 2012 @ 7:28am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Hollywood is behaving like a child who's bottle has been taken away, throwing a tantrum. They are too immature to know how to deal with this situation in any other way."

OMFG, are you kidding? What do you think the anonymous children have been doing? They have reacted like fucking 2 year olds. Hollywood has been very, very tolerant of a lot of bullshit over the years. Close down 1 obvious pirate site, and the anon children turn into devils incarnate and do the nasty on the net.

The children are on your team, idiot.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Jan 2012 @ 7:46am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
With the exception of people who download files with the intent of selling those files, I believe that all of the file sharers are behaving in a very reasoned and mature approach. They intelligently recognize that Hollywood has stolen from the public domain, and is attempting hold those stolen items hostage. They also recognize that test driving those products to determine if they are worth putting down the (often outrageous) price requested. They also, very maturely, do spend money on the dreck produced by Hollywood, check growth of the industry. http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_207.htm even though it is dreck for the most part.

If Big Content were mature they would listen to the marketplace, and change their behavior. Instead they continue the tantrum. When the Internet sent them to their room last week for a time out, they responded with a degree of denial that would make any two year old orgasm with envy.
Worse yet, Hollywood's tantrum has been going on for 100 years or more, and they still haven't grown up.
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Misio, 27 Jan 2012 @ 12:37pm

Protests against ACTA in Poland http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPiV_SB-scM
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booboo, 27 Jan 2012 @ 2:04pm

vile
If everyone just stops paying for their ' content ' via music sales , DVDs,,cinema tickets,web subscriptions,branded apps ,magazines,on and offline versions, just boycott anything to do with 'big content' forever..
Stop visiting their websites and generating ad dollars for them. Never give them your data so they can sell it, just stay away from everything they do, forever.
You know its easy living without them,and its liberating.
If millions of us in each country stop giving them any more of our money they will go down, they need us FAR more than we need them.
These vile corporations and their armies of blood sucking lawyers must be defeated, this is the battle for the free(ish) world, the stakes cannot be higher, and these guys will never give up until they get what they want.
No government will ever be able to control them, only us as their consumers and life source have to power to destroy them.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jan 2012 @ 3:11pm

Re: vile
done and done, for years now, fuck em

I'll only come back with my money once they fire the old cronies, and hire new blood who actually understands the internet and has the customers best interests in mind,

100% content, or near enough, dont want multiple subcriptions god dammit
no region waiting time
instant streaming/downloading
multiple ways to access the service
cheap
cheap
and
cheap
or free with advertisement
subcription based

basically, what megaupload was setting itself up to be
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sdfsd, 14 Feb 2012 @ 8:08am

dfg
Say NO to ACTA:

Foarte bine ca sustineti miscare asta,cu cat suntem mai multi cu atat o sa se teme mai tare de noi.
Aici cateva video referitoare la A.C.T.A,SOPA:

B.A.S & B.M.B � Un indemn la libertate (Stop ACTA)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtsuRaFxWQA

Comunitatea ON-LINE din Romania spune STOP A.C.T.A.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=link extern

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLRqD9TjBAM&feature=relalink extern

Anti ACTA protests across Europe on 02/11/2012 - Summary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsLbwkhwk9w
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