El Rey está desnudo

Letter sent today by the FFII to the European Parliament Committee on Development about ACTA

Dear Members of the Committee on Development,

We are writing to express our concerns with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Below we will present points which we believe are essential for a proper assessment of ACTA’s impact on development.

1. ACTA is not only TRIPS plus, ACTA even goes beyond current EU law, the acquis. Prominent European academics [European Academics, 2011] and the study commissioned by the EP International Trade committee (INTA) [INTA, 2011] pointed this out. While the Parliament’s legal service concludes that on the face of it, ACTA appears to be in line with current EU law, it could only reach this conclusion by consistently overlooking known issues. [FFII-922] ACTA’s damages based on retail price lead to damages based on an imaginary gross revenue, which is way beyond actual loss suffered. Its border measures have a broader scope, its injunctions and provisional measures are more intrusive. The INTA study recommends asking the European Court of Justice an opinion on ACTA.

2. If development and fair trade would have been the intention, the EU should have chosen to further balance, in the World Trade Organization, the TRIPS agreement.

3. The 61 pages Douwe Korff & Ian Brown opinion applies fair balance tests to ACTA. How are, for instance, the right to property and the right to freedom of expression, balanced in ACTA? Their conclusions are devastating: “ACTA was negotiated in unwarranted secrecy, without adequate input from civil society or parliamentarians, but in close cooperation with major IP right holders. Not surprisingly, this resulted in a text that gives disproportionate protection to big business; fails to level the playing field between developed and developing nations in international trade relations; hampers innovation (especially by SMEs); fails to promote grassroots culture; and could impede the dissemination of knowledge for people across the world (and access to health care and generic medicines).” [Korff & Brown, 2011]

4. Regarding fundamental rights, Korff & Brown conclude: “Overall, ACTA tilts the balance of IPR protection manifestly unfairly towards one group of beneficiaries of the right to property, IP right holders, and unfairly against others. It equally disproportionately interferes with a range of other fundamental rights, and provides or allows for the determination of such rights in procedures that fail to allow for the taking into account of the different, competing interests, but rather, stack all the weight at one end.

This makes the entire Agreement, in our opinion, incompatible with fundamental European human rights instruments and standards.” [Korff & Brown, 2011]

5. In third countries with less protection of fundamental rights, ACTA will have a more negative impact than in the EU. By ratifying ACTA, the EU would violate article 21 Treaty on European Union, the obligation to promote democracy, the rule of law, human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for human dignity, the principles of equality and solidarity, and respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law.

Nor is ACTA is compatible with articles 17 and 19 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). [ARTICLE 19, 2011]

6. Civil society groups (for instance [Oxfam, 2011] and [Public Citizen, 2011]) and an academic opinion [Flynn, Madhani, 2011] pointed out problems with access to medicine. The ACTA text only mentions the Doha Declaration once in the non binding ACTA preamble. The combination of heightened measures with a non binding reference to the Doha Declaration, and DG-Trade and the US Trade Representative undermining the Doha Declaration in other fora does not provide sufficient safeguards for access to medicine. [FFII-922]

7. Regarding criminal measures, the WTO dispute settlement panel definition of commercial scale (US versus China case) leaves countries policy space to find a proportional solution. ACTA deliberately overturns this definition. ACTA removes the scale element from the definition of the crime. ACTA does not have a public interest exemption either. As a result, ACTA criminalises everyday computer use. ACTA can be used to criminalise newspapers and websites revealing a document, office workers forwarding a file, people making a private copy and whistle-blowers revealing documents in the public interest. ACTA criminalises almost everyone with a computer – who never forwarded an email? ACTA also criminalises aiding and abetting, which puts pressure on Internet Service Providers, who may decide to pre-emptively censor Internet communications. [ARTICLE 19, 2011; FFII-922]

8. ACTA will not solve global media piracy. High prices for media goods, low incomes, and cheap digital technologies are the main ingredients of global media piracy. Relative to local incomes in Brazil, Russia, or South Africa, the price of a CD, DVD, or copy of Microsoft Office is five to ten times higher than in the United States or Europe, the Media Piracy in Emerging Economies report shows. [Karaganis, 2011] There is no distribution of legal CDs and DVDs outside the capitals. Some 90% of the people in emerging economies can only turn to illegal media copies. Stronger enforcement can not solve the piracy problem, which is basically a global pricing problem, a sign of market failure.

The costs in social welfare of harsh measures are enormous. ACTA is not compatible with article 15 of the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). [FFII-922]

9. In January 2011, European academics issued an “Opinion of European Academics on ACTA”. The academics invite the European institutions, in particular the European Parliament, and the national legislators and governments to withhold consent of ACTA, “as long as significant deviations from the EU acquis or serious concerns on fundamental rights, data protection, and a fair balance of interests are not properly addressed”. [European Academics, 2011]

10. According to the EP INTA study, “There does not therefore appear to be any immediate benefit from ACTA for EU citizens”. [INTA , 2011]

11. ACTA will negatively impact innovation, competition, development, fair trade, start up companies, mass digitization projects, access to medicines and Internet governance. ACTA threatens the rule of law and fundamental rights. These negative consequences will impact the EU as well.

We call upon the Parliament to say no to ACTA.

Yours sincerely,

Ante Wessels

Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure

Original link and more info here. 

Say NO to ACTA.

What is “libertarianism”?

Well, in this article by @David_Boaz published for first time in 1997 but completely “up to date” you can find some answers. I strongly recommend to read it completely, but I extract here the “key concepts” about “libertarianism” and an interesting (and sincere) corollary:

Individualism. Libertarians see the individual as the basic unit of social analysis. Only individuals make choices and are responsible for their actions. Libertarian thought emphasizes the dignity of each individual, which entails both rights and responsibility. The progressive extension of dignity to more people—to women, to people of different religions and different races—is one of the great libertarian triumphs of the Western world.

Individual Rights. Because individuals are moral agents, they have a right to be secure in their lives, liberty, and property. Those rights are not granted by government or by society; they are inherent in the nature of human beings. It is intuitively right that individuals enjoy the security of such rights; the burden of explanation should lie with those who would take rights away.

Spontaneous Order. A great degree of order in society is necessary for individuals to survive and flourish. It’s easy to assume that order must be imposed by a central authority, the way we impose order on a stamp collection or a football team. The great insight of libertarian social analysis is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes. The most important institutions in human society—language, law, money, and markets—all developed spontaneously, without central direction. The many associations within civil society are formed for a purpose, but civil society itself is spontaneous and does not have a purpose of its own.

The Rule of Law. Libertarianism is not libertinism or hedonism. It is not a claim that “people can do anything they want to, and nobody else can say anything.” Rather, libertarianism proposes a society of liberty under law, in which individuals are free to pursue their own lives so long as they respect the equal rights of others. The rule of law means that individuals are governed by generally applicable and spontaneously developed legal rules, not by arbitrary commands, and that those rules should protect the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness in their own ways, not aim at any particular result or outcome.

Limited Government. To protect rights, individuals form governments. But government is a dangerous institution. Libertarians want to divide and limit power, and that means especially limiting government, generally through a written constitution enumerating and limiting the powers that the people delegate to government. Limited government is the basic political implication of libertarianism, and historically it was the dispersion of power in Europe—more than other parts of the world—that led to individual liberty and sustained economic growth.

Free Markets. To survive and to flourish, individuals need to engage in economic activity. The right to property entails the right to exchange property by mutual agreement. Free markets are the economic system of free individuals, and they are necessary for the creation of wealth. Libertarians believe that people will be both freer and more prosperous if government intervention in people’s economic choices is minimized.

The Virtue of Production. Much of the impetus for libertarianism in the 17th century was a reaction against monarchs and aristocrats who lived off the productive labor of other people. Libertarians defended the right of people to keep the fruits of their labor, and from that effort evolved respect for the dignity of work and production. Libertarians developed an analysis that divided society into two basic classes: those who produced wealth and those who took it by force from others. Thomas Paine, for instance, wrote, “There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes.” Modern libertarians defend the right of productive people to keep what they earn, against a new class of politicians and bureaucrats who would seize their earnings to transfer them to nonproducers.

Natural Harmony of Interests. Libertarians believe that there is a natural harmony of interests among peaceful, productive people in a just society. One person’s individual plans—getting a job, starting a business, buying a house, and so on—may conflict with the plans of others, so the market makes many of us change our plans. But we all prosper from the operation of the free market, and there are no necessary conflicts between farmers and merchants, manufacturers and importers. Only when government begins to hand out rewards in response to political pressure do we find ourselves involved in group conflict, pushed to organize and contend with other groups for political power.

Peace. Libertarians have always battled the scourge of war. They understood that war brought death and destruction on a grand scale, disrupted family and economic life, and gave the ruling class more power—which might explain why rulers have not always shared the popular desire for peace. Free men and women, of course, have often had to defend their own societies against foreign threats; but throughout history war has usually been the common enemy of peaceful, productive people on all sides of the conflict.

(…)

A libertarian world won’t be a perfect one. There will still be inequality, poverty, crime, corruption, man’s inhumanity to man. But unlike the theocratic visionaries, the pie-in-the-sky socialist utopians, or the starry-eyed Mr. Fixits of the New Deal and the Great Society, libertarians don’t promise you a rose garden. Karl Popper once said that attempts to create heaven on earth invariably produce hell. Libertarianism holds out the goal, not of a perfect society, but of a better and freer one. It promises a world in which more decisions will be made in the right way by the right person: you. The result will be, not an end to crime and poverty and inequality, but less—often much less—of most of those things most of the time.” 

Well, this is more or less what I defend. I think it is difficult to discuss it, but I am sure there will be people who will do it ;-)

In Europe there is no space for more fools…

… but they are pushing to get in.

The same as G’mork said in the unforgetable Nevereding Story “Fantasia has no boundaries”, we can say also that the “human stupidity has no boundaries” either.

And why? Well, because of this:

http://www.anti-powerpoint-party.com/

Probably you already heard about them. And probably you already heard that they aspire to become the 4th political force in Switzerland. The funny thing is that they might reach their target. That justifies by itself the title of this entry.

Of course any cracy guy can create the political party he wants (freedom!). But to create a political party (??) to promote and obtain the banning/prohibition (???) of a comercial tool (????) which use is optional (?????) imply that such person considers that the people is stupid. And probably he is right because if he created all this circus is because he thinks he can get more than his own vote.

He could have created a Consultancy company that helps to introduce new techniques for presentations, helping the European business to improve their processes and customer satisfaction. Maybe he could be really successful with it. During my PRINCE2 training in London I met a french guy who lives in Frankfurt and who is teacher of the PMI certification, who does not use Powerpoint at all during his classes and he has a percentage of success close to 100% in the exams. So maybe the idea is good.

But instead he decided to create a political party (???) to quit the freedom of the people to chose the tool that they want to use in their businesses. Or even worse: to make the majority of the people to prohibit you which tools you can use in your office (remember what I said about the dictatorship of the majority).

I doubt if he is simply stupid or evil. But in any of the two cases he might show that the header of this article is right. Just as an example, the European media are being pretty kind with him…

Pesimistic

One friend told me on Friday that the reasons why the world is so crazy is due to the effect of the moon. However I still did not arrive to that level with regards to superstitions.

Nevertheless I share her view that the world is a little bit crazy nowadays, a little bit more than usual, and that makes me to feel a little bit pessimistic about the future. Too many bad things are happening, or we are knowing, that let us little space for being optimistic. 

The planet is crazy. The earthquake and the tsunami last week in Japan are the last chapters of a whole series of disasters that seems to be accelerating with the time, and not all of them are related to the global warming-human effect (supposing that we believe on it). However there is little that we can do on this (unless we learn how to control earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes).

On Saturday a coalition leaded by US, UK and France started attacking Libya after the green light given by the UN Security Council. Whatever the reasons that led to it, in my opinion the coalition did not plan the way ahead of the operation, and they started to act moved by other interests that just the real willing to protect civilian people, without thinking “what is next”. Let´s see how it finish (if it does), but for the time being the Arab League has already withdrawn its support to the operation. 

There is also a global plan of governments of the “free world” to “disconnect” Internet. They have realized that the network has escaped to their own control, and with the excuse of security (remember Franklin) or the protection of whoever privileged rights they are introducing step by step, with the needed collaboration of the big telecom companies, more and more restrictions that will end with the freedom in Internet as we know it now: ACTA, AT&T data cap of 150GB and the application of the anti terrorist law to protect the copyright in Internet are three of the symptoms of what is coming. The today known news about AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile is only another needed step. If I am now wrong I consider that the US Government will allow with little impediments the operation. 

And last but not least, thanks to Anonymous, we discovered also this past week the secret plans of the US DoD about how to manipulate the Internet social conscience through advanced tools of identity emulation. However, that the plans are now known does not mean that they are being stooped (indeed they are not).

As a summary: natural disasters, war, less freedom, reduced civil liberties and stronger governmental control on our movements. And everything in just 10 days. Do you still think that we can be optimistic?

But not everything is lost. There is something on the way. Pay attention to your screens.