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I am putting more hope on the European Parliament.

Each individual country's government is too easy to "persuade" and when the negative aspects of ACTA are finally reaching the population they will just blame the EU as usual.

And influential parties in most member nations have tightly controlled voting procedures, e.g. every member of parliament associated with the same party is told how to vote on certain issues.

This is a lot less problematic on the EU level, since factions in the EU Parliament consist of representatives of parties from all over the place.
The of course share common goals but no centralized control structures or enforcable voting loyalties.

Funny thing is, even being from the US (and not too proud of it at this point) I've never understood the whole party system. Why, exactly, are people too damned afraid to vote what they think, instead of what they're told? Voting only works if people have the guts to do it right, and the party system makes a mockery of the whole process no matter where it's instituted.
edit: typos.

Edited 2012-01-28 05:50 UTC

And yet, with 8 parties in our Dutch parliament, we have more choice than Americans have with 535 seats in Congress.

Think about that for a second.

And yet, with 8 parties in our Dutch parliament, we have more choice than Americans have with 535 seats in Congress.

Think about that for a second. "

Thought about it, but not clear what you're trying to convey as I know very little about the Netherlands. Do you mean to say that, in the Netherlands, people don't always vote the way their precious parties tell them to? Or did you mean that, while they do vote so, at least there are more choices of which Mafia controls you?

Well, you can have political parties with freedom of expression inside of them. It typically happens inside of smaller parties here.

It is just that not all of them are this way. Some employ mafia-like techniques to make their members vote "the right way". Though luckily, members do not accept this all the time.

Edited 2012-01-28 09:55 UTC

People aren't afraid, people are stupid. Even bright, clever people can be stupid and act stupid. People don't think much about future. And even if they do think, they think in terms of money or whatever, not in terms of rights.

Some amount of inertia (lasting one parliamentary term for example - or less, if gov falls apart and early elections are called), consistency of sorts, isn't bad and helps prevent chaos ...that's the whole point of people forming cooperatives of various kinds, also parties. Which, by themselves, don't automatically preclude right choices (sure, from time to time we get something ...awkward; but that's still probably "the least of evils")

If it becomes ossified, with scarcely any variety and false contrasts ("even"?), that's another issue - but it can be largely avoided (come on, this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Parties'_seat_share_in_Polish_Sejms.png is the recent history of my political landscape - 3 largest parties in present parliament didn't even exist 15 years ago, and 3rd largest is a new phenomena; only too bad the volatility means this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Beer-Lovers'_Party lovely one from '91 didn't make it ;( ...BTW, a recent photo from my parliament: http://kyon.pl/img/20900,sejm,pl,polityczne,politics,acta,V_mask,po... )

Edited 2012-02-02 23:23 UTC

Maybe put more hope on the individual national states' government. Signing something "in" the EU doesn't imply it's automatically valid for all the states of the EU. Eurpoean right has to be transformed into national right, which might take some time. Time for the people to wake up their "representatives" in the government.



Of course, because people do only receive "EO right" as far as those have become national rights. Some are good, others are plain stupid. No matter which governments you compare, one is more stupid than the other. :-)



Correct. Furthermore, the political parties are highly influenced by the economy ("lobbying"), even though most of them do deny it. Individuals have no place in this "controlled situation" as they might act deviantly.

Example: In the basic law for the the federal republic of Germany, there's a sentence reading as: "The democratic parties participate in the forming of the political will of the people." Reality is: They are forming that will (or better, they exercise it instead or on behalf on the people). That's why no "higher ranks" in politics are chosen by normal people. It's a thing totally happening within the few parties we have, and those are influences, well... I may say controlled by industry, banking, clerical and economy organisations.

So to come back to the main context: What do you expect to happen? For the loobyists ti give up the "higher good" of profit for more democracy? Ha!



As I said, I really fear that those representatives in EU parliament already have their "lobby chip" implanted.

Again the question: What do you expect from people who sign a list for having applied a meeting or assemply that didn't even happen, getting several hundred Euros for that, and confronted with their misbehaviour, running away, calling security or simply stating: "I am entitled to." Do not expect them to be any different than national, regional or municipal politicans. They're all (i. e. 99,9% of them) for the "higher good". They do not bite the hand that feeds them candy. Instead, they bite the hand that keeps them alive whenever possible. :-)

I am putting more hope on the European Parliament.

Each individual country's government is too easy to "persuade" and when the negative aspects of ACTA are finally reaching the population they will just blame the EU as usual.
"

That might be true, but the government might not be in full control on the validation process. For instance, in France, if ACTA requires a change in the constitution, it would require the agreement of both houses in the parliament, and currently the upper house is controlled by the opposition, and the socialists are usually against the strong anti copyright laws.

The main advantage of a block at the parliament level is that it would block ACTA for all EU countries, instead of just one.

I'd say more than 2 steps back as the potential for this could be far more damaging than SOPA.

Not only is this just the start of a global initiative to legislate ACTA worldwide, but it also incorporates active monitoring at the heart of the proposal. This means that you are being watched, regardless of your moral compass and regardless of your intent to pirate; you are still being watched just in case you do.

I swear the MPAA and RIAA are doing a great job at destroying the "innocent until proven guilty" doctrine that we were once proud of.

Come on people, you are forgetting the greater good: profit!
It's all for the greater good.

In the last 200 hundred years we stumbled on ways to use on a mass scale essentially free energy, basically "stealing" it from the past (that's mostly where such http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_welfare_and_ecological_foot... crazy levels come from), and also from the future (by spoilage, making productivity of "future hectares" much lesser) - that's pretty much it.

Oh, and all this time it has been exploited by pretty much monopolies; with great abuses until govs - mostly do representing people in the end - stepped in ...still, we'd better settle on more sane sources (and on less waste - there's no good reason, for quite a few places on that graph, to use ~2 times more for no better effect), otherwise it might get really messy.

Not if Newt Gingrich has anything to say about it! ;^)

Try Mars but better get in quick, once the moon becomes the 51st state, they'll be eyeing Mars.

Bunch of Fascist Pricks. Yeah world - lets bend over and take one for Uncle Sam if not, we can expect some warm and fuzzy Depleted Uranium to keep us comforted with. When are these people being tried for crimes against humanity???

The way things are going, China.

Oh come on, have some perspective. The entity at hand, the EU, is still at least one of the most decent around, civil liberties around.

And as for the Moon... it generally tends to have fundamental problems with allowing such basic rights as the one to life - or at least, it doesn't make breathing easy ;p