Petition Asks White House To Submit ACTA To The Senate For Ratification | Hacker News Reader

Petition Asks White House To Submit ACTA To The Senate For Ratification

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54 pointsttt_5 comments

I speak as an ignorant outsider (Canadian) but have a legitamate concern when 3rd party onlookers are providing a more sensable explanation and rational summary regarding US law than the lawmakers themselves. Aside from the typical bouts of people shouting "corruption" and "incompitence" is there an honest reason for so many of these seemingly simple rules to be overlooked/ignored?

I ask only because looking from the outside in, it seems more and more that the system currently employed is so ass backwards it bends logic. I want to keep a positive outlook and receive justification from all sides before creating a viewpoint that could be portrayed as prejudice.

The true answer to this is more involved than a simple comment can treat with justice.

But... the dysfunction in our political system has been getting more and more noticeable over the last several years. Yes, it is ass backwards and it has never been this bad before. The more notice that it receives, the more people will begin to get involved, the better chance we have of changing how it works.

It's because until the Obama administration starts implementing the treaty or brings it to congress, none of the rules have actually been broken. The constitution allows the president to sign any treaty he wants. After that, it needs to be brought to congress. Historically, presidents have signed treaties whenever they thought it was necessary, regardless of whether or not it would actually get ratified.

For example, Woodrow Wilson's signature is on the Treaty of Versailles(http://foundingdocs.gov.au/item-did-23.html), but congress never ratified it.

In addition to the comments before me, it's also because the rules are not as simple as they may seem, and the rules change with practice over time. Unless you believe that the U.S. Constitution and laws are absolutely inflexible (which not even the most strict textualists/orgininalist would, I think, contend), law changes via practice and via interpretation. In the US, it's almost always been the case that the lines between treaties, executive agreements, and something called congressional-executive agreements (consent of Congress, but less than the super-majority requirement of a treaty) are blurry and ambiguous. Given that, you could either presume that whatever the Constitution doesn't explicitly forbid, it permits (in terms of executive power), or the opposite. Most presidents have presumed the former in the realm of executive agreements and treaties, meaning that, because the Constitution doesn't say that can't make these executive agreements, they've felt empowered to do so. This has been affirmed as permissible by the courts, and has happened very frequently, although that's not to say that future scenarios might arise that test the boundary between executive agreements and treaties in a way that hasn't been pushed before.

In summary: U.S. Constitutional law and the common law are very complex. It's not entirely clear that any rules are being broken, even if Obama does not ask for Senate approval. A court of law would be the proper place to resolve this, presuming the case was justiciable, which is another issue. Lawmakers themselves are no more informed than this comment or other commentators, meaning that they themselves can't provide any definitive answers.

How much proof do we need that while the likely defeat of SOPA/PIPA was due to the Internet waking up (along with many of it's most popular companies initiating a "black out" that confronted the general public for the first time) the big media companies are not stalled by losing a single battle. They plan for war. ACTA is another "front" to this war that many of us were blindsided to because we were fighting SOPA.

Now, I don't know how one coalesces a decentralized, leaderless, and disparate group of citizens who go by the term "the Internet". But, I do know, that unless we start bringing guns to gunfights (obviously I'm implying the expression here), we will lose the war, in spite of winning the SOPA / PIPA battle.

In order to do that we need to educate the non-geek general public about issues like ACTA and make them understand why they need to care. To do that, we must get out from behind our firewalls and our web farms and begin to communicate using the same mechanisms that old media is using, if for no other reason, the general public doesn't live in the same spaces that we do. If you can change public opinion, you can impact elections and legislation.

Until someone else comes along and steps into the void between the digital world and the power players who pass laws we (US) citizens are bound to, I'm busting my ass to stand up a nonprofit 527 Super PAC as fast as I can. I wish I could move the paperwork faster (IRS, FEC) but it's gonna be a couple of weeks before we can start accepting donations.

The news was all abuzz about how the SOPA / PIPA bills were killed in, what appeared to them anyway, lightning speed and with little notice. Ron Wyden understands how fast Internet mobilization moves, but the rest of Washington still doesn't get it. Yes, Chris Dodd, the SOPA / PIPA death was a "watershed" moment in politics, but not for reasons you might think. It was a watershed moment because we have the capacity to do more than just black out our sites and send emails to Washington and we are taking it to the next level. Like Yamamoto, you have awoken a sleeping giant and we intend on correcting the deficiencies in our armor and arsenal.

God. Sorry to go on a rant, but this shit raises the hair on the back of my neck like few other issues and I'm tired of both political parties in Washington taking for granted that I, the Internet, am not paying attention to what you are doing.

Plug: Consider joining me. theinternetvoice.org. On G+ "The Internet Voice".

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