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Comment by rickmb | Hacker News Reader

I'll make it simpler for you. Even if that is correct, even if ACTA doesn't change the existing laws: we want those laws reversed.

They are not our laws. They were forced upon us by a combination of US government pressure and outright bribery. And they are now sending our people to prison and censoring our internet access for things we do not consider to be crimes.

The protest against ACTA is not so much a matter of "ACTA is evil", it's more a matter of "this corruption stops now".

We want our freedom an sovereignty back, not to have it signed away in some treaty, even if that treaty has been watered down to something merely symbolical with no immediate effect. It is patently obvious that they won't stop at ACTA in it's current form.

Sometimes that mere fact that you finally draw a line is more important than where exactly you draw it.

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Also, if people are misinformed over ACTA, it's because the whole freaking negotiation was done in secret.

That's nonsense. First of all, even during the "secret" negotiations, the current drafts were routinely leaked and widely discussed.

Second, there was an official release of the draft text on April 21, 2010. An updated "near-final" draft (which was quite close to the April 21 draft) was released on October 6, 2010. The final draft was released on November 15, 2010.

All of those drafts are readily available on the Office of the United States Trade Representative site: http://www.ustr.gov/trade-topics/intellectual-property/anti-...

The idea that people are misinformed because a document that has been officially and readily available for nearly two years (and unofficially available long before that) was at one time years ago secret is ridiculous.

Right, so we have to rely on leaks in the future to get visibility on how our rights are being stripped away, this is the democratic process our predecessors shed blood for?

Am reminded of this passage from HHGTTG.

"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."

"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."

"But the plans were on display ..."

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."

"That's the display department."

"With a flashlight."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."

heh that exact reference was done in discussions in a danish newspaper too :)

OK fine. But the used arguments against ACTA are obviously wrong. No one will win a fight against arguments with idiocy.

This is not about arguments. This about ideology. Just read the opening words of ACTA:

"effective enforcement of intellectual property rights is critical to sustaining economic growth across all industries and globally"

That is not a fact. That is not even an argument. That is an ideological statement, and 50% of ACTA is exactly that: an ideological manifesto.

Propaganda is the primary currency here, and always has been when it comes to copyright. The other side has been fighting dirty for a few decades now, conveniently ignoring the facts, and they have been winning.

So now the opposition has started to fight dirty. It may be ethically questionable, but idiocy? So far, for the first time ever, the opposition against the ever more repressive copyright regime actually seems to be gaining some traction.

This is not a high school debate. This is politics. Not being willing to fight dirty simply means you'll get beaten up. Unless you want to keep running until there is nowhere left to run. But that is pretty much the intent behind ACTA: making sure that eventually, there will be nowhere left to run.

That was my exact thought too, when I read through it.

Watching politicians actually trying to defend this is infuriating as it is embarrassing.

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