Don't let yourselves be fooled - not only in Germany is it a common method by the government to undermine protests, to call them successful, sit out the fallout, then try again when public attention is focused on other events (like, a football cup or olympic games). I hope noone will withdraw their call for protest tomorrow.
As Germany is one of the most infuencial countries in the EU, we should also show solidarity to the people in other countries and help overturn this treaty entirely.
Its not a common method in Germany. No idea where you come from but if you would know a bit about Germany then you would understand that there democracy still kind of works (unlike in the US for example).
Where are you getting that from? It's standard practice, try reading some alternative media (fefe!) sometime. I have no matching links handy, but you can read about it pretty frequently if you look in the right places (e.g. during the Fukushima event).
The "alternative media" is what conspiracy theorists use to convince themselves that 9/11 was an inside job.
If by alternative you mean a place like HN where stories are being commented on then I agree but you will hardly find one sided support for that kind of claims here.
Which is why HN for all the bad trends we see here is still one of the best places to get our apriori views invalidated.
HN does not invalidate your views, it presents you with the views of a certain group of (mostly U.S. based) people.
You can observe strong tendencies in viewpoints for both web/startup/tech related things as well as political issues, and especially for the latter you won't find the full "political spectrum" covered around here (not confining its meaning to notions like left/right wing here).
That's why you should use several different sources/media.
Go Germany! So it seems there is hope yet. The noise about ACTA in Poland is still growing and politicians are beginning to notice this is a much bigger deal than they thought. Especially as the leading party just went down several percent in polls.
This can now be stopped at the EU level, which will not be easy, but is doable.
As a German, I consider this a desperate attempt to dilute the efforts of the opposition to organize nationwide rallies on saturday. The move just seems too perfectly timed... (Edit: the keyword here is 'for now')
In favor of ratifying ACTA, I'd say. IANAL, but as far as I know, current German law qualifies for most of the ACTA agreements already, so just passing it wouldn't change things per se. The bigger issue here is ACTA as a signal.
So I can understand her somewhat. If ACTA would've been yet another EU regulation passed without much fuss and recognition, it would've been better to focus on actual laws, where Leutheuser-Schnarrenberger still has to fight basically the rest of the government over data retention (I really dread the next government's actions here).
It's probably better this way, though. Any show that the public actually cares matters a lot.
German laws don't already mostly cover ACTA. The politicians are saying the same thing across europe, but it's all lies and deception. One instance is criminal prosecution instead of civil, no rights for private copies anymore, forcing ISP's to cooperate with "rights-holders" bypassing the courts and forcing them to proactively monitor their networks (else they could be fined huge sums), etc, etc.
Actually the ISP umbrella organizations published statements that they think ACTA bypasses democratic processes, and puts them into the position of police and judge all in one, and much more...
Like I said, I am not a lawyer. I'd be grateful for any detailed analysis of ACTA as compared to current German law. There's an insane amount of hyperbole on either side…
One basic problem with something like ACTA is that mostly it's "encouraging" countries to think and debate about "appropriate" measures and laws. A lot of the language is about "might" "should endeavor to" etc. – and it probably has to, or you might just clash with national legal concepts. So just signing it might imply a response from "Will do sir! Let's get the jackboots out!" to "Yeah, yeah, sure, we'll all have a nice chat about it…".
Still, signing it is a bad show of intent, a truly worrying symptom of current politics. It opens doors better left closed…
The problem with ACTA is that many of the clauses are very much open to interpretation and often times only understandable if you have all the protocols - which are not available to the public.
However there is a petition by law professors against ACTA coordinated by Prof. Metzger of the University of Hanover and signed by practically all leading German professors in the field of IT law. (See: http://www.iri.uni-hannover.de/acta-1668.html)
The problem with ACTA is that it's not even democratically enacted. It was negotiated in secrecy to the point that the Obama administration said it couldn't be disclosed for reasons of national security. It's a travesty on every level, and its promulgators should be publicly shamed.
I wouldn't call her a leftist, she's just the last liberal who knows what liberalism means. And the move didn't come from her but the federal foreign office.
German politicians _are_ as useless, spineless, back stabbing, lying assholes as everybody else's politicians.
> They signed without blinking an eye.
So would German big-party politicians. But... next year we have elections, and the Pirate party is already too popular to be ignored. Fear of greens and pirates is the one and only reason why this wasnt signed now. Maybe it will in a year, when the elections are over. Until then, the anti-internet parties are tryin to keep a low profile with repect to internet censorship.
Given what what was happening in the Czech Republic and Poland (and also the protests in Germany itself), it's not that surprising. Let's hope other EU countries follow.
As Germany is one of the most infuencial countries in the EU, we should also show solidarity to the people in other countries and help overturn this treaty entirely.