Germany Delays ACTA Signature, Wants More Discussion 72
First time accepted submitter willodotcom writes "Germany has joined Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia in delaying their signing of ACTA, citing 'time to carry out further discussions' as the reason."
USA (Score:4, Interesting)
So with the USA's propensity to blackmail other countries into passing legislation they want, what are they going to do when an entire continent rejects this treaty?
Re:Very reasonable (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't put your hopes to high. They are just waiting till the public's attention is elsewhere, e.g. occupied by a soccer cup.
That confirms (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Very reasonable (Score:5, Interesting)
It may be a long time until the attention is elsewhere. Right now the German Pirate Party is the one with most popular support, far more than in Sweden. They scored a huge number of seats in Berlin and if it was national election today [wahlrecht.de] they would get anywhere from 4-8% of the votes, there's a 5% threshold but they'd pas it today. Unfortunately it's not election for another year and a half but a long drawn out fight over ACTA is just the thing they need...
Re:Very reasonable (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't expect the public attention to drop so soon in Germany. People there are very careful about protection of private data and information. They have a somewhat bad historical background about state lurking into private lives and filtering/accumulating information... and they are not about to forget it. Anything that goes into that direction gets strong opposition - and the stage generally weights in favor of the private life protection.
Now, in Germany, is happening exactly what the copyright lobby feared : people are looking into it. They is a reason why they tried to push it under the table and they failed. Now there is a good chance ACTA never goes through in Germany. And if it doesn't pass in Germany, it loses a lot of interest within the EU.
Re:Very reasonable (Score:5, Interesting)
ACTA is treated as a "mixed treaty" in the EU, which means that according to the rules of procedure it has to be ratified by the European parliament _and_ all of the national parliaments in order to be valid anywhere. If it doesn't pass in Germany (or some other member state) it doesn't pass anywhere in the EU. At all.