Danish activists demand to know why their governments block ACTA transparency

Last week, a leaked Dutch memo on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a secret copyright treaty, identified the countries whose negotiators were opposed to bringing transparency to the negotiation process. The worst offenders were the US, South Korea, Singapore and Denmark.

Now, activists in these countries are banging the drum, demanding to know why their governments are standing in the way of public participation in a treaty-making process that will have wide-ranging implications for all Internet users, and it's working.

In this video clip, Danish activist Henrik Moltke appeared on Danish television and did an excellent job of explaining what ACTA means and how Denmark's intransigence in ACTA transparency is a global disgrace. (Henrik tells me that his employer, Socialsquare, are giving him the time he needs to work on this -- how cool!)

We're getting results. Today, the Danish minister responsible for ACTA negotiations was told that she must account for Denmark's position. I'm sure other countries will follow.

The question is, will the Obama administration -- a supposed paragon of transparency -- join Denmark in opening a dialog on whether copyright negotiations should take place in smoke-filled rooms, away from the press and public?

Henrik Moltke talks about ACTA on Danish TV

Lene Espersen, in consultation on anti-piracy agreement

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

I think Joelfinch#2 is right. Using quick and understandable scenarios to show to the layman why this matters is vital.

I don’t think the video interview went off very well at all actually. I think it came over to the public as if some geek was stressing about people policing his precious internet, and that he was a) feeling left out because nobody consulted him and his mates and b) a bit miffed that he would have to be more careful with his net related toys.

Now _I_ know this wasn’t the case, and people here grokked what he was saying and why it mattered, but… it needs to be put over in a way that even my elderly mother could understand if we want people to stand up and be outraged the way they should be. As stupid as it is, few people care about an abuse of democratic process if they don’t understand how it might harm their own lives. And most laymen haven’t unlocked their phone or fiddled with their iTunes account, and couldn’t care less if the people who have aren’t treated fairly.

And of course for Joe Public, if you aren’t doing anything wrong, why does it matter if they are spying/disclosing your details/clamping down on dissident speech by making providers liable? In my experience people don’t get why any of this should matter to them.
Anonymous

Update from Denmark: “EU politicians want open anti piracy negotioations”, http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.computerworld.dk%2Fart%2F55259&sl=da&tl=en – we’re rollin’…
calvert4096

Visual communication can have an emotional impact on par with soundbites, if not more so. I don’t know who drew the NSA logo in this story, but I thought it was pretty well done.

http://boingboing.net/2008/09/18/eff-sues-cheney-bush.html
millionpoems

> opening a dialog

Five dollars says no.
joelfinch

We really need soundbite-friendly versions of the anti-ACTA arguments that make things personal for people.

“If your kid brother even looks like he might be copying movies illegally, your whole house could get cut off from the internet.”

“How long will Google keep Gmail once they’re made responsible for every word that anyone sends through it?”

“Internet fees will skyrocket so that service providers can pay their legal bills.”

“Facebook will die. Twitter will die. Blogs will die.”

“They want to invade our privacy to ensure their profits.”

“Public policy should not be made in secret.”

If I have any of these statements wrong (ie. they don’t represent what ACTA is actually about), please correct me, I genuinely want to know. What I read scares the hell out of me.
- TEKNA2007
  
  > We really need soundbite-friendly versions of the
  > anti-ACTA arguments that make things
  > personal for people.
  
  Agree, agree, agree, very good!
  
  “You don’t want them opening your mail. You don’t want them going through your email either.”
  
  “Copyright may be important, but it’s not the only important thing.”
  
  “Citizens have rights too.”
  
  Don’t wiretap me, bro!
- Anonymous
  
  I needed examples like these before going on this show (but they did not want me to talk about laptop border searches etc but really concrete stuf like my phone – I know it was cheap, but that was the deal). The big problem with ACTA is complexity reduction. So a list like this for journos etc would be useful. But keep it clean.