I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament’s demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly. As rapporteur of this text, I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens’ legitimate demands. Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications. This agreement might have major consequences on citizens’ lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this mascarade.
Kader Arif, rapporteur for ACTA in the European Parliament
Updates from January, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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mazsa
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mazsa
A gram of circumvention is worth a metric ton of lobbying.
Charles Johnson -
mazsa
The colonization of outer space is key to the survival of humankind. It will be difficult for the world’s inhabitants to avoid disaster in the next hundred years. We are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history. Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space. This is why I favour “personed” space flight and encourage further study into how to make space colonization possible.
Stephen Hawking -
mazsa
I just got everything perfect in my life, and then I went and messed it all up by having a baby. [...] I compare the process to becoming a vampire, your old self dies in a sad and painful way, but then you come out the other side with immortality, super strength and a taste for human blood.
Jonathan Coulton -
mazsa
Does European integration make a major European war less likely, or more?
David Friedman -
mazsa
central banks which run the world don’t like the slaves owning anything that they can’t manipulate the value of – it undermines their power monopoly
Paul Joseph Watson: France Bans Cash Sales Of Gold & Silver Over $600 -
mazsa
Products and companies are both regarded better as entities transcendent from humans, with their own goals and motivations, rather than being reducible to human use or human intentions. [...] The company’s decisions aren’t actually the shareholders’ decisions. A company has a culture which is not the simple sum of the opinions of the people in it. A CEO can never be said to perform an action in the way that a human body can be said to perform an action, like picking an apple. A company is a weird, complex thing, and rather than attempt (uselessly) to reduce it to people within it, it makes more sense – to me – to approach it as an alien being and attempt to understand its biology and momentums only with reference to itself. Having done that, we can then use metaphors to attempt to explain its behaviour: we can say that it follows profit, or it takes an innovative step, or that it is middle-aged, or that it treats the environment badly, or that it takes risks. None of these statements is literally true, but they can be useful to have in mind when attempting to negotiate with these bizarre, massive creatures. (Also, in contradiction, companies are made out of people, at least partially, and we are responsible for their actions. It’s not simple.)
Matt Webb -
mazsa
Counterfeiting and piracy is a global crime, and it requires a global solution.
Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator -
mazsa
We must reject ebooks until they respect our freedom.
Richard Stallman -
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I expect that the Battle of Internets is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of an Uncensored civilization! Upon it depends our own free life, and the long continuity of our sites and our trackers. The whole fury and might of the enemy will very soon be turned on us.
Winston Bay -
mazsa
I know that there is some international concern. I would welcome the government to seek advice and recommendation from others, both from within Hungary and from the Council of Europe and the United Nations. While any country was free to draft its own constitution, it had to be in line with international rules and norms. When such laws are adopted, it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that they comply with all relevant international agreements, including the protection of the freedom of media and expression.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon -
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We are observing developments in Hungary with much attention and some worry. The media law adopted at the start of the year shows an attitude towards fundamental rights which – despite some amendments – is hardly compatible with European Union values. Our worries over the media law are made worse, not better, by today’s adoption of the constitution and its future implementation.
Werner Hoyer, Minister of State, Germany -
mazsa
[...] To track the risk of a new financial crisis, focus on whether the troubled euro zone economies are seeing bank runs and capital flight. Then comes a fundamental question about human nature, namely: Why do we so often postpone admitting that short-run patches simply aren’t going to work?
Tyler Cowen -
mazsa
What books have always wanted was to be annotated, marked up, underlined, dog-eared, summarized, cross-referenced, hyperlinked, shared, and talked-to. Being digital allows them to do all that and more. [...]
Kevin Kelly -
mazsa
What would help is if the Supreme Court (and indeed corporate law in general) adopted a clear principle when it comes to the analogy between artificial persons and real ones: that companies should be treated as people only in so far as it is expedient. They clearly need to be able to enter into contracts just like individuals. But they should not be treated as if they experience such essentially human emotions as embarrassment and a desire for self-expression. Thus they should not have the same rights to privacy and political freedom as a citizen, but should have only as much of a right to confidentiality and political participation as is helpful for the efficient functioning of business (including letting firms contribute to the public debate on the regulation of business). Companies—or rather their bosses and owners—should welcome such constraints: any further “rights” would, sooner or later, be matched by onerous responsibilities.
Schumpeter -
mazsa
I certainly wont suck dick for fame.
Felice Fawn -
mazsa
I am not suggesting that the focus on children as a means to adulthood is inherently bad; indeed it’s absolutely necessary to prepare them for what is to come, and to guide them in the process of learning. We could even say that to neglect this would be immoral. Yet, I still wonder: is there a feature of childhood that ought not simply be a means to an end? Is there something of moral value that we ought not reduce to an investment into the future, whether theirs or ours?
Regan Penaluna -
mazsa
How can any missile crewman know that an order to twist his launch key in its slot and send a thermonuclear missile rocketing out of its silo—a nuke capable of killing millions of civilians—is lawful, legitimate, and comes from a sane president?
Maj. Harold Hering -
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Al Qaeda loves the places where there is no strong democratic, national power.
Taieb Fassi-Fihri, Moroccan FM -
mazsa
The development of an artificial intelligence may lead to the destruction of the human race. What we may need to also consider the possibility that not inventing such an intelligence might be the more dangerous option.
Alonzo Fyfe -
mazsa
The democracy of the state will always be of the state, by the state and for the state.
David D’Amato -
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“security concerns” are the new black(out) – the means by which those who are meant to enforce the law equally instead pre-emptively reward bullying mobsters who have total contempt for it.
Mark Steyn -
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(a) the term “person” means an individual or entity; (b) the term “entity” means a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization; and (c) the term “United States person” means any United States citizen or national, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.
EXECUTIVE ORDER BLOCKING PROPERTY AND PROHIBITING CERTAIN TRANSACTIONS RELATED TO LIBYA -
mazsa
The EU has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament (in Strasbourg) no one other than its members wants to have power (which must subtract from the powers of national legislatures), a capital (Brussels) of coagulated bureaucracy no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should nor soon will exist (a European central government), and rules of fiscal behavior that no member has been penalized for ignoring.
George Will -
mazsa
the victory for Watson and IBM was about [...] ushering in a new era in computing where machines will increasingly be able to learn and understand what humans are really asking them for.
BBC -
mazsa
Rather than establishing a giant bureaucracy with the authority to impose a one-size-fits-all protocol for security on all airports, the government could merely require that airlines pay the full costs of another 9/11-type disaster. The government wouldn’t have to oversee the methods that airlines implement to weed out terrorist threats. On the contrary, the government would simply verify that the airlines had the ability to pay huge damages in the wake of an unlikely but catastrophic security breach.
Robert P. Murphy -
mazsa
A Nobel Peace Prize for Julian Assange? Please! He’s a fence for stolen goods. Transparency has its place. But nations, like individuals and private organizations, need to conduct their business with varying degrees of confidence. Look at #Egypt at the moment, where American, Egyptian, and other officials are conducting delicate negotiations in the context of a potentially explosive situation. Only the most naive would expect those to be fully transparent.
Roger Pilon-
admin
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mazsa
Congress could require that people buy and consume broccoli at regular intervals, not only because the required purchases will positively impact interstate commerce, but also because people who eat healthier tend to be healthier, and are thus more productive and put less of a strain on the health care system.
Judge Vinson -
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As tensions between countries increase, we could see rising protectionism — of trade and of finance. And as tensions within countries increase, we could see rising social and political instability within nations — even war.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the IMF, on #Egypt -
mazsa
This isn’t a vision. It’s an obsession.
Daniel Henninger: A Presidency to Nowhere
admin is discussing. 
admin 11:19 on April 12, 2011 Permalink |
https://www.economist.com/node/18437755/comments