[governance] FW: [Dewayne-Net] EU & US Negotiators Looking To Hold Blind & Deaf Access Rights Hostage To Get A New ACTA/SOPA

[Paul Lehto]

In the USA, it's a known political strategy to (metaphorically) strap the
disabled to the front of tanks and then roll through the Tiananmen Square
of democracy, defying civil society to shoot.  Being civil, civil society
most often refuses to shoot at such tanks....    This is kind of like how
the EU is seeking to backdoor ACTA provisions via provisions for the
disabled, as mentioned in the article below.

As much as most or all of us wish to be helpful to the situation of the
disabled, at the same time we have to keep our eyes open for the side
effects of provisions for the disabled, and especially the threat of a
political strategy of intentionally abusing the strong political support
for the disabled in order to sneak in unpopular things.

Paul Lehto, J.D.

PS Specifically, in the USA, the "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA) was passed
with quite a few provisions claimed for the disabled crafted onto to what
was more fundamentally a federal takeover of all elections, an elimination
of transparency in vote counting by eliminating paper ballots/trails in
most instances, and was also a pork barrel bonanza for certain vendors who
could more easily meet the specifications recommended or demanded by HAVA.


On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 8:12 PM, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dewayne-net at warpspeed.com [mailto:dewayne-net at warpspeed.com] On
> Behalf
> Of Dewayne Hendricks
> Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2012 10:14 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] EU & US Negotiators Looking To Hold Blind & Deaf
> Access Rights Hostage To Get A New ACTA/SOPA
>
> EU & US Negotiators Looking To Hold Blind & Deaf Access Rights Hostage To
> Get A New ACTA/SOPA from the sad dept By Mike Masnick Oct 23, 2012
> <
> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121020/23344420778/eu-us-negotiators-loo
> king-to-hold-blind-deaf-access-rights-hostage-to-get-new-actasopa.shtml>
>
> We already talked about how US officials have been working against a treaty
> to allow more access to copyrighted works for the disabled, but the latest
> report from Jamie Love highlights an even more nefarious part of the
> strategy. To hold the agreement hostage in order to backdoor in certain
> elements of ACTA/SOPA. This is mainly being led by the EU, but with support
> from the US. And the main part is putting lots of red tape around any
> exceptions -- and tying it to more standardized enforcement, which is what
> ACTA was really all about:
>
> The European Union primarily, but with some backing from the US government,
> is holding blind people's access hostage in and effort to introduce new
> global enforcement norms for copyright. If you look at most copyright
> exceptions in most countries, the system works as follows. If the exception
> applies, an activity is not considered infringement. If you do something
> that is not protected by the exception, you are infringing, and all sorts
> of
> bad things can happen, depending upon your national laws for infringement,
> which include both criminal and civil sanctions. That is how the US
> exceptions work for blind persons, and that's how nearly all national
> exceptions work for blind persons. But here at WIPO, the EU wants page
> after
> page of detailed regulation of anyone who uses an exception. The expanding
> verbiage of the agreement is almost entirely about introducing ACTA and
> SOPA
> like enforcement provisions into this agreement.
>
> We've already seen the EU try to backdoor ACTA provisions in elsewhere, so
> it should come as little surprise that it would also seek to abuse a treaty
> to help the disabled to get to the same point as well. Shameful, but not
> surprising.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4965 (cell)
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