phideltacity

Sean Flynn from the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University has sent some questions on ACTA, the “Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement” to Techdirt who wrote about it. These questions are based upon the interpretation of the current state of ACTA from the perspective of someone concerned about the availability of generic medicines especially to less developed countries.
But those people are not the only ones concerned about ACTA! A growing number of technologists such as Simonand authors such as Cory Doctorow have parsed ACTA as well and are mightily concerned about both the method of negotiations as well as the actual contents of the proposed treaty.

When I myself have read parts and reviews I was involuntarily reminded if the US Declaration of Independence. I that document the American finders claimed:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

It seems to me that several supposedly democratic governments of the present are forgetting about these fundamental rights and their fundamental obligation to protect them. If ACTA continues on its present course a case could well be made that the governments of the ACTA member nations will have crossed the line.

So the one question I would add to the catalog of questions by Sean Flynn would be:

Are you aware of the fact that you are leading your nations directly into legitimate revolution?

After all the claim of “No taxation without representation” is much weaker than the claim of “No criminalization without representation”. I see a clear and present danger to our fundamental liberties presented by ACTA and call on my fellow human beings to let their governments know that ACTA is a no-go. I call upon you to act like our American predecessors. They have aired their grievances for several years before declaring their independence:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Now is the time to let our leaders know that or freedoms are not transient causes. It is time to state clearly that we will neither stand for the methods of negotiating ACTA nor will we accept the proposed contents.