Polish Prime Minister suspends the ACTA ratification | Hacker News Reader

Polish Prime Minister suspends the ACTA ratification

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164 pointskolinko24 comments

It is worth noting that this happened after 250000 signatures were gathered for the referendum about ACTA:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js...

500.000 are needed to make an official application for a referendum, which of course can be rejected by the parliament.

Also there were huge protests against ACTA in almost all major cities in Poland.

Interesting comment from an influential blogger, who was fighting against ACTA since the beginning (and is also a lawyer):

http://prawo.vagla.pl/node/9662 (Polish) http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&... (translation)

Executive summary: It doesn't matter what Tusk says, Poland will be covered by ACTA when EU ratifies it.

> It doesn't matter what Tusk says, Poland will be covered by ACTA when EU ratifies it.

If EU ratifies ACTA, but Poland not, "only" the part of ACTA that is under EU competentions will be binding ("only", because that's like 90% of the whole treaty).

But it is debatable if Poland has even the possibility to never ratify a signed treaty.

Also - any new law has to be compatible with signed international treatis, even if these treaties are not ratified).

>any new law has to be compatible with signed international treatis

If that is so, then how would Poland withdraw from a treaty that it has entered? In the U.S., the government can withdraw from a treaty simply by passing a law doing so. Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957) ("when a statute which is subsequent in time is inconsistent with a treaty, the statute to the extent of conflict renders the treaty null").

If I understand correctly, we can withdraw from the whole treaty. But until it remains signed, even before ratifying it, we can't create law that is not compatible with it.

But IANAL, just have read about ACTA etc recently, mostly on Vagla blog.

Temporarily suspends, it is said that they won't be resumed before end of 2012, but it doesn't mean ACTA won't be ratified at all, so let's not celebrate too soon.

Consultations are to be started Monday at 1400 local time.

update: all is pure BS http://goo.gl/IAEKs

It's all b#llsh!t what PM Tusk says. The whole "suspension" idea is simply wrong according to Article 18 "Obligation not to defeat the object and purpose of a treaty prior to its entry into force" of "Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties" which says:

"A State is obliged to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of a treaty when:

(a) it has signed the treaty or has exchanged instruments constituting the treaty subject to ratification, acceptance or approval, until it shall have made its intention clear not to become a party to the treaty; or

(b) it has expressed its consent to be bound by the treaty, pending the entry into force of the treaty and provided that such entry into force is not unduly delayed."

I'm Polish and I have to honestly admit: my country has so many stupid political leaders, that I often feel just helpless about it.

"I'm %s and I have to honestly admit: my country has so many stupid political leaders, that I often feel just helpless about it." % countries.get_any()

First of all this is a reaction to polls giving the ruling party a significant drop of acceptance within the young people, who have always been the strongest support group for them.

Second thing, let's don't be naive. Tusk knows very well that what was there to sign in Japan, has been signed. It's to late to stop certain things, it's all cold thinking about the popularity and the party has to be punished in the elections anyway... although the alternative is still terrible...

Wow, a country with a ruling party whose strongest support group is young people. Compared to a lot of other countries, I'd say there's hope for Poland.

In Poland baby boomers generation is now 20-30 years old.

This is only telling about the alternatives :)

The left? Lots of scandals which they tried to deny/cover. Lost trust, their new leader perceived as sleazy. The "right"? They cater to religious old people and their fears of change. PSL? Farmers' & big food interests. Palikot? He is the one catering to the young (reduce influence of the church, legalize MJ) but IMHO he's trying too hard to be perceived as trustworthy.

On the one hand this is a great result, congratulations to the Polish activists for acting and achieving this!

However I'm a bit sad the protests happened so late and only in Poland. ACTA had been negotiated since 2008, the final draft being leaked online in 2010... Since some members including USA signed already on 1 October 2011, realistically it already was to late to stop it.

Maybe if SOPA had happened 1 year earlier, the spillover activism could have stopped ACTA too? :/

I've put my translation of another article from GW on

  http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/gazeta-wyborcza-20120203.text

--jch

Suspending ratification is only temporary, there needs to be legislation making much of it illegal.

Is there a source for this article that doesn't rely on Google translate?

The google translation is quite honest, but if something is unclear I might translate it by hand.

All English sources, that google knows about :

http://news.google.pl/news/story?ncl=dt6kARLjrYdhuXMdAaT2Ct-...

It's purely PR, since Poland signed ACTA already on Jan 26th with 21 other EU countries. Now ratification is mainly up to the EU Parliament. A "yes" vote in EU will mean 90% of ACTA still applies in Poland, regardless of national ratification.

PM Tusk pretends to be making mends with the outraged internet community. I wonder if anyone will buy that b#llsh!t.

On the other hand, Poland is still pretty awesome to have some actual public debate about ACTA. In most countries, 99% of citizens haven't even heard that acronym, not to mention understanding it or agreeing / opposing it.

Well - I'm happy (for now), because the government admitted it's mistake in not consulting ACTA with all the interested parties. For me, it was the most important thing.

As for ACTA being ratified by EU, Polish government admitting that they were wrong will help in killing it in the EU parliament. I can't imagine any polish party voting "FOR" now.

Finally - the thing I'm really hoping that will happen is that the future changes in the law will be consulted with the society. Politicians will think thrice before signing a copyright extension law, or software patent laws.

Edit: but you're right. Our government kept telling us that the signature means nothing, because our Sejm needs to still ratify ACTA. Now I'm hearing that polish Sejm can do jack to stop the ratification, wtf.

I sure hope it gets killed in the European Parlament vote, but Poland itself has just 50 seats out of 754 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament).

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