For what it's worth, some of us have been lobbying our MEPs. We just did it the old-fashioned way, by writing to them and asking them not to support this if they want us to vote for them next time.
It will be interesting to see what really killed this agreement. I'd like to think it was a principled stand against conducting negotiations behind closed doors, or an objection to the dubious copyright provisions, or perhaps the implications for supplying medicines to developing nations.
Sadly, I suspect in reality it was at least partly driven by fear of association with politically toxic subjects like SOPA/PIPA. Still, a win's a win, and if the result here is as straightforward as the reports so far imply, hopefully ACTA is effectively dead in Europe now whatever the (unelected) Commission and (unelected) representatives of national governments might prefer.
>Sadly, I suspect in reality it was at least partly driven by fear of association with politically toxic subjects like SOPA/PIPA. Still, a win's a win.
Well, on the bright side, SOPA/PIPA and legislation like these are actually becoming toxic and politically nonviable. Legislations like these will keep popping up like whack-a-mole until they become toxic and seems like we're on our way to achieve that.
I'm in the UK as well, and have similar worries. My own MP (Julian Huppert in Cambridge) seems to be fairly clued up about these technical/IP issues, but I fear he is in a small minority within Parliament as a whole.
There is a certain kind of person -- I'm still not sure whether it's in the political classes or whether it's an ingrained assumption/bias at the top of the civil service -- who keeps supporting harsh IP-related laws. I don't assume that they're doing it out of malice. I think there are good arguments for having a robust IP framework, at least until someone demonstrates anything more effective at promoting creation and distribution of new works.
But at the same time, as a practical matter, there is inevitably a balance to be struck between enforcing someone's IP rights and protecting someone else's rights of privacy, freedom of expression, and so on. I get the feeling that a lot of the briefings used to persuade representatives to vote for these draconian laws aren't paying much attention to the costs in these areas, only to the assumed economic benefits of having a strong IP regime in place. At least if the problem is ignorance rather than malice/corruption, one possible solution is education, and thus I write to my representatives in the hope that at least some of them will listen.
FWIW, I had about a 50% response rate to a letter to 7 MEPs on this subject, although I don't think I should count the one whose letter basically repeated each of my points verbatim but with the words "I understand that..." at the start of each sentence!
> FWIW, I had about a 50% response rate to a letter to 7 MEPs on this subject, although I don't think I should count the one whose letter basically repeated each of my points verbatim but with the words "I understand that..." at the start of each sentence!
Well, technically 5/7 replied, but two were little better than auto-reply e-mails mumbling something about sending a reply later (which never came in either case) so I discounted those to leave 3/7 and called it around 50%.
One of those was the utterly vacuous letter I mentioned, so I think I should discount that one as well.
So really, I got only two substantive replies (for the record, one was from a Lib Dem and the other from a UKIP MEP) that genuinely addressed the issue I'd brought up and explained their position.
He's been known to, though I think he gets slightly more credibility for actually being a real scientist who understands things like evidence and falsifiability. He also has entrepreneurial experience and has worked a lot with Liberty, both of which are relevant to issues like this one.
Unfortunately, there are very few people with such a useful background serving as MPs in the House of Commons today, but an awful lot of people who are essentially career politicians and have never worked outside politics or closely related fields such as journalism.
Cambridge has an elected someone with common sense, an understanding of issues that are relevant and important to British industry and society as a whole?
It's a nice place, bar the epic amounts of students and associated noise and vomit, insane traffic jams, very odd traffic management, chav ridden Arbury, nazi bus drivers, extortionate public transport costs and epic levels of bike theft.
(I spent a good few years living in Cambridge).
Mind you saying that, I live in a rather nice and tidy bit of London near the river and it's just about the same but the cash is better.
