

Kroes Throws in Towel on ACTA - jimlast
http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/05/04/kroes-throws-in-towel-on-acta/?mod=google_news_blog

======
terhechte
The conference where she delivered the speech was at the re:publica in Berlin
(<http://re-publica.de/12/>). I've seen her talk in entirety on Friday, and I
was deeply impressed with her opinions. Usually, when politicians
(particularly older politicians) talk about Internet topics, their opinion is
mingled with half-knowledge and the hope to enslave the internet and make it a
read-only thing. However, Kroess' speeach was fantastic and it made me almost
happy to see such a level of understanding of the importance of the internet,
and the questions, dangers, and opportunities it raises for the future to
come, in a politician. Especially someone who has such an important position
in the EU.

~~~
bOR_
She's great (or at least the dutch think she is), and did a good job as well
when she was commissioner on competition, handing out some big fines to
business cartels. see

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a854010e-dd84-11db-8d42-000b5df106...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a854010e-dd84-11db-8d42-000b5df10621.html)

I think we first were a bit disappointed that she was no longer keeping
businesses on the straight and narrow, when she moved from competition to the
digital agenda: it seemed like she was rearranged to a position where she
would be less dangerous. In retrospect, that impression might have been wrong,
and she might have just decided that keeping the digital world from being
corrupted (by roaming fees, broadband prices, copyright agreements) was a more
important thing to go after now than business cartels :-).

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I wasn't so happy about her work as competition commissioner. They went very
far in the direction of price fixing. For instance, the EC tells telcos what
to charge for roaming even though no one can claim that the telecom sector
isn't very competitive. It's cut throat actually.

~~~
bOR_
I understand the the telco's are very competitive, but for some reason, free
market competition appeared to fail to have an effect on prices like texting
or data roaming. Oddly enough, you roam through various network using the
internet, and there free market seems to have worked between fiber providers
into keeping the prices low and efficiency high.

It seems that Kroes only launched the inquiry into telco's as part of her
commision on competition. The price regulations came after her time there (see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission_roaming_reg...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission_roaming_regulations))

~~~
fauigerzigerk
The price of something being "high" doesn't mean there is a market failure. It
may just be an expression of customer preferences. If high roaming fees are
used to subsidise cheap local calls and data plans, that may be a problem for
EU officials who travel a lot, but it may be exactly what regular folks want.

The job of the competition commission is to make sure there is real
competition, but what they have done is plain old price fixing. In this case,
their actions make low income people subsidise the mobile life-style of high
income people.

~~~
bOR_
Isn't it actually the reverse?: don't the EU actions actually stop the
previous practice of Telco's to subsidize the calling behavior of the majority
by adding additional fees to a smaller group that heavily uses roaming?

I'm not sure what the free-market theory on that is (it is an interesting
topic though) - making a smaller group of customers pay (and have limited
alternatives but to pay) to be more competitive in other parts of your market.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Yes, I think that's exactly what happened before the prices were fixed and
it's a completely normal facet of markets. You could make a case that
governments should protect minorities. But I see a couple of issues in this
case:

The competition commission doesn't have a legal mandate to give preferencial
treatment to minorities. They have a very clear mandate and they should stick
to it in the interest of seperation of concerns.

The particular minority concerned in this case is a rather wealthy one that
benefits from free markets in other respects more than the average person.
They don't need extra help from governments.

Helping minorities by fixing individual prices tends to be inflexible because
any change in the underlying economics or social culture has to be to be
compensated with new regulation which often doesn't happen in a timely
fashion.

Preferencial treatment for minorities should, in my view, focus on life and
death issues, freedom of expression, legal matters, etc.

------
unimpressive
Thats great. But I smell a slight of hand trick here. Lead the audiences
attention away while you stuff cards down your sleeve.

Stay wary, stay vigilant.

~~~
jmonegro
I agree. This cat and mouse game between lawmakers and the people is quite
exhausting. If it isn't SOPA, it's PIPA, CISPA, ACTA... and they'll just keep
coming until one of them makes it into law.

I think we should be focusing our power into pushing for legislation that
prevents these kinds of bills to be passed, rather than fighting them off time
and time again.

~~~
Retric
The only way to limit what congress can do is with a constitutional amendment.
Anything else, and they can just overwrite it.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Yes and no. It's true that you can't just have Congress pass a law that says
"future Congresses can't do xyz," because future Congresses can just repeal
it.

But you can do something even better. Pass legislation that takes a step in
the other direction. Repeal the DMCA anti-circumvention clause and demand an
international treaty that requires other countries to do likewise. Reduce
copyright terms. Eliminate statutory (as opposed to actual) damages for
noncommercial infringement.

This would do three things. First, all of those things are good policy, and
passing them would help us. Second, it would put the copyright extremists on
the defensive and makes them spend their political capital to try to prevent a
series of sensible bills from being passed. And third, when we succeed in
passing them, it shifts the status quo, so that the next outrageous bill they
propose looks like an even larger departure from the baseline, making it
easier to defeat.

~~~
redthrowaway
All of this is predicated on having a government that makes wise policy
choices as opposed to acting in the self-perceived interests of its sponsors.
The USG is not such a government.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
They say you get the government that you deserve. If you don't think you
deserve what you have, maybe you should get something else.

~~~
redthrowaway
I'm Canadian; I'm more or less happy with our government. It's about the best
you could hope for of a product designed by a committee of 15M.

------
cnbeuiwx
CISPA is way worse and its backed by 800+ massive corporations:

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/cispa-supporters-
list-800-c...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/cispa-supporters-
list-800-companies-that-could-help-uncle-sam-snag-your-data/)

So they can talk all they want... its still the same kind of thinking in the
system. Dirty old men wanting to get more power.

------
SoftwareMaven
Way to go, Europe and elsewhere! Don't let Hollywood screw you over like they
continually screw us over in the States.

------
novalis
Amazing that it ends with:

"The controversial agreement, which opponents say was conducted behind closed
doors, aimed to fight against counterfeiting at international level through
greater co-ordination of anti-counterfeiting measures and tougher
enforcement."

WSJ is a great place for propaganda and framing it wrong.

