Talk:ACTA rejected by European Parliament; protesters rejoice

Foreign language source
Always leery of these but, ...

German: ''ACTA ist ein Symbol für Politik im Hinterzimmer geworden. Dass sich Brüssel nun gegen die Interessen der Lobbyisten stellt, gibt Hoffnung. Die Wahrung der Grundrechte und Bürgerfreiheiten im Netz scheint zumindest für die Abgeordneten des Europäischen Parlaments nicht nur ein leeres Wort''.

Gtrans: ''ACTA is a symbol of backroom politics has become. The fact that Brussels is now against the interests of lobbyists, there is hope. Respect for fundamental rights and civil liberties in the network seems at least for the members of the European Parliament is not just an empty word''.

I believe the quote translation used in the article has been carried out be a .de native-speaker, so whilst I didn't contribute that section I'm inclined to consider it reliable. --Brian McNeil / talk 11:10, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
 * My knowledge of German is pretty poor, but the translation matches perfectly so far as I can tell. I'm also inclined to believe. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 12:31, 5 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, I am a German native speaker, and I have lived in Britain for 12 years so I’m pretty fluent at English. Despite, I prefer Google’s choice of fundamental rights instead of basic rights, so I think I’ll change that. — Timwi (talk) 12:49, 5 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Go right ahead, I suspected from your enWP userpage you'd been on Airstrip One for a while. It was the 'fundamental rights' and 'backroom politics' bits I thought might be more apt.
 * There's a lot more detail to it now, although 'cribbing from the Gruniad editorial to make it most-current is, I feel, less-than-ideal. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:53, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Relevance
Considering working in something from this:

Thoughts? Worth doing/relevant? --Brian McNeil / talk 12:57, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Intrdocution/background
The article presents lots of background on the protests, yet fails to explain ACTA itself ... I suppose the reader can follow the WP link, but it'd be nice to have a little introduction about ACTA ... not everyone knows about it. Otherwise, it looks like a good article. Cheers, --SVTCobra 00:59, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It's a Trade Agreement. It was written by lobbyists, for US businesses. They did so in secret. That's about it. --Brian McNeil / talk 08:52, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Factually challenged
I'm going to reserve judgement, till I've finished the source-check, on whether I can sufficiently repair this while maintaining independence for review (I'm not sanguine), but this sentence appears to have two dire problems.
 * The trade agreement ... had already been ratified by Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States.

The two problems with this, afaics so far, are (1) they didn't ratify it, they only signed it; and  (2) those are only the non-EU countries that did so, in addition to 22 countries within the EU. --Pi zero (talk) 17:41, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
 * "amongst the signatories [...]". The thrust of the point being made there is that there's no overarching group (the EU) for them. --Brian McNeil / talk 18:18, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The detail was taken from the Access Now source, FYI. Rather than mirror their wording, "ratified" was my error. --Brian McNeil / talk 18:21, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The list also appears, with a few extra wisps of context, in the Boston.com (AP) source. --Pi zero (talk) 19:58, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Interestingly, ACTA is no longer needed in Canada, regardless of whether or not it is or was ratified. Bill C-11 was just given royal assent last week, and the changes it makes to copyright law are far, far more restrictive than those in the ACTAgreement. For instance, as of last week it is illegal to break any digital lock for any reason whatsoever &mdash; including reasons that are legally allowed in other legislation, and including reasons that are legal for physical locks. It's a ridiculous bill, similar to the DMCA, but worse:P. Unfortunately it didn't get nearly enough press, so it passed without incident. &mdash; Gopher65talk 20:53, 6 July 2012 (UTC)