... is downplayed by the media, especially here in Germany?

The underlying message I get from reading newspapers and watching TV news is: It's just a bunch of pirates complaining about not being able to download free music and movies. If I had no idea what the internet was, I'd probably believe them that this new law is all for the better. Makes me kind of disappointed in the German press (when even Reporters Sans Frontières have spoken against ACTA). I don't expect them to take sides, but IMO they actually do, by overemphasizing the protesters supposed dislike of music and movie copyrights and downplaying the real issues with ACTA (high risk of a surveillance culture, undemocratic secret-mongering, lobbyism, loopholes etc.).

It's probably true that a lot of Anti-ACTA activists are uninfomed and hysterical, but that's the whole point: How can they be informed if the relevant information is withheld from the populace? This has been worked on in secret for years and was signed by many nations without most of their citizens ever hearing about it (and apparantly without the signers being fully informed about it themselbves)? Aren' t the refusal of the ACTA authors to share all relevant information and the absence of any political debate - even in the face of massive protests - reasons enough to be highly suspicious? I'd say better safe than sorry.

Just had to get this off my chest, sorry. Let the flaming begin. ;)

Downplayed is not the word I would use in regards to how the Swedish media treats ACTA. Totally ignored is.
*sighs* And this is not the first time they totally ignore very important issues. They totally ignored major changes to our constitution, they totally ignored the protests in southern Europe (Spain in particular) last year, they totally ignored SOPA for a long time... Swedish news media stinks and one would almost think that they are asked by the people in power to not mention a lot of things that might be a bit controversial.

I protested along with all the forms and the petitions against senators and against SOPA and PIPA and against Google for being part of the coalition and all sorts of stuff. The difference here is that those weren't passed yet.

ACTA is already all over the world, already implemented, already passed. I only heard about it close to the end of the other two bills. But I just don't know that much about ACTA. All I know at the moment is it hasn't been the be-all end-all of the internet in the form it is right now, that we protested in the same argument against the others. With ACTA being actual law, overturning it requires probably about 10 times the number of people that it took by the time we won. It's going to have to be the Occupy Movement all over again, the consumer versus the producer, 99% of the world against the minority, yet super powerful industry of entertainment.

In Poland one of the biggest newspaper was very strong about ACTA. To be fair, I have to admit I don't agree with single thing they write about any other subject, so it seems that ACTA is a threat to everyone, left, right, anyone.

Spiegel Online has a decent wrap-up of the situation here (in German). I'm not sure if an English article is well-suited to demonstrate an alleged "downplaying" when there are much more detailed articles linked from the main page of the German site.

I think the point is probably that ACTA is only an international agreement that needs to be ratified into national laws before it becomes effective. Still to early to call out any real threads. It's by far the worst international law that came into effect here. Considering the anti-terror craze the world was engulfed in the aftermath of the terror attacks on New York, Madrid and London this is downright pleasant.

It is problematic to say the least, but it is by far not as bad as SOPA as the latter was an actual law.

I must say I'm kinda relaxed towards it, as our Constitutional Court is doing solid work in the IT sector. And the Pirate Party is currently very strong in Germany giving the "digital generation" a lot of attention. Same goes for the ECtHR, which will get a lot more important in the coming years.

TRIPS, WIPO and all their little cousins all had a lot of very problematic causes, but back then people were less attached to this whole internet thingy and therefore less vocal, not because they were less severe.

To parahrase Dr. Ian Malcom: "The internet will find a way."

Edit: Oh, and Spiegel Online isn't any near what I would call a decent newspaper (But they are fast, I have to give them that. The printed version is somewhat better.

Over here it hasn't been ratified yet and shortly before the announced protests the government put its plans to let it pass on hold. They probably will ratify and pass it though, and the media is doing its bit to back them up.

The thing I don't get is when the observation that a "contract is not acutely dangerous, only potentially dangerous" is interpreted as something like "it isn't all that bad, there's no harm in signing it, I guess". I can't believe how politicians can act so openly naive. Almost everything really bad once started as "potentially bad" only and ignorance helped to let it grow. This kind of attitude always reminds me of the famous quote from that French movie, "La Haine":

C'est l'histoire d'un homme
qui tombe d'un immeuble de 50 étages.
Au fur et à mesure de sa chute,
pour se rassurer, il se répète:

"Jusqu'ici, tout va bien."
"Jusqu'ici, tout va bien."
"Jusqu'ici, tout va bien."

Mais l'important, c'est pas la chute.
C'est l'atterrissage...

(Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good... so far so good... so far so good. How you fall doesn't matter. It's how you land!) :P

And another probably better-known, and shorter, one: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Yes, but Spiegel Online is by definition directed at an audience that's more or less informed about what's going on in the web and makes heavy use of it, while this article quotes daily newspapers (that are tendentially more left-wing, on top of it). All well-written online articles are no use if TV and print media don't represent the points they make. I'm not particularly mad about this international article, it just sums up my own impression of watching TV news and reading the morning paper, and in a language others can understand.

EDIT: Thanks for the link though! :)

As I said before, it's less binding than other, worse stuff we signed. It's funny how some critizism is actually pretty baseless. E.g. that the formulation is to "unclear" and not "detailed" enough. Well, guess what, that is the purpose of international contracts. They need to be made more concrete by the legislation because that is how democracy works. ACTA is not a law, it's a treaty.

It's a bad treaty, in purpose and implementation. But just that. A bad treaty along the lines of many bad treaties before it. It's actually nice to see people care, therefore it might have actually been good in making people look closer. Yet, it is more the general trend in that legislation that is disturbing, not the treaty itself.

You may be right there, but that's why I stressed what worries me most about it is the way it was worked out and passed, without any knowledge of the populace. I couldn't judge the treaty itself, I've never seen it and contrary to you, I'm not a lawyer. ;) I just find it very unsettling that noone really tries to explain the other point of view. On the one side there's rage and hysteria, on the other side there's just silence. How does that fit together?

It's also funny how such topics are still treated as marginal by politicians and some media, even after the 'unexpected' rise of the Pirate party. I think there's a reason why so mayn gave their vote to them and not to any of the other parties.

(As a sidenote, regarding your other post which I hadn't come to read yet, the Constitutional Court is one of the few institutions I still have faith in. :) )

A great many international treaties get treatments (oh the pun) that are "worse" on the transparency scale. Especially all those "anti-terror laws" I mentioned earlier. The european "list of terror suspects" is considered by some former Constitutional Court judges as unconstitutional and could warrant an exit from the EU if not adjusted. That is some really wicked stuff.

The irony of all this is that ACTA might actually be something benefitial in the long run, as it made people more aware of their surroundings. The point that ACTA has been singled out as the "bad treaty" is because of the closeness to the SOPA and the fact it makes people afraid that "the man" will take away there toys.

You can rightfully critizise the way international treatments are made, but they don't need to be transparent, because they are no laws. They are acts of the executive, that aren't automatically binding in the countries that signed. It needs a legislative act (btw, the "anti terror list" is a problem because of the unregulated executive power it gives).

So, even if the shit gits the fan and we get a really, really bad anti piracy law, I'm giving it roughly a month before it gets shot down before the Constitutional Court ;-).

Ah, okay. :) That probably explains why the article you linked isn't actually that bad - the title is questionable, and the part from the Süddeutsche is somewhat objectionable, but the latter is just one commentary in the Süddeutsche (that generally takes a slightly different stance on its site), and even that commentary views the criticism as "justified" (the Spiegel journalist just chose to not quote that passage). So, in short, I don't really see much evidence for "downplaying" here.

I don't know about other media though. I've given up on TV news years ago, and newspapers are just too much of hassle to read in cramped spaces, so I rarely go beyond the online media. I agree with you that well-written articles in the online media aren't terribly useful if TV and printed press are downplaying the issue.

Well, I admit my view is subjective, too, I might be overemphasizing their downplaying. ;)
It's just that it bugs me when they make assumptions and partially portray the protesters as people who'd just like to illegaly download tons of copyrighted material without being punished. It's not the only thing they report, but so far it's been hinted at in some way or other in every article or news program I've seen and it's the thing that's most likely to stick in people's minds because it stirs up the most emotions ("ah! so they want to grab stuff without paying!"). IMO it overshadows the actual issues and makes it easy to dismiss them.

Knowing the German parlament, it would be no surprise that they downplay it.


The radio stations for example have become institutional affairs during the Weimar civil wars in 1918-1920. Left extremist and communists were taking over several stations and proclaimed the revolution. That's the sole reason we have shit like GEZ around.

It is always a German mentality to institutionize(socialize:P) and controll every information possibility in fear of losing authority.
Schäuble tried with the Vorratsdatenspeicherung decree but failed, now they try to undergo this step with an international wide controll. Austria is no different.

I just hope our Bundesgerichtshof will shrug this off...