blogg för Jan Louzek

The most extreme weekend in Brussels ever

Jan Louzek — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 13:12:30 +0000

Språk Engelska

Founding of European Pirates. Conference of the Young Pirates. 370 people that came to Brussels, journalists, good speakers and interesting debates. These were the major features of the last weekend.

One might say that all of this cannot be achieved in only Saturday and Sunday. Indeed it's not – and that is why this weekend was unique. It started actually on Thursday evening already. That was a great moment – opening and keynote speeches by Amelia, by Julia Reda and Rick Falkvinge.

The Conference. Venue: European Parliament

We spent many weeks by preparations so we could be sure that all we do will run smoothly. And so did the Young Pirates, who gathered right after us on Saturday and Sunday in the very nice BYRRH abandoned factory/cultural center/community space in northwestern Brussels.

Yeah, we wanted to do the foundation of Pirate Party Europe. But not only that. Shortly after the official celebration, after the historical moment (and after lunch) we had a huge conference full of panels with specialists, NGOs, evangelists, activists... simply all the people that one can imagine when speaking about Internet Governance.

The hardest work was indeed to form a program that will be interesting and that will bring a lot of attraction from all over the Pirate movement, but also from outside. A cheap policy-babble talks (that are actually very common here in the parliament) were not an option. We had 34 speakers in total; one MEP, one Pirate deputy from local administration in Germany, independent journalists, NGO lawyers, hackers, scientists... Even EU organizations (such as the European Commission, or European Consumer Organization – BEUC) sent their representatives as speakers. This was a good certainty that various backgrounds will be taken into accord during the talks.

In the end 371 people registered for our event. Pirates came from all over the world, from faraway countries like Iceland, Croatia or even Japan. The entrance to the parliament was for one moment kinda crowded. The topics for discussion (all eight of them) were defined in order to describe the current issues of the cyber world in the best way. We discussed the copyright reform, as it will most likely be the outcome of recent copyright consultations arranged by the Commission. The talks about net neutrality also brought us very closely to the current negotiations in the Parliament. Internet security (and insecurity) was also debated. And many more.

One of the topics I personally liked, where I put the most effort in preparations was TTIP – the currently negotiated Trans-Atlantic partnership. This topics was discussed as the last one, at the largest panel. The speakers were very good – Willi Kampmann, Gregory Engels, Glyn Moody, Ben Borges, Kostas Rossouglou – all of them presented what can the impact of adoption of such a treaty can be. Examples from North and South America were presented as well as possible benefits that the treaty might or might not bring.

We've also registered some minor problems and issues during the event. Some of the visitors were actually confused by the size of the “small” room (that had 217 places compared to the “big” one with 417) and also late arrivals, that kinda made complications with the registration. But in the end the opinions of our visitors about our event were mostly positive. European Parliament provided us with all we needed; there was streaming, audio-visual service, catering was provided. The administration even dispatched one person to help us with everything we wanted to have. Security was present after the working hours to check if everything will work just fine...

Young Pirates meeting

And now to Saturday and Sunday: The parliament is closed for the weekend (some assistants actually can enter the building even on weekends if they want to, but interns can't, not to mention the visitors). The good thing is that the Young Pirates managed to get a very nice place – BYRRH. It is a factory, located in Brussels-Laeken with all spaces needed for presentations, for workshops, barcamps or even afterparties. In essence: It was kinda similar to the parliament (we only missed a supermarket or a canteen). Why was it similar? Well, there was actually no reason to go to the “outside world”. And the guys inside also prepared breakfast, lunch and dinner for all the participants! (Almost) all vegan.

The discussions during the YEEA were about all possible topics, but focused mostly on the level of political theory. We've talked about various planes how all the ideologies interact, evolve, change and where Pirates can be on which axis. Kinda reminds me the panel I wanted originally to have on the opening of the European Internet Governance and Beyond (that we decided to cancel due to focus on less political and more technology-related topics).

An interesting part of Smári McCarthy's speech was exactly about this – about axes that define extreme positions in the political competition and that define parties. Most of us know about the right-left definition of politics (that is more or less already a branding than real politics in the postmodern world), or even the liberal-conservative distinction. But about centralistic-decentralistic principle? Or individualist-collectivist one?

I would say I liked this presentation the most from the whole YEEA meeting.

So as the conclusion – yes, this was the most extreme weekend ever. The preparations started already in December and they were long, lots of work was supposed to be done. Some of our partners were not very helpful, sometimes I had a feeling that I am in some kind of Kafka-esque novel. But in the end so many Pirates helped us. Especially the Pirate Party Germany showed a great deal of interest in the founding of PP EU and so the Pirate Party Sweden. I am wondering if we would be actually able to do the stuff without their assistance.

Image credits:

Founding session of the Young Pirates: Maša Čorak, CC-BY-SA 3.0, A colleague holding a poster of our event in front of Amelia's office: Anders Jensen-Urstad CC-BY-SA 3.0, YEEA facility: Jan Loužek CC-BY-SA 3.0

Think Twice

Jan Louzek — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 11:45:25 +0000

Språk Engelska

Last weekend, the Pirate Party International prepared and organized a conference that took place in Frankfurt am Main. It was called Think Twice and it brought a nice mix of sociology- and technology-oriented presentations and speeches. The name was chosen for one and obvious reason: Perhaps we should think twice before accepting some statements as the truth. In the light of recent events this idea seems to be important almost in every field. And after all - the current world also teaches us that there might be more than one truth.

The mentioned "nice mix" was actually possible thanks to the PPI. The International Pirates put a big stress and importance on the preparations of the meeting. We gathered in the ver.di labor union building in downtown Frankfurt. Having three parallel sections for all the participants actually meant that everyone had a chance to see various presentations and talk about various and different topics.

The number of participants unfortunately dropped significantly, as the major airport in Europe - the Frankfurt International Airport - went on strike just during the weekend. Some guys that wanted to get there by plane just didn't make it. So the number of participants dropped from hundreds to tens. And some of the presentations had to be canceled (unfortunately).

But honestly - if there is something I do like, its the small conferences. I mean, the Think Twice session had something kinda similar with the meeting we had in Maastricht last year - and it was really nice. Having less people on the conference can be beneficial when meeting others because finding those you want to speak to is much more easy. There are no lines of people would like to talk to the presenting guy after his speech etc. With the upcoming European Internet Governance and Beyond there was actually a lot of topics that should be discussed.

What was actually the most interesting and intriguing idea that was mentioned at the whole Think Twice session? We discussed the stratified democracy model - a model how principles of most of the people are changing over time with the technological and economical progress. We evaluated the role of politicians in this model and how they can or can not benefit from various changes in our society that appear over time. And when mentioning technological progress, one should not forget about the most hip invention of recent years: 3D printers. That is why we also had a nice presentation about how the 3D print revolutionized the whole idea of manufacturing in general.

It's only too bad that the session was this short and that we had to end on Sunday. The people that were there at the conference were great and it was not that good to tell everyone goodbye so early. But journey from Frankfurt to Brussels is quite far so there was unfortunately no time for the rest of the session.

Why do we need the European Pirate Party

Jan Louzek — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 12:46:31 +0000

Språk Engelska

There are many political formations in the European Parliament, similar to those that we can see in numerous national houses of deputees. We have the European People's Party – major right wing player, the Social Democrats – major alliance of many European socialist parties. We have the liberals,the greens and many more. But where are the Pirates?

The Pirates are a member of the Greens/European Free Alliance. There is no European Pirate Party right now. So.. shouldn't we found it? Or … perhaps better … do we need it? Do we want it? Absolutely!

As I've posted before, there were numerous general elections in many European countries last year. (Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Luxembourg...) In all these respective countries the Pirate movement was present and in all of them the Pirate candidates were showed to the general public.

Just a short example - the visual stuff: In France, Pirate Party uses purple/green as their colors. In Belgium its purple, in Germany orange, in Sweden its purple with black and in the Czech Republic even four colors are used. In all of these countries right before the elections a huge discussion about the visual identity and the design of the campaign materials was present. In all of the countries everyone worked on preparations of these materials.

Many international projects – like non-governmental organizations – already have their global body that can be used as a platform for sharing ideas, exchanging knowledge or helping those in need (like in March 2013 when Pirates from around Europe helped their colleagues in Croatia with the campaign). But for the Pirate movement we do miss such an organization on European level.

That's pretty much it. Creating an institution that can be contributive in this very manner. That can provide a necessary expertise and work pretty much as an advisory tool. The members of parties in particular countries can then be much more focused on their actual work – such as improving their program, adding more topics, or simply using the valuable time for more promotion activities. After all the most discussed issue in pretty much any Pirate party before the elections is not the program – but the manpower available. Then the issue of volunteer management and volunteer mobilization is discussed the most.

So, yes – that is what the Pirate Party of Europe can provide to all of us. And even more.

All over the continent we can see the respective Pirate parties to sign the statues. Another thing that can be done is also the ratification of the Common European elections program CEEP). The program pretty much merges the current agenda of various Pirate parties all over Europe and presents an unique and unified plan how to do Pirate politics in the European institutions. This program is also one of the benefits that the common organization can provide - and pretty much another example of what I explained above when it comes to visual identity.

Which countries already initiated the process when it comes to joining the PPEU? We can clearly see that the ratification process of the Statue of the Pirate Party of Europe was already successfully finished in France, Germany, Belgium, Catalonia, Greece, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland. And many other countries will join soon. Young Pirates of Europe and the Pirate Party International will join too.

In order to make all of our dreams true, we decided to organize a conference that will take place this March where the PP EU will be officially founded. So – do not hesitate and join us in European Internet governance and beyond – on 21st and 22nd March this year in Brussels!

Svenska

Promotion of the Copyright consultations: Czech Republic

Jan Louzek — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 10:55:49 +0000

Språk Engelska

The copyright consultations. They were supposed to be over by 5th February, but the deadline was surprisingly extended to 5th March. So right now there is some more time for the general public to participate in this process. All the stakeholders (that is what we use in eurotalk for interested parties) are now intensifying their efforts to bring people to the debate. That is simply great. Democracy in practice.

The Czech Pirate party showed a good level of initiative. Firstly, one initial billboard was placed in central Brno. But with more time available for the consultations the party decided to place additional ones all over the country.

In the beginning of this project there was an interesting debate. Should we - as the Pirates - use billboards as the method of promotion of our ideas or not? Well, the conclusion was not very clear. But one thing might be. These billboards inform about a project. They do not spread any slogans or smiling faces. They want to raise participation of the general population in a democratic process - by informing more and more people about current issues in Europe.

Perhaps it might be a good idea to have billboards about all the topics where the people can participate. Most of the general public in the Czech Republic (and frankly… in many other countries) simply does not know about the possibility to directly address the European Commission and take a role in the decision process. That is unfortunate and that has to change. And it is very nice to see that there are people who would like to make this change for real.

Copyright consultations extended

Jan Louzek — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 15:01:06 +0000

Språk Engelska

It is highly surprising, but yet it happened. The European Commission decided to extend the deadline for the Copyright consultations to 5th March 2014.

The reason seems to be quite simple. In recent days in January the amount of people interested in the whole idea of public consultations rose significantly. According to available information the number of responses the Commission received was around 2500. We had the successful coypwrongs project that helped everyone to understand and better interpret the whole issue and also lot of effort was done in the whole NGO sector. Many pirate parties informed about this issue (the Czech Pirate Party even promoted it on billboard in Brno). Several MEPs already asked for extension of the deadline, as well as some NGOs did.

Last week for the Copyright Consultations

Jan Louzek — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 13:40:37 +0000

Språk Engelska

On 5th December 2013 the European Commission has launched the public consultation on whether a copyright reform should be initiated or not. The Commission simply wants to ask all Europeans if we should change copyright; if we should make it more European, more restrictive, more liberal or how should it look in the future.

Based on the suggestions that the people will send by e-mail, the Commission will decide, if the reform should be initiated or not. The time frame is highly limited – as the current term of the parliament is going to end in May, the timespan for the consultations was defined only for 2 months – from 5th December to 5th February. And the parliament will have to talk about the proposal or adopt it/reject it if the Commission will draft the proposal. So – if you want your voice to be heard in this issue, you have only one week left! But remember: The European Commission has to take your comment into consideration. And every voice counts. Each suggestion has a chance to change copyright.

So how can you participate? Simply. Download the form, read our manual how to fill it and send it to the DG Markt in the European Commission: markt-copyright-consultation@ec.europa.eu

In the last two (almost) months we could have seen an incredible interest in the participation on the copyright consultations from all over the Europe. The government of Poland expressed a high level of interest already and also published their own questions. Pirate Party Germany and the Czech Pirate Party embraced the consultations to general public by mentioning the whole issue on the main page of their websites and also by active promotion. Several initiatives were created, such as copywrongs.eu or Fix Copyright. And we have the whole NGO sector, that mobilizes volunteers...

Based on the list of current Open Consultations (aside of the Copyright Reform it is possible to send feedback to the European Commission about much other things), the one we are talking about is actually having one of the shortest time window possible. And much of the time we already had actually was during Christmas, when most of the people are usually not interested by politics at all. However - we still have the chance to participate in the reform. Raise your voice!

Everything is a Remix - movie screening in the European Parliament

Jan Louzek — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 11:51:26 +0000

Språk Engelska

Our modern digital society is based on the ideas of Web 2.0. That means that everyone creates, distributes, consumes, reuses and share the culture. The former model, where authors create, distributors distribute and consumers consume is more and more a sign of the past.

But even before that, when the number of people creating content – art, movies, books etc. - was limited, a certain pattern in their creative behavior could be seen, preserved through centuries in many books, plays, movies etc.

In essence – the idea where people copy concepts, transform them and combine is not new. But so far it was a common practice inside of a very limited amount of people, such as writers, directors, photographers, artists or even programmers (anyone remembering the “Pirates of Silicon Valley” movie?)

Not a long time ago I had an opportunity to see an independent documentary by Kirby Ferguson called Everything is a Remix. The movie is pretty much based on a very interesting assumption – that information evolve, just like living organisms do. Memes – the basic elements of information – are evolving and constantly undergoing changes. Yet, their basic idea and principle remains the same for the long time. Ferguson presented countless examples proving this assumption to be true and he did so in a manner so desperately missing in contemporary US documentary movies.

It should be noted that it is impossible for anyone to stop the memes from evolving. Memes were always present and the same memes we can see today will be there even after we are dead. The concepts and ideas in various movies, computer games, songs, or any other content simply want to be shared and transformed and changed – and nowadays (thanks to web 2.0) this is happening in mass numbers amongst all of us.

The copyright is a system initially designed as a temporary restriction of this practice. It was created as a way how to benefit the author for the time and effort he spent for creation of his work. Over the time the temporary nature of copyright was made almost permanent, blocking the “protected” memes from evolving almost completely. Instead of a temporarily protected content they become someone's property. And everyone who is following the natural path – contributing to the evolution of memes - is penalized and considered as an individual endangering the whole society.

The copyright is designed in a simple way – to stop a big portion of memes, ideas, concepts or stories from evolving, transforming or changing. This might have worked well when the copyright period was short and when the amount of people creating and using content was limited, as well as the variety of tools how to modify, transform and remix the original work. That is why the whole idea of copyright fails and why will always fail. It does a totally different thing – it penalizes everyone who acts totally natural, who is contributing to evolution of ideas and who is not harmful to our society at all.

Do not track conference

Jan Louzek — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 11:05:08 +0000

Språk Engelska

In 2013 the world was stunned by the scandals related to tracking. We've realized that the dystopian world, where governments watch almost everyone's move is perpahs not that far from the truth we thought it can be.

As it was mentioned several years ago, the Internet browser will become important than the operating system in the future. And indeed, we now use Internet browsers from all the software in our computers predominantly. These browsers need data and we provide it. Such a data can be our names, ID numbers, personal data, or information where we've been to and who we've met. But what if all the data are not only kept or stored but eventually – transmitted to someone? How can we be sure that if we agree that we want the browser not to track any information it is actually not tracking?

In 2002 the European Commission issued a directive that was later adopted by the member states, that forbids such a behavior; i e. that user's on-line activities cannot be tracked without their consent. In order that the Commission will be able to understand and evaluate the tracking mechanisms of the current world, a working group has been set. Despite years that passed, the group that represent both citizen initiatives and advertising and software industry, did not come to any conclusions.

In the meantime the 2013 wiretapping and tracking scandals occurred.

So far there is a “do not track” standard for Internet browsers. This standard is however only voluntarily enforced. That is why we've organized the Do not track conference; a panel debate of various parties interested in this issue. We should investigate if these standards should remain voluntary or not and eventually outline an idea how this issue should be changed in the future.

Aside of the people from the European Commission, such as Robert Madelin or Paul Nemitz, we will also see speakers from other backgrounds, like for example Rob van Eijk. Stuart Hamilton for example will tell how librarians and visitors of libraries are affected by tracking and how freedom of expression as well as their privacy rights might be endangered.

We believe that this meeting will be interesting; confronting various views on a very important topic of the today world. We'll be happy to see you in Brussels!

Svenska

The Maastricht conference

Jan Louzek — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 18:29:21 +0000

Språk Engelska

Various movements, political parties and NGOs do organize conferences from time to time. So why should the Pirate meeting that took place in Maastricht this weekend be special?

Well, it was I guess this was the first conference, that was actually organized – in a squat. Landbouwbelang, it might be a hard name to remember, but it is actually a squat/culture center in an abandoned factory at the banks of the Maas River in Maastricht, Netherlands.

The whole event took two days and the participants were from many countries from around the region (Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium). I was the only one who came there from Amelia's team. The organizers were Belgians, the speakers pretty much lot of people from Civil Society – as well as from the Pirate Party.

During Saturday and Sunday all the participants had a chance to see a lot of interesting sessions, presentations and talks. The place was nice and the conference, despite a rather slow start, turned out pretty good in the end as well. The more time I've spend there, the better it got. Therewere many interesting sessions, such as the Education reform, focused mostly on the question why is school and learning now two separate entities and why the textbooks are expensive and inefficient - while lots of other options are there on the internet, or the preparation for the upcoming 2014 elections. We also talked about the current situation when it comes to the lobbying in the European Parliament or debate about Basic income (where I had to comment on the session that some of the attendees actually welcomed by an applause). The topics that we discussed and that were presented were pretty much a nice mix of the issues that Pirate party care about extended by many more that are on mind of numerous Civil Society activists.

As about some of the upcoming events, this conference was pretty much a good place for discussion over these topics. I've met with the Belgian Pirates and we talked about the foundation conference of Pirate Party Europe – the very same one, that would Amelia like to hold in March 2014 in Brussels. I was quite positively surprised by the willingness of Pirate Party Belgium to participate in the whole business and by their opinions they've shared with me about this issue. We still have a lot of work to do – as we aim to have a meeting of about 500 people in Brussels.

As the time was progressing, the number of participants was growing and growing. Soon the whole venue was quite full and it was harder and harder to moderate the discussion - simply everyone wanted to speak about the topics. But the time schedule wasn't created for compromises (and we were already behind the schedule in the end). So despite all our wishes, we had to end our meeting on Sunday afternoon so that the participants will have enough time to get back home. But still it was great. Especially thanks to many bonds that were created and people that showed up, presenting new ideas or new views on the ideas that are already well known.

TTIP - A weapon of net destruction?

Jan Louzek — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 14:38:00 +0000

Språk Engelska

As I remember clearly, somewhere around early October I've met Martin Kliehm from Mozilla Foundation. We spend the whole evening by discussion about the upcoming DRM in HTML5 debate in the Parliament and current trends in many IT related areas in general. In one moment he mentioned “ACTA 2” - a new document under some strange name. I have to say I can't remember clearly what was the abbreviation he mentioned. It was maybe something with T... and it mentioned the IP protocol (perhaps?) somewhere.

But as the time progressed, it was not that hard to find out what is the issue. The abbreviation stands for TTIP – Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, cornerstone of the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement, abbreviated as TAFTA.

The idea is simple: European single market (EU) and North American free trade Area (NAFTA) should be merged. This will create the one of the largest single market in the world – and it will make doing the investments in both regions more easy. There might be also better competition and both Europeans and Americans will benefit from this. The profit calculated from the whole TAFTA project is supposed to be billions of EUR every year. So what is the big deal?

In order to establish pretty much any community, a set of rules has to be drafted first. In our countries, we have complex legislative processes; laws and other legal documents that are supposed to make life in better, are proposed. People can participate on this process; they can either submit their proposals in some of the countries directly, or they elect their representatives in the chamber of deputies that will do this on their behalf.

With much bigger bodies, such as international organizations – like the European Union, this process is pretty much working the same way. We have the European Commission with its president voted by the European Parliament and commissioners appointed by member states' governments. Again, the member states' governments were formed on basis of the elections results – on the will of the people. And we also have the European Parliament, that can approve or disapprove any legislative act – or international agreement.

A hundred years ago, it was a common practice in European politics to sign secret international treaties. A treaty that no one would know about – a treaty that might define allies or enemies. Once a single nation attacked his neighbor, he suddenly realized that he is in war not with his neighbor only – but with much more countries, allied to him secretly. This made international negotiations pretty much impossible to hold; and it was also considered as one of the causes of the rapid spread of hostilities in the beginning of First World War.

That is one of the reason why international political agreements mostly don't function this way any longer. When it comes however to the trade pacts, these still follow the practice from the early 20th century. Last year we've been witnesses of the ratification of the ACTA agreement that appeared almost from a thin air; the negotiations were made behind closed doors. Most of the information that was available to the democratically elected parliamentarians came from WikiLeaks – and not from standard communication channels. Having in mind the lack of information, it was only logical that the request for the European Commission to made all the negotiations, documents and especially the text of the very treaty itself public – was voted shortly after.

Once the text of the treaty was officially published and the Members of the European Parliament as well as many other interested people started to analyze it, opposition continued to grow. This convinced the more governments of the member states to interrupt the ratification process of ACTA in their respective countries. 5 committees of the European Parliament (Development Committee – DEVE, Civil Rights Committee – LIBE, Industry Committee – ITRE, Legal Affairs Committee – JURI, International Trade Committee - INTA) decided to vote againt the adoption of the treaty after many of the possible consequences were discussed. That (together with Amelia's contribution) was pretty much the very reason why the deputies rejected ACTA in July by a majority vote – as the possible list of consequences of the implementation of the treaty would be so big, that no one would be able to evaluate it properly – especially in the short time given between the publication of the text of the treaty and voting. In this case it might be interesting to point out that the secret nature of the negotiations de facto killed the treaty itself.

More than a year has passed from that very moment, but it seems that those want the transatlantic economic to flourish, did not learn anything from it.

There is a reason why during that October night TTIP was a strange, unknown acronym to me (and perhaps to all others as well). Media has not informed about the upcoming treaty in appropriate way so far – yet, this treaty will have a dramatic impact on our daily life.

As the third round of negotiations in Washington D. C. is closing in, opposition is growing again. An open letter, that was drafted and signed by more than 100 NGOs from around the world requests removal of certain features from the treaty. Tonight, a summit here in Brussels take place. Thousands of people will protest against the meeting - and one of the reasons for doing so is exactly the cake that are the negotiators "baking" behind the closed doors.

What feature are we talking about?

It is so-called “Investor-state dispute settlement”. It is part of the NAFTA's charter (article 11). Expanding the NAFTA towards European Union would make this practice effective in the EU as well. How does it work? Simply.

There are many countries in the world that want to attract foreign investors. In order to do so, they can offer lower taxes, subsidies, they can prepare industrial parks so that the cost of the investment of any particular company will be lower and the return time can be more interesting. However, there are other options as well. The government can guarantee the same legal environment for the company for a certain amount of time. Thus, any changes to mentioned part of the legal system would become illegal for the government. Political representation might then be sued and face consequences. Investor-state dispute-settlement (abbreviated) ISDS grants the corporations the right to use private trade tribunals and directly challenge any government policy and action that be seen as harming the current or even future profit of the private investor. This is called “expropriation”. A new term, so-called “predictable regulatory environment” will be introduced to describe the part of the legal system, that should be preserved at any cost.

This very part of the TTIP document would simply restrict the powers of democratically elected governments. It does not say that the cabinets will not be allowed to change whatever law they would like; that would be too undemocratic to say. But it says that the government can be sued and if so, pay a lot in refunds to the very company. And having in mind the current state of public finances – it is clear that not a single government would like to pay that much money, would it?

Thus a stable and predictable environment is created – but on expense of freedom to do actual politics. Should we allow the negotiators in secret meetings to block our elected legislators from changing our laws anymore? Should we really give them that much power?

The TTIP document does have a chapter about Intellectual property rights. Text of the chapter is still secret and pretty much the whole world is waiting for first information to be leaked. It is also interesting fact that all the important stuff around this treaty is happening around Christmas - when most of the people want to meet with their families and forget about the politics. It is regrettable what "christmas present" is currently being prepared. So far we have informations from Wikileaks about a similar chapter from TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement) - and frankly it is not a nice text. Having similar rules applying to european countries would pretty much mean that TTIP will become a weapon of net destruction.

It is very easy to convince both US and European general public to support the treaty with words like jobs, investments and billions of dollars – when unprecedented amount of Europeans (and I do believe that
Americans as well) are facing economic downfall, poverty and job loss. Radicalism, that is spreading throughout in all the European member states in every direction, can easily leave behind important concepts like creativity, competitiveness, freedom of speech or freedom of action.

Svenska