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Deutsch: Neue ACTA-Verhandlungsrunde: Die Haltung der EU
A new round of negotiations on ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is taking place from 26 to 29 January 2010 in Guadalajara, Mexico. As announced by some countries participating in the event the main topics of the new negotiations are: civil enforcement, border measures and enforcement procedures in the digital environment. Transparency is also on the agenda, but only for one hour during the last day, proving the importance given to this subject.
As explained by FFII (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure) and EDRi-member Electronic Frontier Foundation the latest EU document leaked suggests the EU would prefer ACTA to mirror existing EU legislation. This is confirmed by the statement of the designated Commissioner for Digital Agenda who said during the hearing in the European Parliament: "There has been a first proposal tabled by the United States. For the Commission, the objective of the negotiations is that our international partners guarantee the same level of protection of IP rights as the EU currently applies. There will be no harmonization via the back-door. We stick to the line they have to move to our side and that's it."
Professor Annette Kur of the Max Planck Institute in Munich pointed out in a presentation last December that "Exporting EU-style enforcement legislation to foreign trading partners is an (un)official goal of EU policy."
FFII explains that ACTA might look like the recently EU-Korea free trade agreement, meaning harsh anti-counterfeiting measures against patent infringements, which are often complex and of unclear validity. "Applied to patents, we believe these could well threaten companies that produce software, companies that use software, and free software projects alike. And the "safe harbours" for online hosting providers proposed by the agreement are no safe harbours at all. We believe these are the kind of regulations that Europe is proposing exporting to the world. "
La Quadrature du Net also thinks that ACTA wants to impose extra-judicial "voluntary" agreements between ISPs and rights holders to combat copyright infringements through "three strikes" schemes or automated content filtering or removal. To force Internet operators into accepting such access restrictions, ACTA will make them liable for the copyright infringements of their users.
Consumers International issued a Joint Declaration on ACTA explaining that the new international agreement will authorize border guards to search laptops and MP3 players and to seize them if they contain material that could seem to infringe copyright. The agreement could also introduce new criminal sanctions for copyright infringements, including sanctions for certain uses of the Internet that previously were not criminalized.
The new Spanish movement Red SOStenible called ACTA the Damocles sword at the world level against the civil rights in the digital era.
In the meantime, several MEPs are trying to get more information from the European institutions on this topic.
Alexander Alvaro (ALDE, Germany) has tabled a detailed set of questions on the issue of ACTA. The questions vary between ones that will elicit answers that have been given already (such as regarding transparency and availability of the documents), questions that can be easily dodged (when is a conclusion expected and will the Internet be covered) and ones that are much more probing. He asks, for example, if and why issues not related to counterfeiting are covered and if substantive intellectual property law will change as a result of ACTA.
Perhaps the most interesting question is "what benefit would accrue" for Europe if, as certain US officials have said, the agreement does not impose new obligations on the United States. The recent statements by Commissioners-designate De Gucht and Kroes that EU law will not change as a result of ACTA makes the answer to this particular question particularly interesting.
Britta Thomsen (S&D, Denmark) tabled a similar question to both Commission and Council, with a specific query as to whether recitals 30 and 31 of the "telecom package" (by which, she presumably means Directive 2009/136/EC, amending the e-privacy and universal service Directives) will be adequately respected by ACTA.
Blogging ACTA Across The Globe: FFII's Ante Wessels on Exporting Europe's
Flaws (26.01.2010)
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/blogging-acta-across-globe-ffiis-...
European Union's Comments to the US Proposal Special Requirements Related to
the Enforcements of IPRs in the Digital Environment (29.10.2009)
http://blog.die-linke.de/digitalelinke/wp-content/uploads/674b-09.pdf
ACTA Agenda - Round 7 (26-29.01.2010)
http://www.mfat.govt.nz/Trade-and-Economic-Relations/Trade-Agreements/...
Enforcing European Intellectual Property Rights in Europe and in Third
Countries - The Quest for Balance (12.2009)
http://www.se2009.eu/polopoly_fs/1.28342!menu/standard/file/Kur%2C%20M...
ACTA Attacks Internet! Let's Attack ACTA! (25.01.2010)
http://www.laquadrature.net/en/acta-attacks-internet-lets-attack-acta
Consumers International: Joint Declaration on ACTA
http://a2knetwork.org/joint-declaration-acta
(North)american friends are needed (only in Spanish, 25.01.2010)
http://red-sostenible.net/index.php/NotaPrensa5
Written Question by Alexander Alvaro (ALDE) to the Commission (22.01.2010)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+WQ+E-...
Written Question by Britta Thomsen (S&D) to the Council (21.01.2010)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+WQ+E-...
EDRi-gram: IP Chapter in the EU-Korea free trade agreement essentially
flawed (13.01.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.1/eu-korea-ip-chapter-ffii