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Deutsch: Netzsperren: Schlussfolgerungen der dänischen Ratspräsidentschaft
On 8 June 2012 the Council of Ministers will adopt a “Council Conclusions” document on the creation of a “Global Alliance against Child Sexual Abuse Online”. In line with the Directive adopted last year, the text refers to blocking “where appropriate” of websites. The inclusion of blocking in the text indicates an expectation of failure – a “global alliance” could be expected to effectively remove, identify and prosecute such offences wherever the material was found. It also transplants a concept from EU legislation into an international context, with all of the dangers that this implies. The reference to blocking in the EU Directive is surrounded by safeguards (even if these are not always implemented) and subject to the Charter of Fundamental Rights but in the international environment those safeguards do not apply.
Separately, the Danish and Swedish authorities have been actively lobbying Japan to introduce web blocking. The Swedish Ambassador to Japan attended an event in Tokyo last week to lobby in favour of blocking – touting Sweden's entirely bizarre official “statistics” to support their case. By coincidence, one of the biggest technology providers that works in the blocking area is Netclean, which happens to be Swedish. By a second coincidence, the Swedish EU Commissioner's services fund CIRCAMP, a police-based organisation that also lobbies for web blocking.
The motivations of the Danish Presidency are difficult to guess at – is child abuse being instrumentalised for other policy goals or does the Danish government simply not understand the issue of online child abuse?
No particular attention appears to have been given to the fact that there is no statistical information showing that blocking provides any particular value in the protection of children. Worse still, statistics from EU-funded hotlines show that even the potential value of blocking for child protection reasons is dropping at a precipitous rate. Not alone is the overall number of sites dropping consistently, around half of the sites (and the proportion is growing) are file hosting sites or hacked servers which cannot normally be blocked. For example, blocking the entire Flickr or Microsoft Skydrive services because their services had been abused would clearly be inappropriate.
There has been given no special attention either to the fact that, even with EU protections for fundamental rights, blocking for child abuse material has spread to cover other types of material (gambling and copyright, in particular) in every country where it has been implemented in Europe, except Sweden. Nor has any attention been given in the document to the need for appropriate safeguards, although this may be due to the fact that some EU countries have blocking with no meaningful safeguards – indeed Denmark itself has a blocking system that does not have a legal basis.
The document to be adopted is a set of “Presidency Conclusions.” These are non-binding but must be adopted unanimously. One has to wonder at countries like the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, which had extensive discussions on a national level, which resulted in a decision that blocking should not be implemented. Indeed, Germany was the only country in the Council discussions to raise any concerns at all about this initiative. It seems little more than reckless to permit the EU's credibility to be attached to a strategy to be spread around the world which is not good enough to be implemented in many of its own Member States.
Ironically, while the EU continues to push directionlessly for blocking in any forum that it can find, it makes no efforts to reflect on improving its domestic measures. There has been basically no evolution of policy or thinking on either blocking or “notice and takedown” in the past decade while in the US the procedures around notice and takedown have been completely reformed to a positive effect.
Statistics from the Internet Watch Foundation annual reports for the
last number of years
http://www.iwf.org.uk
Netclean
http://www.netclean.com
Sweden's blocking page
http://195.54.122.220/sv.html
CIRCAMP
http://www.circamp.eu
(Contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi)
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Deutsch: Netzneutralität: BEREC präsentiert neuste Erkenntnisse
On 29 May 2012, The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) published its findings in its joint investigation with the European Commission regarding traffic management and other practices that lead to restrictions to an open Internet in Europe.
This investigation was based on over 400 responses to a questionnaire addressed to European operators in fixed and mobile markets and includes three publications in the context of Net Neutrality (the quality of service guidelines, a report on differentiation practices and related competition issues and a report on IP Interconnection).
While stating that traffic management and differentiation practices are not harmful in themselves, BEREC draws the attention over the fact that they are “capable of being used for questionable purposes or in an inappropriate manner.”
BEREC’s conclusions are that in order to provide net neutrality, competition between operators should rely on effective transparency and the possibility for end-users to easily switch between service providers. National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) as well as end-users should also be able to monitor the performance of the Internet access service and of the applications used via that Internet access service.
As the situation is different in the Member States, BEREC is proposing general criteria to allow NRAs to assess practices on a case-by-case basis in their respective markets.
However, the data from the investigation is actually revealing an increased trend of the operators to restrict access to their users. “At least 20% of mobile Internet users in Europe have some form of restriction on their ability to access VoIP services, although there are differences by country (depending for example on the number of operators providing unrestricted access)” says the report. The same is valid for 20% of the fixed telecommunications operators especially for peer-to-peer volumes at peak times. According to Neelies Kroes, who initiated the investigation, this can affect up to 95% of users in a country. Kroes emphases the fact that the findings show the need for more regulatory certainty and the existence of “enough problems to warrant strong and targeted action to safeguard consumers.”
The Commissioner believes consumers should know exactly what they get for their money and that regulators should have control over how ISPs market their services.
Yet, digital civil society groups consider this is not enough and that the Commission should legislate on the matter and provide strong legal protections for the free Internet, taking the good example of Netherlands.
"Commissioner Nellie Kroes' proposals refer soundly to the long standing principle of Net Neutrality, but they will have no effect if they fall short of decisive action. Net neutrality must be made into EU law, and provide a stricter framework paving the way for fine-tuned but effective regulation. As Mrs. Kroes timidly suggests, it is indeed of the utmost importance to ban operators from using the word "Internet" if they block, throttle or charge differently for specific Internet services and applications. Privacy invasive traffic monitoring practices must also be prohibited. All the data is on the table, now we need action," stated Zimmermann, co-founder and spokesperson of La Quadrature du Net.
The public consultation on the three BEREC documents is open until 31 July 2012.
A view of traffic management and other practices resulting in
restrictions to the open Internet in Europe - Findings from BEREC’s and
the European Commission’s joint investigation (29.05.2012)
http://erg.eu.int/doc/consult/bor12_30.pdf
PRESS RELEASE - BEREC publishes net neutrality findings and new guidance
for consultation (29.05.2012)
http://erg.eu.int/doc/whatsnew/pr29052012.pdf
BEREC documents on Net Neutrality consultation
http://erg.eu.int/whatsnew/index_en.htm
Next steps on Net Neutrality – making sure you get champagne service if
that’s what you’re paying for (29.05.2012)
http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/neelie-kroes/netneutrality/
EU Telecom Regulators' Wake Up Call on Net Neutrality (30.05.2012)
http://www.laquadrature.net/en/eu-telecom-regulators-wake-up-call-on-n...
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Deutsch: Europarat: EDRi-Stellungnahme zur Modernisierung der Konvention 108
EDRi submitted last week its comments on the proposal for the Modernisation of Council of Europe (CoE) Convention 108 for the Protection of Individuals with Regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data.
EDRi reiterated its support to the overall objectives of the Modernisation process, and expressed its satisfaction that most of its earlier comments have been taken into account in subsequent versions of the proposal. While EDRi generally welcomed this latest draft, some provisions still need some revision.
For example, EDRi considers that the paragraph which allows any Party to the Convention to apply it to legal persons, should be deleted. The reasoning is first, that this is beyond the scope of the Convention, which deals with the protection of “individuals”. Secondly, this provision contradicts the very notion of “personal” data protection. Furthermore, the paragraph raises major concern with respect to freedom of information and the right to access to documents (where the concerned legal person is a public entity) and with respect to the principles of transparency and accountability that are necessary in a democratic society (where the concerned legal person is a private entity).
Also, EDRi welcomes the inclusion of data breach notifications provisions, but sees it as currently too weak to actually avoid possible breaches of the fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject or his interests. In order to overcome this problem without imposing too cumbersome and unnecessary obligations on the controller (especially when the controller is an SME), EDRi suggests to consider a two-level system of data breach notification obligation, so that (i) the Supervisory Authority is notified in any case of data breach and (ii) the data subject is also notified when the data breach presents serious risks for him/her or when the Supervisory Authority decides so.
EDRi Comments on Modernisation of Convention 108
http://edri.org/files/EDRI-CommentsOnConvention108-30052012.pdf
Council of Europe - Modernisation of Convention No. 108
http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/standardsetting/dataprotection/modernisation...
(Thanks to Meryem Marzouki - EDRi-member IRIS, France)
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Deutsch: Tschechien: Neuer Anlauf zur Wiedereinführung der Vorratsdatenspeiche...
For over a year now, Czech operators have not generally retained data on electronic communication for the needs of police – data police considered crucial in the investigation of crime. Yet, every year, there has been an increase in the number of solved crimes. Guardians of privacy are therefore convinced there is no need to monitor private electronic communications. However, the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic discusses the reintroduction of data retention.
In March 2011, the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic decided to cancel the obligation of operators to retain traffic and localisation data on the electronic communications of all the citizens for the needs of the police and other authorized bodies, following a complaint filed by the civic association EDRi-member Iuridicum Remedium (IuRe) and supported by 52 deputies. The police can currently use only data kept for other purposes, such as billing.
"Prior to the decision of the Constitutional Court, we were true European 'champions' in the number of police requests for such data. In the first three months of 2011 only, just prior to the decision of the Constitutional Court, the police requested this information in criminal proceedings in a total of 29 661 cases. Some of these requests were multiple, addressing for example all three mobile phone operators. So that a total of 61 698 responses with data files were provided," says Jan Voboril, lawyer with IuRe. He also adds that in the first three months of 2012, only 2 240 requests were filled and only 2980 responses provided – which adds up to more than ten times less requests and twenty times less responses. IuRe requested this data from the Special Tasks Department of the Police of the Czech Republic.
"It is interesting that such a large drop in the number of requests had virtually no effect on the detection of crime. According to the police statistics for 2010, a year when operators kept the data and it was widely used by the police, and for 2011, when, following the decision of the Constitutional Court, there was limited data retention for the most part of the year, with a substantial drop in the number of requests for information, the Czech Republic saw an increase in crime the detection rate from 37,55% to 38,54 %. Therefore statistics do contradict what the police says: the Police insists that data retention is more or less an essential tool and limiting data retention has a major impact on police work. "It is obvious that the police still has sufficient tools for the investigation of crimes apart from global data retention related to the communications of all citizens," explains Voboril.
Currently, the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic discusses a draft document for the amendment of the Act on Electronic Communications aimed to reintroduce the obligation of operators to retain data in order to implement the European directive. IuRe sent its comments on this questionable proposal to the Members of the Parliament.
In some areas, such as the right of the police to request these data for purposes related to searching for wanted and missing persons outside the scope of criminal proceedings, there is a lack of protection against abuse. "The police is aware of this as well, as confirmed to us by representatives of the Special Tasks Department who also said they sought to change these authorisations which can be misused. However the Ministry of Interior is blocking the solution to this problem," says Voboril.
"We would see the best solution in declining the current proposal or passing only stricter rules for the use of these data and simultaneously declining the obligation of operators to retain data for the needs of the police and other authorities. Europe currently expects a decision of the European Court of Justice assessing the acceptability of global data retention as required by the Directive in respect of its compatibility with fundamental right to privacy. At the same time, the Directive is being revised by the European Commission. In Germany, where the Constitutional Court annulled these legal provisions in 2010, it seems that the Directive will not be implemented at all, despite the threat of sanctions – given its massive impact on citizens' rights and with reference to the unconstitutionality of it. We hope that our legislators will find the courage and common sense to reject this useless tool with great impact on our privacy," concluded Voboril.
(Thanks to EDRi-member Iuridicum Remedium – Czech Republic)
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Deutsch: EDRi-Stellungnahme zur Konsultation über Abgaben auf Privatkopien
In November 2011, the European Commissioner Michel Barnier appointed Mr Antonio Vitorino – former EU Commissioner – as mediator in the dialogue on private copying levies. A public consultation was (quite discreetly) launched by Mr Vitorino in April 2012. The consultation deadline, to which EDRi answered, was last Thursday.
In its answers, EDRi underlines the incoherence of having a levy on private copying when there is no consistency in EU regarding the scope of private copying. It is indeed fundamentally impossible to harmonise private copying without fully harmonising the copyright legislation especially on exceptions and limitations, as well as resolving the problem of legal protection for technical protection mechanisms.
The logic behind private copying levies is that there is a specific harm to the creator caused by the legal owner of a copy of the content in question who uses the content as he(she) sees fit. This assumption appears somewhat dubious on its own and becomes even more questionable when we consider that there are major question marks over whether or not the actual creators, particularly niche artists, receive an appropriate proportion of the money collected in the EU Member States that currently collect levies.
On the other hand, while the harm caused to creators has never been clearly demonstrated, the damage to the equipment market in Europe is very easy to see, as is the exceptionally wasteful and costly collection of levies by and for collecting societies.
Moreover, private copy levies seem to hinder creativity and creation in the digital age more than they encourage them. They skew the market by compensating rightsholders for economic losses that have never been clearly demonstrated. Private copy levies might even have a chilling effect on new business models including digital services. New devices and services are being developed that allow the creation and commercialisation of works. Some devices and services have their own models to remunerate creators. However, pressure is mounting for levies to be spread to cover such services, even when copying, particularly private copying, are not a main function of the services. Secondly, some emerging business models are based on licensing content and do not even envisage the possibility of private copies.
One important issue with the consultation is that it assumes that the private copying levies should exist, when it does not appear to be an equitable solution. Since the Directive 2001/29/EC recognises the possibility of an exception for private copying, a levy imposed on exercising a right that is yours by law does not seem to be justified, unless there is a significant damage that can be quantified. Discussions on this alleged negative economic impact have been going on for a long time but the damage, if it exists at all, was never quantified.
In a recent Opinion, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) stresses the unfairness of private copying levy as "private copying is an integral part of fair use". Moreover, the opinion underlines that "it should certainly not apply to hard drives used by businesses in the course of their industrial and commercial activities." (Point 1.5 of the Opinion) In its final point, the Opinion states that a tax levied in order to cover the cost of private copying is based on the presumption of guilt, and that "private copying is a legitimate practice which enables the user to change media or hardware and which should be recognised as a right of the legal holder of the license for use under the concept of fair use" (point 4.6.7).
As long as the damage has not been quantified and not even clearly verified, no tax should be raised to compensate an unknown damage. Some other solutions could possibly solve the “problem” encountered, such as a compensation scheme based on the sale price of the work. That would firstly solve both the issue of the compensation of the alleged loss of creators and the question of who is liable to pay for this compensation, and secondly, that would avoid problems in cross-border sales.
Statement by Mr. António Vitorino on the mediation process
concerning private copying and reprography levies (2.04.2012)
http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/barnier/docs/speeches/2012040...
Opinion EESC on the "Communication from the Commission — A Single Market
for Intellectual Property Rights — Boosting creativity and innovation to
provide economic growth, high quality jobs and first class products and
services in Europe" (6.03.2012)
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2012:068:00...
Consultation response: http://edri.org/files/levies_consultation.pdf
(Contribution by Marie Humeau - EDRi)
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Deutsch: Ein sicheres Internet für Kinder – erste Fortschritte
The European Commission hosted a meeting of the “CEO Coalition” on Friday of last week. This is a project where Commissioner Kroes invited industry to produce measures to make the Internet a safer place for children. The dangers of such an approach are clear – industry will be tempted to choose the easiest and most public relations-friendly measures rather than evidence-based measures that will make a positive difference and, potentially, to favour “solutions” which give them a competitive advantage. On the other hand, the Commission is faced with the temptation to take whatever is on offer from industry, particularly due to the very short time-frame (end of 2012) that it gave industry to come up with proposals.
There appears, however, to be a new awareness in the Commission that child protection must be taken more seriously, based on credible research. One indication of this is the distribution on Friday of the latest round of the EUKidsonline research project. This project provides a comprehensive overview of the experience of European children in the online environment, providing an evidence base for future decision-making. To date, however, the EU institutions have referred this work disappointingly infrequently, although this may change as the research becomes better known.
The discussions on Friday, despite the less than promising framework for the project, displayed some of the first significant evolution in thinking of this subject for several years. The quality and progress of the work of the CEO Coalition is, however, very different depending on the subject being discussed and which companies are taking the lead. There are four working groups, WG 1 on “reporting tools”, WG 2 on “age-appropriate privacy settings”, WG 3 on “notice and takedown” and WG 4 on "parental controls".
The most disappointing work is being done in working groups 1 and 2. Working Group 1 on "reporting tools" appears to believe that any reporting button of any description will be a good thing. Many of the proposals are measures that have already been tried, with varying degrees of success and failure. Instead of learning from past mistakes and building on past achievements, the working group appears to prefer to start from scratch. Despite the recent revelations on the Gawker website and the Daily Telegraph, no particular attention is being devoted to the treatment of reports that are filed through reporting buttons.
Working group 2 on “age-appropriate privacy settings”, led by Facebook, offers the least progress. The task at hand appears to be “spin” existing policies and laws that should be applicable for both children and adults as a special service for children. This approach is the one that was followed in the already existing “The Safer Social Networking Principles for EU”. The presentation made on Friday, for example, suggested that “an application or service that is directed at children or adolescents should ensure that the collection, access and use of personal information is appropriate in all given circumstances and compatible with national law.”
In Working Group 3 on "notice and takedown", there are worrying discussions on the roll-out of upload filters. Hardly coincidentally, Microsoft both leads the Notice and Takedown working group and developed the PhotoDNA software that is used by, for example, Facebook UK, to check filter images being uploaded to its service against a blacklist of known child abuse material. No discussion of abuse of the software, unintended consequences or positives and negatives that can be drawn from experience with the use of the software took place. On the other hand, however, there was an awareness among participants that the focus on industry actions such as notice and takedown, leaves much of the problem unaddressed and even neglected. There has been far too much attention placed on removing the symptoms of the crime, often outside the rule of law, and too little on the important problems that intermediaries cannot solve – victim identification, investigation, prosecution etc. This was the first meeting that we are aware of when this realisation was expressed by organisations other than EDRi.
Working group 4 on "parental controls", which is led by Nokia, showed an impressive amount of expertise and serious reflection on how to create a real value added for child protection online. The paper presented by Nokia stressed the importance of continual research in order to ensure that the measures being implemented are actually achieving their intended goals, that parental controls should be at the edge of the network rather than in the network itself and that measures which undermine the privacy of the child should not be supported by any such software.
The biggest danger now is that the rapidly approaching deadline of the end of 2012 will lead to proposals being made and approved without due care for unintended consequences for child protection, for fundamental rights, for online competition and for the open Internet.
EU Kids online project
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EUKidsOnline/Home.aspx
Inside Facebook’s Outsourced Anti-Porn and Gore Brigade, Where ‘Camel
Toes’ are More Offensive Than ‘Crushed Heads’ (16.02.2012)
http://gawker.com/5885714/
The dark side of Facebook (2.03.2012)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/9118778/The-dark-side-o...
Commissioner Kroes speech on “delivering a better Internet for kids”
(1.12.2011)
http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/neelie-kroes/better-internet-kids/
(Contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi)
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Deutsch: Frankreich: YouTube haftet nicht für Inhalte
On 29 May 2012, in a case brought to court by TF1 against Google for its YouTube service, the High Court of Paris ruled that YouTube was just a hosting service and therefore not bound to police the content posted on it by its users.
TF1 sued Google in 2008 over a series of extracts from its programs posted on YouTube by its users. The TV company claimed 141 million Euro as damages for counterfeiting, unfair competition and parasitism.
"The defendant is not responsible in principle for the video content on its site; only the users of the site are....... It has no obligation to police the content before it is put online as long as it informs users that posting television shows, music videos, concerts or advertisements without prior consent of the owner is not allowed," says the court’s decision.
The court dismissed all TF1 claims and asked the TV channel to pay 80000 Euro for Google’s legal fees.
"We continue to oppose any demands to systematically filter or pre-screen YouTube content and are confident that future court rulings will uphold the need to allow innovative Web services to flourish," Christophe Mueller, head of partnerships for YouTube in Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa, said in a statement.
This is good news for Google as the company was not as lucky in Germany where in April 2012 the court took a totally opposite decision deciding YouTube was responsible for the content its users published and should take down copyrighted videos or pay royalties.
The French court decision can, however, still be appealed, as it was given by a civil court of first instance in Paris.
YouTube wins against TF1 which was asking 141 million euro (updated)
(only in French, 29.05.2012)
http://www.numerama.com/magazine/22736-youtube-gagne-contre-tf1-qui-lu...
The High Court of Paris ruling in TF1 case against YouTube (only in
French, 29.05.2012)
http://www.numerama.com/media/YoutubeTF1-Jgt29mai2012.pdf
A Victory for the Web in France (29.05.2012)
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/victory-for-web-in-fr...
French court backs Google in TV piracy case (29.05.2012)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/29/net-us-google-france-idUSBRE...
EDRi-gram: YouTube loses a case in Germany to collective society Gema
(25.04.2012)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number10.8/youtube-gema-case
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Deutsch: Neuer Vorschlag zur elektronischen Identifizierung und E-Signaturen
On 4 June 2012, the European Commission published a new draft regulation on e-signatures and e-identities that is meant to extend the existing e-Signatures Directive to include new services such as e-stamping or e-seals that would guarantee the origin and the integrity of an electronic document.
“The proposed Regulation will ensure people and businesses can use their own national electronic identification schemes (e-IDs) to access public services in other EU countries where e-IDs are available.” says the EC press realease.
By the draft regulation, citizens’ e-identities will be automatically recognised in other EU member countries without need of extra paper work. "The proposed Regulation will ensure mutual acceptance of electronic identification schemes (eIDs), e-Signatures and related online trust services," explained Ryan Heath, spokesperson for Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes.
The EC assures that the regulation will not oblige EU member states to introduce eID cards, that “the proposals are designed to avoid the centralisation of information” and that there will be no European eID database or any other kind of European database.
According to the Commission, the security of the electronic use of personal data in other countries will be protected with state-of-the-art technology and procedures and no unnecessary data will not be revealed.
“If a teenager wanted secure access to a chat room for 14-18 year old, or gamblers needed to prove they were of legal age, the website should only check information about their age from the e-ID card. Other details such as nationality and address would not need to be revealed,” details the Commission’s paper.
However, the proposal favours the introduction of e-IDs. The member states taking up e-IDs will benefit from incentives and although the document underlines that harmonisation of e-identities is not required, best practices will be exchanged and followed among member states with e-Ids, which will lead to an actual harmonisation.
The proposal will probably still raise controversy in countries with high concerns about privacy such as the United Kingdom where citizens have long opposed the introduction of identity cards. "We fought to be free and we will again fight to be free," said a EurActiv reader.
Security is another matter of concern as the current data protection systems are not entirely equipped to deal with increasingly sophisticated techniques to steal data and identities in the electronic world and eIDs would also be targeted by Internet fraudsters and criminals organisations.
The French Pirate Party called for avoiding the centralisation of data storage and for allowing citizens to disclose the minimum of personal information.
Commission launches e-identity initiative (4.06.2012)
http://www.euractiv.com/infosociety/commission-launches-identity-ini-n...
Digital Agenda: new Regulation to enable cross-border electronic
signatures and to get more value out of electronic identification in
Digital Single Market (4.06.2012)
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/12/558&...
EC Draft Regulation on electronic identification and trusted services
for electronic transactions in the internal market (4.06.2012)
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/esignature/eu_legislati...
EDRi-gram 10.10: Electronic identities all over the EU? (23.05.2012)
http://edri.org/edrigram/number10.10/electronic-identities-european-un...
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Deutsch: ENDitorial: ACTA vor der endgültigen Abstimmung im EP
Over the past two weeks, all four European Parliament (EP) committees that are providing an “opinion” on ACTA have voted against the proposal. The next steps will be a vote in the responsible Committee on 20/21 June and final vote of the full Parliament on 3 July.
It is worth remembering that, so far, a total of only 175 parliamentarians have had an opportunity to vote and 98 of these (56%) voted against ACTA, with a large number of abstentions. The results in the different committees varied widely. Only one MEP in each of the Development (DEVE) and Civil Liberties Committees (LIBE) voted in favour of ACTA, while the vote was comparatively close in the Industry and Legal Affairs Committees. A total of 37 parliamentarians voted in favour of ACTA.
While this headline is very positive and very welcome, the fight is far from over. There are still Parliamentarians who wish to support ACTA, even if this now means humiliating the Parliament itself by avoiding a vote until after the European Court of Justice ruling next year. Efforts are still being made by some Parliamentarians to give Commissioner De Gucht one last opportunity to address the Parliament to plead for a delay of the vote. Even during the votes in DEVE and LIBE some Parliamentarians tried to disrupt the Parliament's work by introducing last minute amendments to delay the final vote.
As a result, ACTA has now become much more than ACTA. It has become a test for the functioning of the European Union institutions. For the first time since the Lisbon Treaty has came into force, the European Parliament has had the courage to stand up for itself. It has (so far) refused to be derailed by the political games of the European Commission. The late (they had already referred ACTA to the Parliament) decision to send the proposal to the European Court of Justice is correctly being understood as a political ploy.
The Parliament has also, so far, had the maturity to see through the weakness of the lobbying of the parts of industry that support ACTA. Lobbying letters to the Parliament vacillate between explaining that ACTA changes nothing and there is no need to be afraid, to ACTA is hugely important and will cost Europe jobs if it is not accepted. The rather weak ploy of the music industry (IFPI) of writing bland letters in favour of ACTA and then lobbying uninterested industry groups to co-sign has also so far failed to impress MEPs.
The Parliament has also shown a new ability to hear the voice of citizens. There is a new mood in the Parliament regarding civil liberties and the Internet. Parliamentarians were asked by the Commission and parts of industry to ignore “misinformation” about ACTA from civil society. However, as more and more independent and credible voices – the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) and others – lined up to support the analysis of civil society, the Parliament realised that the civil society's voice must be listened to.
But we must not forget that there are over 700 MEPs in the European Parliament, only 175 have so far had the opportunity to vote and just 56% actively voted against ACTA. We must maintain the pressure until the very end. After years of campaigning on ACTA, we are four weeks away from a vote that will determine the strength and credibility of the civil society and even the European Parliament itself for many years to come. It is not the time to be complacent. It is the time to redouble our efforts.
OSCE media representative urges European Parliament to reassess ACTA to
safeguard freedom of expression (14.02.2012)
http://www.osce.org/fom/88154
Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on the
"Communication from the Commission — A Single Market for Intellectual
Property Rights — Boosting creativity and innovation to provide economic
growth, high quality jobs and first class products and services in
Europe" (6.03.2012)
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2012:068:00...
Opinion of the European Data Protection Supervisor on the proposal for a
Council Decision on the Conclusion of ACTA (24.04.2012)
http://www.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/site/mySite/shared/Documents/...
(Contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi)
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Deutsch: Mitmachen!
9 June 2012
3rd International Day of Action against ACTA, IPRED & Co.
http://stoppacta-protest.info
Consultation on discussion papers on Corporate Responsibility to Respect
Human Rights Sector Guidance Project
Deadline: 30 June 2012
http://www.ihrb.org/project/eu-sector-guidance/consultation-on-sector-...
ICT Discussion Paper
http://www.ihrb.org/pdf/roundtable-discussion-papers/ICT-Sector-Roundt...
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Deutsch: Lesestoff
EDPS Opinion on a notification for Prior Checking concerning the "Safe
Mission Data" system (24.05.2012)
http://www.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/site/mySite/shared/Documents/...
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24-29 June 2012, Prague, Czech Republic
ICANN 44 meeting
http://prague44.icann.org/
27 June 2012, Brussels, Belgium
Pan-European Forum on Media Pluralism and New Media
http://www.mediapluralism.eu/
2-4 July 2012, Samos, Greece
Samos 2012 Summit on Open Data for Governance, Industry and Society
http://samos-summit.blogspot.com/
2-6 July 2012, Budapest, Hungary
Policies and Practices in Access to Digital Archives: Towards a New
Research and Policy Agenda
http://www.summer.ceu.hu/sites/default/files/course_files/Policies-and...
9-10 July 2012, Barcelona, Spain
8th International Conference on Internet Law & Politics: Challenges and
Opportunities of Online Entertainment
http://edcp.uoc.edu/symposia/idp2012/cfp/?lang=en
11-13 July 2012, Vigo, Spain
The 12th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium
(PETS 2012)
http://petsymposium.org/2012/
25-26 August 2012, Bonn, Germany
Free and Open Source software conference (FrOSCon)
http://www.froscon.de/en/program/call-for-papers/
6-7 September 2012, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
CONSENT policy conference:
Perceptions, Privacy and Permissions: the role of consent in on-line
services
Call for papers by 7 June
http://conference.ubbcluj.ro/consent/
12-14 September 2012, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Building Institutions for Sustainable Scientific, Cultural and Genetic
Resources Commons.
http://biogov.uclouvain.be/iasc/index.php
7-10 October 2012, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2012 Amsterdam Privacy Conference
http://www.ivir.nl/news/CallforPapersAPC2012.pdf
25-28 October 2012, Barcelona, Spain
Free Culture Forum 2012
http://fcforum.net/
6-9 November 2012, Baku, Azerbaijan
Seventh Annual IGF Meeting: "Internet Governance for Sustainable Human,
Economic and Social Development"
http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/
9-11 November 2012, Fulda, Germany
Digitalisierte Gesellschaft - Wege und Irrwege
FIfF Annual Conference in cooperation with Fuldaer Informatik Kollquium
http://www.fiff.de/2012