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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Was uns Konquistadoren über ACTA lehren

When the conquistadores arrived in the Americas, historians tell us that the viruses that they carried caused devastation among the indigenous populations. For the European invaders, who had been subject to the viruses for longer, the illnesses, while still sometimes deadly, were less dangerous than for populations that had not yet been exposed to them. With ACTA as the future EU and US template for free trade agreements with countries around the globe, is this the virus that risks killing free speech, democracy, privacy and access to knowledge even more readily in developing countries than in the countries where it was conceived?

Within the EU, a certain amount of resistance has been developed over the years to excessive, destructive and anti-democratic attempts to strangle fundamental principles of civil and human rights. For example, France's original "HADOPI" proposal stumbled over the nation's constitution when it attempted to overturn centuries of legal tradition by undermining the basic principle of "innocent until proven guilty." Similarly, the European Parliament, faced with the threats appearing in France, the UK and elsewhere, defended the rights of citizens by squeezing every legally possible guarantee out of the famous "amendment 138" in the telecoms package.

The UK, unfortunately, is still in a critical condition as its government feverishly tries to destroy the concept of a free and open Internet with its "Digital Britain" proposals. It remains to be seen whether that country's democratic safeguards, such as its unwritten constitution and its Human Rights Act will be enough to protect its citizens. Maybe it will be an imaginative web 2.0 campaign by an opposition party in the upcoming national elections that will create a flashmob of the polling stations to disconnect politicians from office if they support narrow business interests ahead of their voters' rights.

All of these protections are not available in many of the countries that the EU and US would plan to reach free trade agreements with in the future - agreements that will be based on ACTA. Measures like intermediary liability take on a vastly different meaning in the absence of robust legal defences of civil rights. What happens when Internet access providers are made liable for illicit online content, when they are given an incentive to carry out surveillance on their consumers in the absence of human rights law, in the absence of privacy legislation, in the absence of a democratically-elected government or in the absence of competition?

The EU and US will not wish to tie their own hands by demanding strict human rights or privacy protections when imposing ACTA measures on other countries. In any event, even if they wanted to, they could not replicate Europe's experience of 50 years of human rights legislation. Once Internet access providers have paid for the technology to filter and control their consumers' access, the next logical step will be to monetise this control through a non-neutral Internet - one which governments will also be tempted to exploit in the same way as broadcast and print media are frequently exploited to undermine democracy in many countries today.

Only months after entering into force, what will be left of the Lisbon Treaty's goal of developing and consolidating "democracy and the rule of law, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms" if ACTA becomes the vehicle for undermining civil liberties across the globe?

Digital Britain
http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/5631.aspx

Telecoms package overview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecoms_Package

EDRi-gram: ENDitorial: Mobilizing to Stop ACTA (18.11.2009)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number7.22/acta-mobilizing-to-stop

(contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi)