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Deutsch: Europäische Kommission erwägt taktischen Teilrückzug aus ACTA

At the meeting of the heads of cabinet of the European Commission on Monday of this week, Commissioner De Gucht's representative announced that a referral of ACTA to the Court of Justice of the European Union is currently being considered.

The minutes of the meeting, which have been obtained by EDRi, say that the head of cabinet described the "strong mobilisation" against the Agreement by "certain NGOs and movements active on the Internet" and stated that a referral of the Agreement to the Court of Justic

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Deutsch: Europäische Proteste gegen ACTA vom 11. Februar

Several tens of thousands of citizens from an estimated 200 cities in Europe went out in the streets on a cold 11 February 2012, in a massive pan-european protest against ACTA and to support digital civil rights. Several EDRI members and observers have reported for the EDRi-gram on what happened in their countries.

The biggest turnout was in Germany, where 100 000 protesters flooded the streets to demonstrate against the ACTA agreement.

1. This is only about large-scale infringements
a. Criminal sanctions

There is no minimum-level of infringement that could be criminalised by ACTA. It requires parties to, at least, criminalise infringements which are for direct economic advantage, direct commercial advantage, indirect economic advantage, indirect commercial advantage or “aiding and abetting” such an offence.

In the absence of a definition of any these five activities, the European Commission has no way of knowing whether only large-scale infringements will be covered.

In order to counter the spreading misinformation, we are providing a how-to with short explanations regarding different practical problems related to ACTA. This guide looks at the risks that ACTA creates for websites, particularly e-commerce sites.

To stay online, a website owner just needs to make sure that their site contains nothing which might cause any of the site's service providers to fear that it contains an (intentional or unintentional) infringement of intellectual property rights. This could include information posted by third parties, such as user-generated content.

Recently, we have seen many rumours and half-truths about ACTA being circulated by campaigners on all sides. And, as the European Commission's "fact sheet" 10 Myths about ACTA shows, there are also still a lot of misunderstandings. Many decision makers and citizens seem not yet to be aware of ACTA's serious implications.

In the following, we are focusing on the real problems and most important issues in ACTA:

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Deutsch: ACTA-"Aufstand" in Polen

Polish youth apparently decided to break the stereotypes about the nation's passiveness and lack of interest in Internet politics. As soon as the Polish government announced that ACTA would be signed on 26 January, we became witnesses of an amazing movement.

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Deutsch: Lobbyarbeit für ACTA erreicht neue Dimensionen

When the Commission calls for ACTA support, the chosen ones in industry happily follow.

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Deutsch: Internetzensur: Einflussnahme der USA auf Spanien macht sich bezahlt

The US has continued to pressure Spain since 2008 to adopt measures against users allegedly illegally downloading copyrighted music and movies from file-sharing networks.