I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament’s demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly. As rapporteur of this text, I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens’ legitimate demands. Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications. This agreement might have major consequences on citizens’ lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this mascarade.
Kader Arif, rapporteur for ACTA in the European Parliament
Tagged: ACTA RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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mazsa
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mazsa
“The only way to stop piracy is to cut prices. That’s the verdict of a major new academic study that reckons copyright theft won’t be halted by ‘three strikes’ broadband disconnections, increasing censorship or draconian new laws brought in under the anti-counterfeiting treaty ACTA.
The Media Piracy Project, published last week by the Social Science Research Council, reports that illegal copying of movies, music, video games and software is “better described as a global pricing problem” – and the only way to tackle it is for copyright holders to charge consumers less money for their wares.
The three-year study into media piracy in emerging economies concentrated on countries such as Russia, Mexico and India, where piracy is endemic.
The academics concluded that societies where piracy is rife are no more immoral, or less willing to pay for content – the problem is that in those parts of the world, legitimate CDs, DVDs and software are five to ten times higher relative to local incomes than they are in the US and Europe.
No amount of anti-piracy enforcement will change the economics that drive copyright theft, say the report’s authors. They claim to have seen, “little evidence – and indeed few claims – that enforcement efforts to date have had any effect whatsoever on the overall supply of pirated goods. Our work suggests, rather, that piracy has grown dramatically by most measures in the past decade. [...]
The report condemns what it calls the “strong moralization of the debate” about an issue that the authors claim is really a matter of price and consumer demand.
Interestingly, the report itself is distributed under a ‘Consumer’s Dilemma’ licence that charges $8 to residents of ‘high-income’ countries – but offers it free for non-commercial use everywhere else.” http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/3/15/cutting-prices-only-way-stop-piracy/”
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mazsa
Son of ACTA: the next secret copyright treaty: “[...] TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) has been in the drafting stage for some time, but the US intellectual property chapter (PDF) only leaked yesterday. Canadian law professor Michael Geist calls it “everything [the US] wanted in ACTA but didn’t get. [...]”
mazsa
“Dear President Obama, As academics dedicated to promoting robust public debate on the laws and public policies affecting the Internet, intellectual property, global innovation policy and the worldwide trade in knowledge goods and services, we write to express our grave concern that your Administration is negotiating a far-reaching international intellectual property agreement behind a shroud of secrecy, with little opportunity for public input, and with active participation by special interests who stand to gain from restrictive new international rules that may harm the public interest.
Your Administration promised to change the way Washington works. You promised to bring increased truthfulness and transparency to our public policy and law, including the Freedom of Information Act. You promised that wherever possible, important policy decisions would be made in public view, and not as the result of secret special interest deals hidden from the American people.
Your Administration’s negotiation of ACTA has been conducted in stark contrast to every one of these promises. In the interest of brevity, we’ll focus here on the three principal ways in which your Administration’s negotiation of ACTA undercuts the credibility of your previous promises.
First, [...]” http://www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/go/blog-post/academic-sign-on-letter-to-obama-on-acta
mazsa
“US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, whose office negotiated the US side of the deal, issued a statement this morning about the “tremendous progress in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy,” but the real story here is the tremendous climbdown by US negotiators, who have largely failed in their attempts to push the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) onto the rest of the world.” http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/10/near-final-acta-text-arrives-big-failure-for-us.ars
Original as of 2 Oct: http://www.ustr.gov/webfm_send/2338
Compare versions: http://euwiki.org/ACTA/diffs
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5352/125/
Cf: http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/tag/ACTA
Mexico:
“it’s not clear exactly how much say the Mexican Senate has here. While the resolution claims that it needs to ratify any such agreements, I don’t know if that’s the case.” Comment: “Actually means a lot, even though is non-binding it was adopted by all every single senator and the final say on international treaties is on the Senate. The President can ratify if he wishes ACTA, but the Senate needs to approve it. And they are not very willing to.” http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101005/17320811304/mexican-senate-unanimously-votes-to-remove-mexico-from-acta-negotations.shtml
Original:
Spanish: http://www.senado.gob.mx/index.php?ver=sp&mn=2&sm=2&id=5264&lg=61
Translation: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.senado.gob.mx/index.php%3Fver%3Dsp%26mn%3D2%26sm%3D2%26id%3D5264%26lg%3D61&hl=en&langpair=auto
Cf: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/10/06/2321203/Mexican-Senate-Votes-To-Drop-Out-of-ACTA
mazsa
> We just reached the 369 signatures of Members of the European Parliament
> required for WD12 to be adopted!!!
>
> Completion of WD12 shows that alltogether we can weight in making the
> European Parliament take care of our fundamental freedoms. With WD12,
> the European Parliament rejects both the un-democratic process of ACTA
> – -whatever the final content of the agreement will be- and its content,
> harmful for fundamental freedoms.
>
> WD12 is a strong political signal sent by the EP to the Commission that
> ACTA is not tolerable as a way of bypassing democratic process; that
> legislation related to Internet, freedom of speech and privacy cannot be
> traded off in secrecy and under full influence of entertainment industry
> lobbies. Whatever the content of the final agreement, ACTA will remain
> an illegitimate circumvention of democracy and should be opposed as such.
>
> Let’s hope that WD12 announces the “consent” vote that the EP will have
> to take in order to accept or reject ACTA when it is finalized. Then
> again, citizens will need to act to make sure that their Internet and
> their fundamental freedoms are properly defended, by a full rejection of
> ACTA.
>
>
> Thanks to everyone who participated in that great effort!
[On Tue, Sep 07, 2010 at 05:10:47PM +0200, Jérémie ZIMMERMANN - La Quadrature du Net wrote]
Cf. http://www.laquadrature.net/en/european-parliament-vs-acta-rejection-is-the-only-option
mazsa
“ACTA: Partial transparency isn’t legitimacy – The release of the public draft of ACTA [ http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2010/april/tradoc_146029.pdf ] is a milestone in the long opposition to this illegitimate agreement, which aims at tackling trademark, copyright and patent infringements. Now, citizens, NGOs and parliaments all around the world must continue to act together to expose ACTA and its dangers. This whole policy laundering is incompatible with democracy and the ideals of preserving fundamental rights, Internet, public health and innovation at large. [...]
Today’s release of the text does not legitimize the content of ACTA, as transparency is no excuse for political laundering and the circumvention of democratic processes.”
http://www.laquadrature.net/en/acta-partial-transparency-isnt-legitimacy
mazsa
Digital Economy Act: This means war “With the rushed passage into law of the Digital Economy Act this month [cf. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/tag/debill ], the fight over copyright enters a new phase. Previous to this, most copyfighters operated under the rubric that a negotiated peace was possible between the thrashing entertainment giants and civil society.
But now that the BPI and its mates have won themselves the finest law that money can buy – a law that establishes an unprecedented realm of web censorship in Britain, a law that provides for the disconnection of entire families from the net on the say-so of an entertainment giant, a law that shuts down free Wi-Fi hotspots and makes it harder than ever to conduct your normal business on the grounds that you might be damaging theirs – the game has changed. [...]
Parliament has just given two fingers to me (and every other small/medium digital enterprise) by agreeing to cripple Britain’s internet in order to give higher profits to the analogue economy represented by the labels and studios. [...]
Elements of this agenda are also on display (or rather, in hiding) in the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement [cf. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/tag/acta ], a treaty being drafted between a member’s club of rich nations. They’ve turned their back on the United Nations to negotiate in private, without having to contend with journalists or public interest groups. By their own admission, they intend to impose this treaty on poor countries as a condition of ongoing trade, and in the US, the Obama administration has announced its intention to pass ACTA without Congressional debate. [...]
I am enough of a techno-pessimist to believe that baking surveillance, control and censorship into the very fabric of our networks, devices and laws is the absolute road to dictatorial hell.” Cory Doctorow, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/apr/16/digital-economy-act-cory-doctorow
mazsa
Obama on ACTA: “We’re going to aggressively protect our intellectual property. Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people…It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century. But it’s only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can’t just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor.”
“There’s nothing wrong with other people using our technologies, we welcome it. We just want to make sure that it’s licensed and that American businesses are getting paid appropriately. That’s why the (U.S. Trade Representative) is using the full arsenal of tools available to crack down on practices that blatantly harm our businesses, and that includes negotiating proper protections and enforcing our existing agreements, and moving forward on new agreements, including the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).”
[Notes: You can hear the president discuss ACTA and intellectual property in the video above starting at 18:14 and ending at 19:07; via cnet.com]
mazsa
“European Parliament resolution on the transparency and state of play of the ACTA negotiations
[663 in favour, 13 against, 16 abstentions]
The European Parliament,
[...]
1. Points out that since 1 December 2009 the Commission has had a legal obligation to inform Parliament immediately and fully at all stages of international negotiations;
2. Expresses its concern over the lack of a transparent process in the conduct of the ACTA negotiations, a state of affairs at odds with the letter and spirit of the TFEU; is deeply concerned that no legal base was established before the start of the ACTA negotiations and that parliamentary approval for the negotiating mandate was not sought;
3. Calls on the Commission and the Council to grant public and parliamentary access to ACTA negotiation texts and summaries, in accordance with the Treaty and with Regulation 1049/2001 of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents;
4. Calls on the Commission and the Council to engage proactively with ACTA negotiation partners to rule out any further negotiations which are confidential as a matter of course and to inform Parliament fully and in a timely manner about its initiatives in this regard; expects the Commission to make proposals prior to the next negotiation round in New Zealand in April 2010, to demand that the issue of transparency is put on the agenda of that meeting and to refer the outcome of the negotiation round to Parliament immediately following its conclusion;
5. Stresses that, unless Parliament is immediately and fully informed at all stages of the negotiations, it reserves its right to take suitable action, including bringing a case before the Court of Justice in order to safeguard its prerogatives;
6. Calls on the Commission to conduct an impact assessment of the implementation of ACTA with regard to fundamental rights and data protection, ongoing EU efforts to harmonise IPR enforcement measures, and e-commerce, prior to any EU agreement on a consolidated ACTA treaty text, and to consult with Parliament in a timely manner about the results of the assessment;
7. Welcomes affirmations by the Commission that any ACTA agreement will be limited to the enforcement of existing IPRs, with no prejudice for the development of substantive IP law in the European Union;
8. Calls on the Commission to continue the negotiations on ACTA in order to improve the effectiveness of the IPR enforcement system against counterfeiting;
9. Urges the Commission to ensure that the enforcement of ACTA provisions – especially those on copyright enforcement procedures in the digital environment – are fully in line with the acquis communautaire; demands that no personal searches will be conducted at EU borders and requests full clarification of any clauses that would allow for warrantless searches and confiscation of information storage devices such as laptops, cell phones and MP3 players by border and customs authorities;
10. Considers that in order to respect fundamental rights, such as the right to freedom of expression and the right to privacy, while fully observing the principle of subsidiarity, the proposed agreement should not make it possible for any so-called ‘three-strikes’ procedures to be imposed, in full accordance with Parliament’s decision on Article 1.1b in the (amending) Directive 2009/140/EC calling for the insertion of a new paragraph 3(a) in Article 1 of Directive 2002/21/EC on the matter of the ‘three strikes’ policy;
11. Emphasises that privacy and data protection are core values of the European Union, recognised in Article 8 ECHR and Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which must be respected in all the policies and rules adopted by the EU pursuant to Article 16 of the TFEU;
12. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission and the governments and parliaments of the states party to the ACTA negotiations.”
Background: http://www.laquadrature.net/en/acta-a-global-threat-to-freedoms-open-letter via http://nyissz.hu/blog/acta-a-global-threat-to-freedoms-open-letter/
Piracy isn’t just about price http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/03/piracy-price-manifesto.html