ACTA's Back: European Commission Trying To Sneak In Worst Parts Using Canada-EU Trade Agreement As A Trojan Horse
from the not-dead-yet dept
Even in the face of a resounding rejection of ACTA by the European Parliament last week, the European Commission seems determined to keep pushing for its eventual adoption. Techdirt noted some ways in which it might try to do that, but an important article by Michael Geist lays out what seems to be an alternative approach that is already close to fruition:
According to recently leaked documents [pdf], the EU plans to use the Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA), which is nearing its final stages of negotiation, as a backdoor mechanism to implement the ACTA provisions.
Here's how that would work:
The European Commission strategy appears to be to use CETA as the new ACTA, burying its provisions in a broader Canadian trade agreement with the hope that the European Parliament accepts the same provisions it just rejected with the ACTA framework. If successful, it would likely then argue that ACTA poses no new concerns since the same rules were approved within the Canadian trade deal.
What's extraordinary is how slavishly the CETA IP chapter follows ACTA -- Geist's post provides a table comparing the two in detail, and for many key issues, CETA adopts ACTA's wording exactly.
This includes requiring the promotion of "cooperative efforts" that could see ISPs taking down content on a "voluntary" basis; the use of the meaningless term "fair process"; disclosure of a subscriber's information "expeditiously" upon accusation of infringement; civil damages that consider "any legitimate measure of value that may be submitted by the right holder, including lost profits"; the use of the vague term "commercial scale" for both civil and criminal enforcement measures; and criminal liability for "aiding and abetting" infringement.
What that means is that practically all of the key stumbling blocks that persuaded the European Parliament to vote against ACTA are also present in CETA. As Geist observes;
The backdoor ACTA approach creates enormous risks for Canada's trade ambitions. Given the huge anti-ACTA movement, the Canada-EU trade deal could face widespread European opposition with CETA becoming swept up in similar protests.
After all, if those proposals were problematic in ACTA, they are equally problematic for CETA, and so it seems likely that the European Parliament will vote against the entire Canada-EU trade deal just as it threw out ACTA. The obvious solution is to remove the intellectual property chapter from CETA altogether to avoid this risk. Geist points out there's an important precedent for this:
the U.S. and EU recently announced their own plans to negotiate a trade deal but agreed to keep intellectual property issues out of the talks. If CETA becomes known as ACTA II, the future of the Canada-EU trade deal may hinge on adopting a similar approach.
That would not only be a good idea for CETA, it would be sensible for all trade agreements, since it would return them to their original aim of promoting trade between nations, not regulating the domestic laws governing things like copyright.
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Filed Under: acta, canada, ceta, european parliament
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Do people really not know why politicians are not trusted? This is why, underhanded tactics to pass legislation that benefits big business to the detriment of wider society.
The only thing that will change things is a revolution but people are too busy watching trashy reality TV to care.
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Revolutions are bloody. They cause all sorts of disruptions for a really long time, and there is no guarantee either 1) that it will succeed in overthrowing the current government or 2) that a decent new government will take the place of the old.
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Predictable
Something will give one way or the other.
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Thanks global network thing!
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They never give up, do they?!
Hello Democracy, Goodbye CETA
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Agreed completely with this article
I was up in arms with cheer to hear about ACTA's death and I was equally pissed that I heard about this via a recent article on DeviantArt.
I do think that most lawyers and bureaucrats nowadays are going completely nuts and thus, they have no respect for the people that they are supposed to represent in favor of the huge lump of cash they'll get.
I find that completely despicable.
Once enough people catch wind of this and get the word to the European Parliament that this is happening, the European Commission can kiss CETA/ACTA 2.0 GOODBYE.
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Where did my holiday go?
Now here we are all of FIVE DAYS LATER facing CETA as the new ACTA v2.0 and I am getting rather stressed out. They are lobbing new trade agreements at us like a multitude of hand-grenades.
Well I certainly hope they go and neuter CETA of all these bad aspects before anyone comes to sign. We can already see that TPP-A is trying to backtrack in trying to cut the public a sweeter deal and here they are wanting to terrorize us with an ACTA clone. I think I will throw up when this leave a bad taste indeed.
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In other words: The negotiators for EU are not even close to politicians. They are officials with agendas and their respect for the public of EU only goes as far as the lobbying world of the parliament...
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Canada Died Years Ago
They are driven by pure evil and the greed of their multinational owners and have huge financial aid from many of the usual well-known and much-hated international fascists. They turned Canada from one of the most liked countries in the world to one of the most hated shitholes on the planet.
Sound familiar?
The day those evil anti-humanity bastards seized power was the day Canada died. The dead body once known as Canada is now well beyond mutilated to the point that it is unrecognizable.
It's now called The Kingdom of Harper The Evil Bastard and His Evil Cabal of Bastards.
The sheeple are too passive and dumb (and I mean really, really, really passive and dumb) to rebel.
Only a brainless moron would want to live there.
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Umm...let's not be too hasty
http://falkvinge.net/2012/07/10/alarm-over-ceta-appears-premature/
Apparently this is standard fare, since this doc was written back in February, when it was assumed that ACTA would be passed, to build upon it with this document, which is why the wording is so similar. I don't think this is necessarily being backdoored.
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Since the Europarl managed to "boom-headshot" the European Commission from getting ACTA passed, it seems unlikely that CETA will be able to get through without resistance.
Also, the "recently leaked documents" were from February 2012. It could've been rewritten since then (highly doubtful, but you never know).
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Bring back the guillotine!
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