Fifth EU Committee Recommends Rejection Of ACTA By European Parliament

from the how-many-times-do-we-have-to-say-no? dept

Another major milestone has been achieved in the push to get ACTA rejected by the EU: a fifth parliamentary committee has recommended that the European Parliament should refuse to ratify it when it is put to the vote on July 4th, effectively killing it in Europe. The other committees – on legal affairs, civil liberties, industry and international development – recommended rejection a few weeks ago, but today's vote by the international trade committee (INTA) was seen as the most important.

That was reflected during the vote. For example, the hall in which the meeting was held was unusually full, with a large contingent from the press. Unexpectedly, an EU politician who is not aligned with the main groupings turned up to vote, adding to the uncertainty about the final result.

The main INTA report recommended that the European Parliament should reject ACTA, but three amendments were tabled: two to accept ACTA immediately, and one to recommend waiting until after the European Court of Justice had handed down its judgment -- something not expected for a year or two.

At the last minute, the first two amendments were withdrawn, leaving only the call for a postponement of the European Parliament vote. This was rejected by the committee; but then somebody pointed out that there were more votes than people -- a problem EU committees have had before. This meant that that the vote had to be taken again, adding to the already-high tension in the meeting, to confirm that the amendment was indeed being rejected.

Finally, the INTA committee voted on the report containing the recommendation to reject ACTA, and passed it by 19 votes to 12. That was a wider margin than expected, but isn't necessarily representative of what will happen in the plenary vote in July. The European Commission will be making one last effort to convince EU politicians to vote for ACTA, and lobbyists will doubtless be out in strength during the next two weeks.

Gaining the support of five EU committees out of five is an extraordinary achievement -- six months ago, most commentators expected ACTA to sail through the European ratification process without much trouble. European politicians themselves have said that this change of heart is entirely due to the massive wave of protests against ACTA, both on the streets and in the form of thousands of emails and phone calls.

Although the battle is not over yet, it will be hugely significant if such citizen action does succeed in stopping ACTA, since it would send a message to politicians that the views of the public cannot be ignored when it comes to such major policy decisions about the Internet. In this respect, it would complement the similar revolt over SOPA and PIPA in the US -- something that made the current string of European victories against ACTA possible.

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Filed Under: acta, european commission, european parliament, european union, inta, pipa, sopa

Workshop Audience Barred From 'Demonstrating' Approval Of Michael Geist's ACTA Takedown

from the this-is-openness? dept

Although ACTA has now been referred by the European Commission to the European Court of Justice, it continues its passage through the various committees of the European Parliament, each of which will provide input on the final decision of whether to ratify ACTA or not. The first of these took place last week, when the International Trade (INTA) committee had a preliminary ACTA workshop. This included hearing from external experts, one of whom was Michael Geist, well known to Techdirt readers.

It will come as no surprise to learn that his ten-minute speech succeeded in distilling the key flaws of ACTA in a highly-accessible way that left the treaty's supporters desperately trying to undo the damage to their arguments for the rest of the day -- and failing.

You can either watch the video (embedded above), or read the text -- they offer perhaps the best summary of ACTA's problems so far, and are highly recommended. Since some of the points he made have been discussed elsewhere, I'll focus here on the issues he covered that haven't received so much attention.

After summarizing his views as "ACTA’s harm greatly exceeds its potential benefits", Geist broke down his analysis into three parts: the process, substance and likely effectiveness of ACTA. On the process, he made this great point that hasn't been brought out much before:

All countries and stakeholders benefit from a well-functioning international intellectual property governance model led by WIPO and the WTO. Ratification of ACTA will undermine the authority of those institutions, causing immeasurable harm to the development of global IP norms. ACTA countries avoided WIPO due to gridlock concerns, but ratifying ACTA would perversely increase the likelihood of gridlock. For those countries participating in ACTA, the successful completion of the plurilateral model will only increase the incentives to by-pass WIPO as a forum for challenging, global issues. For those countries outside of ACTA, the relevance of WIPO will gradually diminish, as achieving consensus on their concerns may prove increasingly difficult.

That is, if ACTA is ratified it will harm a wide range of global bodies because of its go-it-alone approach. Of course, for the leading signatories -- the US and the EU -- that's a feature, not a bug, since they were finding it increasingly hard to impose their one-sided plans on global institutions where the rising BRICS economies were beginning to assert themselves.

As far as ACTA's substance is concerned:

The net effect of these provisions [that signatories "may" implement] is to open the door to statutory damages, detain in-transit goods, disclose information to rights holders, create criminal provisions for unauthorized camcording, and require Internet providers to disclose information about their subscribers.

While it is true that ACTA parties will not be required to implement these provisions in order to be compliant with the agreement, there will be considerable pressure to reinterpret these provisions as mandatory rather than permissive. Indeed, it is already happening as the IIPA, a rights holder lobby group, has recommended placing ACTA countries such as Greece, Spain, Romania, Latvia, Switzerland, Canada, and Mexico on the USTR piracy watch list for failing to include optional ACTA provisions in their domestic laws.

This is a crucial point. Defenders of ACTA emphasize that many of the worst provisions, detailed above, are optional -- signatories are not obliged to implement them. But as Geist points out, "may" has a habit of turning into "must", and he cites concrete evidence that the USTR is already working to make that happen.

In the same section, Geist also shows why claims that ACTA does not go beyond TRIPS are simply not true:

Unlike comparable international intellectual property agreements that have identified the need for balance and proportionality, ACTA is almost single-minded in its focus on increasing enforcement powers. ACTA Article 9 removes safeguards, ACTA Article 11 removes the proportionality provision found in the TRIPS equivalent, and ACTA Article 18 does not include rules for compensation in cases of wrongful detentions.

Finally, in the effectiveness section, he underlines the key failing of ACTA:

ACTA supporters may have believed that an agreement could best be achieved by bringing together a "coalition of the willing", but by limiting ACTA to predominantly developed world countries that are not typically associated with being major sources of counterfeit product, the agreement is seemingly designed to fail.

Geist's speech was greeted with rapturous applause by the vast majority of the 600 people who were present at the workshop -- an unusually large number for such meetings. One person who was visibly annoyed by this warm reception was the workshop's chairman, Vital Moreira, who declared:

you are not here to demonstrate; from now on, I will not allow any demonstration. Those who will infringe this rule will be kindly asked to leave the room.

That's rather rich, since he opened the session by claiming that the high attendance at the workshop "bears witness not only to the importance of this file, but also to the openness and transparency of this parliament, which in my view is second to none." Clearly, that openness only goes so far. The pointed contrast between his first and second thoughts on the subject can be enjoyed in the video below. Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: acta, eu, free speech, inta, michael geist

European Trade Committee Chair Defends Continued Secrecy On ACTA

from the but-of-course dept

The ridiculous secrecy behind ACTA still hasn't stopped, even as the document has long been made public, and most of the negotiating countries have signed on. The EU bloc of countries has not signed on, as they've been awaiting some legal analysis to determine if the text of ACTA is in accordance with existing EU law. Apparently, the European Parliament Committee on International Trade (INTA) has planned a meeting for November 23rd, in which it will hear the European Parliament legal service's opinion on ACTA's current status with existing EU law. However, that meeting and the report from the legal service... will be kept secret. Some concerned folks sent an open letter protesting this secrecy, and were given a doublespeak response from the chair of INTA, Vital Moreira. As best as I can figure out, Moreira's argument is we're keeping the meeting and the analysis secret, because it's secret, thus we have to keep it secret.

...the opinion of the Legal Service is, for the time being, a confidential document; therefore its presentation is foreseen to take place in an “in camera” part of the Committee meeting.

... as to the question whether there is an overriding public interest in disclosure of the opinion under Regulation (EC) No. 1049/2001: under legislation in force and related jurisprudence, it is for the institution concerned to balance the interest to be protected by non-disclosure and public interest in disclosure.

So here's the thing that I don't understand: why is it in the public interest to have this document be confidential and secret. I can't think of any single compelling reason that doesn't involve corruption. If it's merely a legal analysis of the status of ACTA under existing law, there should be nothing to keep confidential. The only reason to keep such a thing confidential is if the intent is to change the analysis before it actually does go public. That would indicate undue pressure by some on what should be an objective analysis. Assuming that the European Parliament legal service is not, in fact, corrupt, then what other possible reasons could there be for keeping such a document secret.

Filed Under: acta, copyright, eu, inta, secrecy, vital moreira