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05 Nov 2008
The European Union has released details of its negotiations on the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and has stated that it will not affect civil liberties.
The briefing document (PDF) covers the two rounds of negotiations that have already been held, and seeks to reassure people that there will be no measures in the treaty that will harm civil liberties or privacy.
"ACTA is not designed to negatively affect consumers: the EU legislation (2003 Customs Regulation) has a de minimis clause that exempts travellers from checks if the infringing goods are not part of large-scale traffic," it states.
"EU customs, frequently confronted with traffics of drugs, weapons or people, neither have the time nor the legal basis to look for a couple of pirated songs on an iPod music player or laptop computer, and there is no intention to change this."
The ACTA negotiations are being held by representatives from Australia, Canada, the EU, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the US.
The talks had been shrouded in secrecy and only came to light after documents were leaked to the Wikileaks web site. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is now suing the US government for details of its stance in the negotiations.
Some of the proposals under discussion involve handing over internet use details to media companies without proof of wrongdoing, and using customs officers to enforce copyright protection.
But the EU briefing documents claim that the measures under discussion are to be used only against large-scale traffickers in stolen intellectual property, and not against individuals.
"It is alleged that the negotiations are undertaken under a veil of secrecy. This is not correct," the document continues.
"For reasons of efficiency, it is only natural that intergovernmental negotiations dealing with issues that have an economic impact do not take place in public and that negotiators are bound by a certain level of discretion."
The next round of negotiation will take place this weekend in Japan.
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ACTA
You didn't understand the substance of the document. It says the EU Commission wants to push for criminal sanctions although it lacks competence for criminal law under the treaties and seeks back room deals by Sarko. It says the purpose is to impose legislative regimes on other nations, which also applies to the US where the EU wants to export their rushed through IPRED1 sanctions (seizure of bank accounts etc). And it wants to reopen the "mere conduit" principle for ISPs and get into internet filtering/content control. All this via a process that is not in the hands of the legislator but unelected officials on the European side who don't lay open what they negotiate about. Forget the lipservice about not affecting consumers, it will affect internet business for the benefit of Hollywood and Vivendi.
Posted by: Karsten 05 Nov 2008