‘End of the road’ for ACTA in Europe as EC withdraws court appeal over treaty.

‘End of the road’ for ACTA in Europe as EC withdraws court appeal over treaty.(RT).The European Commission has withdrawn its request to review ACTA’s compatibility with the EU law in the European Court of Justice. The move virtually ensures the treaty will never be adopted in the Union.

­The European Comission’s move was reported by MEPs from the Socialists and Democrats alliance.
“I welcome this news from the Commission today,” said SD Euro MP David Martin, the author of the parliamentary report on ACTA, as cited by The Register. 

“The EU cannot be party to an agreement without European Parliament ratification. MEPs overwhelmingly rejected ACTA in July and I am pleased that the Commission has acknowledged this is the end of the road for ACTA in the EU thanks to the Parliament.”

The European Commission made the appeal to the court in July, after ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) had received a knockout blow from the European Parliament. At the time MEPs roundly rejected the treaty with 478 votes against, and only 39 in favour.
Even before that, in February this year the adoption of ACTA was suspended due to mass protests against it, with critics slamming the agreement for its breaches of human rights, that it would protect copyright at the expense of freedom of speech on the Internet.
Intended as a global treaty, ACTA started to be developed in 2007 as a means to target copyright violations in a wide range of industries.ACTA has been signed by the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Mexico, South Korea and 22 EU member states. Of all those countries, only Japan has ratified it so far. The treaty will come into force for the countries which ratified it when at least 5 more pass the relevant legislation.Read the full story here.

Canada-EU Trade Agreement Replicates ACTA’s Notorious Copyright Provisions.

Canada-EU Trade Agreement Replicates ACTA’s Notorious Copyright Provisions.(EFF).By Carolina Rossini.The shadow of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is back in Europe. It is disguised as CETA, the Canada-European Union and Trade Agreement. As reported by EDRI, a rather strange and surprising e-mail was sent this summer from the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union to the Member States and the European Commission. The e-mail explained that the criminal sanctions provisions of the draft CETA are modeled on those in ACTA.

A comparison of the leaked draft Canada-EU agreement shows the treaty includes a number of the same controversial provisions, specifically concerning criminal enforcement, private enforcement by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and harsh damages. These provisions are particularly problematic, and were the key reasons why the European Parliament rejected ACTA.

However, given the lack of transparency associated with the CETA discussions (both Canada and EU insist that the draft text remain secret), the concerns that CETA may replicate ACTA appear to be very real despite denials from some members of the European Commission.

CETA is a trade agreement designed to strengthen economic ties between Canada and the EU through “free” trade and increased investment. However, hidden within this treaty are provisions that were essentially lifted from ACTA word-for-word. And just like its close cousins, ACTA, KORUS, and TPP—and other trade agreements that are applauded by the entertainment industry for carrying expansive intellectual property provisions—CETA is being negotiated in secret.

Jérémie Zimmermann declared:

The only hard evidence on which we can base our analysis suggests the worst: once again, the European Commission and the EU Member States governments are trying to impose repressive measures against cultural practices online. (…) This trend of sneaking repressive measures through negotiated trade agreements must stop.

This cut-and-paste strategy was confirmed yesterday by La Quadrature du Net, which had representatives present in a workshop on October 10th, where Philipp Dupuis, the European Commission negotiator, bragged that ACTA-like criminal sanctions were still in the CETA draft. Following the workshop, La Quadrature du Net sent letters to Mr Pierre Moscovici, Minister for Economic Affairs and Finance, requesting clarifications and demanding that the criminal measures be removed from CETA.

The 92% of the European Union Parliament who voted against ACTA in July 2012 demonstrated that the EU was overwhelmingly against provisions like this, and many expected that it would be the end of the matter. Sadly, that assumption appears to have been unfounded. Despite this there are encouraging signs of resistance—including that the Dutch government has stated that it would not accept CETA moving forward this way.

Civil society, which has mobilized and filled streets of France, Poland, and others, is calling on citizens to demand that their governments remove copyright provisions from CETA during the upcoming round of negotiations next week in Brussels.

The Consolidation of Policy Laundering and Increasing Secrecy in International Negotiations

The copyright lobbies have consolidated on the use of foreign and international forums as an indirect means of pushing policies—a strategy known as policy laundering—like those ones in CETA that might never win direct approval through the regular domestic political. The move from fora like the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the World Trade Organization (WTO) to bilateral and regional trade agreements confirms it. Policy laundering takes advantage of the fact that the institutions nations have created for ensuring democratic control and input into the bureaucratic policymaking process have not yet been instituted into most international bodies and negotiation venues. And of course, the entertainment lobby applauds this. It is well known for instance, that provisions of the US DMCA were the result of policy laundering. This should not be the way we build 21st century agreements.

International negotiations are abstract and it’s hard to see how they may eventually affect one's life. When a trade agreement or treaty is signed by a country and later ratified however, it does manifest itself into national law. Therefore, the time to act is from the very beginning of such initiatives, not later. Secrecy around negotiations is not democratic, violates the open government principles many of the negotiating countries have signed onto, and purposefully makes taking action much more difficult.

Secrecy impacts civil society’s ability to comment or analyze agreements, just as it does with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) and other FTAs. It’s hard enough to work within the participation system at places like WIPO, but at least there we are given some opportunity to observe and participate in the official discussions. When trade negotiators and copyright maximalists get together to launder IP rights expansion through secret agreements, we lose that small but vital voice that lets us speak truth to power.

Additional Resources:
Europe: La Quadrature du Net: http://www.laquadrature.net/en/CETA
Europe: EDRI http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number10.17/ceta-acta-criminal-sanctions
Canada: Michael Geist blog on ACTA http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_tags&task=view&tag=acta&Itemid=408

"Happy New Year" - Major Internet service providers to institute so-called six-strikes plan by year’s end.

"Happy New Year" - Major Internet service providers to institute so-called six-strikes plan by year’s end.(Wired).

The nation’s major internet service providers by year’s end will institute a so-called six-strikes plan, the “Copyright Alert System” initiative backed by the Obama administration and pushed by Hollywood and the major record labels to disrupt and possibly terminate internet access for online copyright scofflaws.

The plan, now four years in the making, includes participation by AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon. After four offenses, the historic plan calls for these residential internet providers to initiate so-called “mitigation measures” (.pdf) that might include reducing internet speeds and redirecting a subscriber’s service to an “educational” landing page about infringement.
The internet companies may eliminate service altogether for repeat file-sharing offenders, although the plan does not directly call for such drastic action.
“We are farily confident the program will launch by year’s end,” said Jill Lesser, the executive director of the Center for Copyright Information, the name of the group behind the program.
The program, which monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing services, was to have been deployed sooner, according to Gigi Sohn, president of digital rights group Public Knowledge, and an adviser to the center.
Sohn noted that the internet was aflame in January with federal anti-piracy proposals — the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act — both of which went down in flames amid a huge backlash and internet blackout.

Top-ranking Obama administration officials, including the U.S. copyright czar Victoria Espinel, played an active role in secret negotiations between Hollywood, the recording industry and ISPs to disrupt internet access for users suspected of violating copyright law, according to internal White House e-mails.
The e-mails, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, show the administration’s cozy relationship with Hollywood and the music industry’s lobbying arms and its early support for the copyright-violation crackdown system publicly announced in July, 2011.
Under the six-strikes plan, internet subscribers may challenge their dings for a $35 filing fee paid to an arbitration service. They also get a free pass, one time, if they claim the infringement was based on having an open, unencrypted Wi-Fi network.
France has a much more stringent plan. Last month, the nation levied its first fine, $193, under its three-strikes plan.Read the full story here.

SOPA Being Reintroduced Through Creation of Copyright Commissars.

SOPA Being Reintroduced Through Creation of Copyright Commissars.(AP).By Joe Wright.The battle rages on between lovers of the free Internet and a big government hellbent on controlling the only semblance of a fair and balanced media that still exists.

An onslaught of bills have been introduced worldwide which seek to criminalize the fundamental way that information is freely shared. Among the most comprehensive:

ACTA - Recently struck down by the European Parliament in a 478 to 39 vote after street protests swept across Europe. However, ACTA has already been signed in the United States. ACTA allows accusers of copyright infringement to bypass judicial review. Lack of “due process” makes these bills and ACTA unconstitutional and violates the Magna Carta, a charter signed in 1215 on which most Western law is based, including the US Constitution. (Source)

PIPA - A massive protest in January generated over 7 million petition signatures, which caused the bill to be postponed. Some of the most popular websites on the planet blackened their pages to protest the PROTECT IP Act, (S. 968), which threatens free access to information on the Web by allowing accusers to shut down an entire website - even shared platforms like Twitter, WordPress and YouTube, because of a single copyright violation. (Source)

OPEN - Darrell Issa (CA-R) and 24 co-sponsors introduced H.R. 3782. The bill claims to only target foreign websites for digital trade violations, while keeping Americans free to surf and post, but the bill's wording was wide open to pursue American sites. (Source)

CISPA - The grandaddy of cyber legislation, ushering in fascism to the Internet by giving full control to the Department of Defense and all of its satellite federal agencies and private contractors to surveil and wage cyberwar. (Source)

Resistance has been strong, but Big Brother remains motivated to move in by stealth if necessary, as evidenced by a new related bill that seeks to sneak a previously defeated piece of SOPA past an unsuspecting public.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been at the forefront of keeping the public informed about the myriad ways that our (s)elected representatives are attempting to usher in tyranny to the free market of ideas known as the World Wide Web.As Adi Kamdar writes:

Even after millions rallied against the passage of SOPA/PIPA, the House is still quietly trying to pass a related bill that would give the entertainment industry more permanent, government-funded spokespeople. The Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing on Lamar Smith's IP Attaché Act (PDF), a bill that increases intellectual property policing around the world. The Act would create an Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, as well as broaden the use of IP attachés in particular U.S. embassies. (The attachés were notably present in Sec. 205 of SOPA—which was also introduced by Smith.) [Source]

Kamdar rightly states that this empowers Hollywood with "traveling foot soldiers" that become content commissars by virtue of being "IP Attachés." - or world ambassadors for Internet censorship. In so doing, it creates yet another pyramid of control and intimidation that seeks to corral content through the ever-present threat of copyright violations.

So far, private copyright trolls have been repeatedly defeated (here and here for a couple recent examples), as judge after judge has ruled their lawsuits to be completely without merit. However, with this new piece of legislation, the federal government very well could create its own copyright troll goon squad at the behest of establishment lobbyists and their easily bought-and-paid-for congressmen.

Please continue following any mention of Internet regulation no matter how slick the veneer, as the final nail in the coffin of free expression and sharing of information contrary to the establishment media could arrive at any time, cloaked in ways we might not yet suspect.

It is clear that despite overwhelming public outcry, there are those in Congress such as Lamar Smith who clearly serve a different master.Read the full story here.