[p2p-research] Fwd: [fcforum] Fwd: Blogging ACTA Across The Globe: FFII's Ante Wessels on Exporting Europe's Flaws

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alberto Barrionuevo <abarrio at ffii.org>
Date: Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 7:09 AM
Subject: [fcforum] Fwd: Blogging ACTA Across The Globe: FFII's Ante Wessels
on Exporting Europe's Flaws
To: fcforum at list.fcforum.net


fyi


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ante <ante at ffii.org>
To: bxl at ffii.org
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:48:49 +0100
Subject: Blogging ACTA Across The Globe: FFII's Ante Wessels on Exporting
Europe's Flaws
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/blogging-acta-across-globe-ffiis-ante-wessels-expo

Every major country in the ACTA negotiations claims that its own laws will
remain unchanged by the treaty. But without changing a word of domestic law,
ACTA can still be dangerous to a country's — or a continent's — economy.
This
week at Deeplinks, we've asked guest bloggers from around the world to give
their perspective on the trade agreement. Today, giving the view from the
heart of the European Union, is Ante Wessels, analyst for the Foundation for
a
Free Information Infrastructure, a group best known for their work in
Europe's
debate over software patents.

Negotiations on the highly controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
are now in mid-flow in Guadalajara, Mexico. Topics for this round of closed
negotiations will be civil enforcement, border measures and enforcement
procedures in the digital environment.

After the last round of negotiations in November, the secret EU analysis of
the Internet chapter (as proposed by the US) was leaked to the press. This
document suggests the EU would prefer ACTA to mirror existing EU
legislation.

Questioned in January by the European Parliament, Neelie Kroes, now
Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, confirmed this. She said "There has
been a
first proposal tabled by the United States. For the Commission, the
objective
of the negotiations is that our international partners guarantee the same
level of protection of IP rights as the EU currently applies. There will be
no
harmonization via the backdoor. We stick to the line they have to move to
our
side and that's it."

What would be the outcome of an ACTA where EU IP legislation is exported to
the world? One troubling possibility is that our most controversial IP
regulations would be frozen in ACTA with no obvious way to reform them. The
EU
is still in the middle of an ongoing political debate over the future of
intellectual property enforcement, including how best to handle patents, a
discussion that the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure is
intimately involved in. But if these current laws were to be established in
an
international agreement, they would be effectively unfixable, in the EU or
elsewhere.

Europe's Flawed Legislation

"Exporting EU-style enforcement legislation to foreign trading partners is
an
(un)official goal of EU policy", Professor Annette Kur of the Max Planck
Institute in Munich, remarked in a presentation last December. She added:
"If
and where legislation is (partly) flawed, export is not a recommendable
option."

If the European governments and Commission have it their way, we believe
ACTA
will look like the recently negotiated EU-Korea free trade agreement. This
agreement proposes to apply harsh anti-counterfeiting measures against
patent
infringements, which as most readers here will know, are often complex, of
unclear validity, and require argument in a civil court.

An FFII analysis of the agreement showed that the free trade agreement
contained drastic civil and border measures, including injunctions,
seizures,
destruction of goods, and the removal of online repositories. Applied to
patents, we believe these could well threaten companies that produce
software,
companies that use software, and free software projects alike. And the "safe
harbours" for online hosting providers proposed by the agreement are no safe
harbours at all. We believe these are the kind of regulations that Europe is
proposing exporting to the world.

Traditional models of IP rights are being challenged world-wide. With a few
mouse-clicks anyone can copy whole libraries of works. Children record,
download, mix and publish music and video. Twitter and blogs spread news.
How
to best deal with all these new developments is still unclear. Yet, in this
moment of great uncertainty, governments gather to impose and freeze broken,
old-school measures on these new developments. They do so to protect old
interests against innovation. And they do so in secret.

On Friday, delegations have set aside just one hour to discuss transparency.
It is clear what should happen: stop these negotiations until all documents
are published.

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-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
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