The European Commission, playing Pontius Pilate, has just announced its intent to ask the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for an opinion on the conformity of ACTA with fundamental freedoms. Beyond the obvious intent to defuse the heated debate currently taking place, this move aims to make the ACTA discussion a mere legal issue, when the main concerns are political by nature. http://venitism.blogspot.com
Giving ACTA to blogbusters is giving gin to alcoholics! While the EU Commission has consistently refused to undergo an impact assessment of ACTA on fundamental freedoms, it is now scared of the growing citizen opposition to ACTA and has decided to buy time.
Even if the the ECJ referral text has not been published yet, its announced framing is narrow and legalistic in nature. La Quadrature du Net says important questions will not be asked, and therefore be left unanswered:
* Can a wide-ranging interpretation of ACTA's criminal sanctions for infringement on a commercial scale, including aiding and abetting, be used as a bullying weapon by the copyright industry to force Internet actors into deploying contract-based repressive measures?
* What will be the impact on EU policy-making and public debate of casting in stone current repressive policies for which an impact study is still expected, and which are heavily criticized (such as the EUCD and IPRED)?
* Can such a body of policies, impacting EU policy-making, the free flow of information and the freedom to conduct business on the Internet be negotiated instead of democratically debated, and yet be legitimate?
* Is ACTA necessary as we are facing an open conflict between repressive copyright policies and fundamental freedoms, and that other paths could be taken, such as a positive reform taking into account new cultural practices?
A sensitive issue cannot be fully explained in a post, but only in a speech, in that magic eyeball to eyeball contact, baring my soul, and declaring truths that cause shock and awe. That's why I look forward to the invitation of your organization to speak at your conference. Basil Venitis, venitis@gmail.com
EFF muses that if there's one thing that encapsulates what's wrong with the way government functions today, ACTA is it. You wouldn't know it from the name, but the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a plurilateral agreement designed to broaden and extend existing intellectual property enforcement laws to the Internet. While it was only negotiated between a few countries, it has global consequences. First because it will create new rules for the Internet, and second, because its standards will be applied to other countries through the U.S.'s annual Special 301 process.
Philippe Aigrain of La Quadrature du Net points out the European Commission asks the wrong questions, because it is afraid of getting the right answers. It tries to prevent the Court from assessing ACTA's impact on fundamental rights having regard to how it will interact with existing EU law and the announced revisions of the IPRED and Online Services directives. With this wider perspective, ACTA's harmful effects on fundamental rights become so obvious that a referral is not even needed.
Jeremie Zimmermann of La Quadrature du Net asserts ACTA is dangerous because it aims at circumventing democracy, and because its vague wording can be interpreted in so many repressive ways by the signatories and judges. The Commission seems afraid that the heated ACTA debate and the growing recognition that the present system is broken will lead to a highly needed copyright reform for the benefit of art, culture and innovation in the digital era. No legal debate can fix ACTA or give it a legitimacy that by design it cannot have.
Smart words are more effective than smart bombs! Mighty words of a charismatic keynote speaker can transform your people to a new dimension of organizational climate, efficiency, self-actualization, enthusiasm, belonging, and motivation. I would like very much to speak at your conference in order to explain critical points much further. Basil Venitis, venitis@gmail.com
Negotiated in secret, ACTA bypassed checks and balances of existing international intellectual property norm-setting bodies, without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens. Worse still, the agreement creates a new global institution, an ACTA Committee to oversee its implementation and interpretation that will be made up of unelected members with no legal obligation to be transparent in their proceedings. Both in substance and in process, ACTA embodies an outdated top-down, arbitrary approach to government that is out of step with modern notions of participatory democracy. http://venitism.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.