Members of the European Parliament have asked the Commission to halt a global trade agreement against counterfeiting (ACTA) after reports that negotiations on the controversial pact were concluded without their consent in Tokyo on Saturday (2 October).
More from EurActive
A group of MEPs from the Greens/EFA have written a letter to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking to participate in the ongoing ACTA negotiations in Tokyo. Ska Keller writing on behalf of her colleagues Eva Lichtenberger, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Yannick Jadot, Carl Schlyter, Karima Delli, Sandrine Belier, Judith Sargentini and Jan-Phillipp Albrecht said:
I believe the negotiators will benefit from a dialogue with experts, civil society, and NGOs, especially now that the agreement is in the final stages of negotiation. You might be aware of the European Parliament Common Resolution of March 10, its Written Declaration in September and that under the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament has to provide its consent to the Agreement before it can enter into force.
At each ACTA negotiation since New Zealand, the negotiators have made time to meet with civil society representatives attending the meeting. This is really the only opportunity given to ever meet with a large group of negotiators. But the meetings are getting less and less substantive and this one appears designed to ensure that no NGOs show up.
Sean Flynn details ACTA's resistance to civic participation in its latest (and probably final) round.
The 11th and likely final round of negotiations on ACTA starts today, Thursday, in Tokyo. The talks are preliminary scheduled until 1 October but open-ended. The US wants to reach an agreement to avoid a clash with mid-term elections in November. The agenda is here.
From Michael Geist:
With the next round of the ACTA negotiations scheduled to begin tomorrow in Tokyo, I am pleased to launch a new site that aggregates much of the analysis and publicly available materials on the draft agreement. ACTAWatch.org includes the latest leaked text, links to official and leaked documents, country-specific discussion, analysis, and ACTA scholarship. There are also links to other sources, a running twitter feed, and a collection of ACTA videos. I'd like the site to be as comprehensive as possible, so suggestions for improvement and missing content is certainly welcome.
Visit ACTA Watch
La Quadrature du Net have embarked on a campaign to reject the Gallo Report:
The Gallo report is a draft report from the JURI committee of the European Parliament, on enhancing the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the internal market, whose rapporteur is Marielle Gallo, a French Member of Parliament.
This report is nothing but a series of amalgams and misconceptions, identifying counterfeiting of physical goods with online piracy, and in particular non-commercial file sharing, confusing patent and trademark infringements of drugs with the trade of fake drugs, etc.
La Quad' have set up a campaign site here, with more info, reference documents and instructions on how to lend your voice to the opposition.
The draft international law has been compared to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which sought to prevent space exploration being pursued for anything less than the benefit of all human kind. The Internet Treaty would similarly seek to preserve the Internet as a global system of free communication that transcends national borders.
More from Thinq.co.uk
DRM fails again!
An antipiracy code used in set-top boxes, Blu-ray and DVD players has been cracked and published on the Internet, and as a result, we may soon see devices on the market that allow people to make unauthorized copies of movies.
More from CNet News
The Swiss supreme court has ordered a company to stop snooping on suspected illegal file sharers, saying the practice breaches their right to privacy.
The Lausanne-based Federal Tribunal says Logistep AG collected personal information on users of file-sharing networks and sold it to film and music companies seeking to protect their intellectual property.
More from CB Online
Considering Mr. McGuinness proudly informs us he has been debating on this issue for two years, he seems to totally misunderstand the reasons behind broadband customers’ demand for better broadband speeds and equally doesn’t understand the current facilities available on the Internet.
More from Entanet
