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EU Privacy Chief Says ACTA Violates European Law
An anonymous reader writes "Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor, has issued a 20-page opinion expressing concern about ACTA (PDF). Michael Geist's summary of the opinion notes that it concludes that the prospect of a three-strikes and you're out system may violate European privacy law, that the possibility of cross-border enforcement raises serious privacy issues, and that ACTA transparency is needed now."
One of the points he makes, which is a good one, is that data-sharing for enforcement purposes among countries that have different criminal punishments for copyright law is hard to justify. It also makes me wonder if--for example--I live in a country with fair use and a country with more stringent fair use policies wants to go after me for copyright infringement... well, you see the issues. Will the country with the most stringent policies suddenly be the equivalent of the patent troll district in Texas?
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
So after reading a bit of his "opinion" piece (written way more formally than any opinion piece I've read), it seems that without reading the full extent of ACTA he is dead set against it. Any aspect he has heard of (most likely through Doctorow or Geist) he makes a case for it being a violation of privacy. Without even reading all of it, he knows it's illegal. His title sounds like he should have been invited to these proceedings but I think I can decipher why he wasn't invited ...
... maybe privacy and international IP/copyright enforcement are inseparable. Not being an expert, I cannot say. I am fairly certain, however, that each country has to pass this into law once the countries agree on a basis. I will say that my representative and senators had better damn well represent the majority of the population and I hope that majority is with me on this. What the EDPS should do is continue to demand transparency but also get the citizens and all the members of the EU to promise not to pass this into legislation without transparency right now.
I agree with him but it sounds like he would be opposed to anything they could dream up. And maybe that's the way it should be
My work here is dung.
the title should read "European Law violates ACTA"
subtitled "The law must be changed"
I'm sure it will be available for the public to read - but only after it has been signed into law. ACTA is still being negotiated, you know.
Its not law yet. Its a proposed international treaty. Once it is signed, then each individual country that signs (an ratifies) it is then obligated to pass laws to implement the treaty. Those laws of course will be public.
The problem with secret negotiations, is that the public is then presented with a fait d'accompli, which must be implemented in law, thus depriving them of any input. In some countries, the ratification process provides some measure of input, but it is binary, either yes or no. Once ratified, the politicians can then say, "we have to pass this law, we are obligated by the treaty" and ignore any opposition from the public.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
Yes, but treaties seem to be a way around this. Governments don't need public approval for treaties. The treaties just obligate them to make appropriate laws. The public can have input into the laws after the treaty is signed but have considerably less say over it.
Of course, the US (presumably other countries) often avoids treaty obligations because the constitution makes it impossible to write laws.
Most countries also prefer to avoid having anything to do with the men threatening western civilization instead of fighting them.
Yes, because if EU had declared war on the USA while Bush was in power, it would have caused WW3. The nicer approach was to just wait for his term as a president to finally run out.
That might even be illegal in most countries. But you may rest assured it becomes "public" a nanosecond before the vote. Since politicians rarely if ever read the laws they vote on anyway, they won't even bother to find out just since when they could read the law and go for the usual way they walk when tasked with voting on some law: Asking their party leaders how to vote.
I really wonder why we need so many representatives. It's not like they do anything but raise their hand whenever the party says they should.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
ACTA is the attempt to eradicate free communication. The ultimate chilling effect. It's the return to government and industry controlled dissemination of propaganda. The establishment is fed up with grass-roots resistance to corporate control and is readying the big guns.
I have to disagree with you in this:
People have all sorts of different reasons for keeping legislation secret until it is proposed ranging from strategically hiding it from your opposition thereby reducing their reaction time to simply not having a solid foundation built yet. If you've got a shaky idea of what all the players want out of this deal, you shouldn't be publishing the initial draft of the documentation. This leads to confusion and gives opponents fodder. Let's say the countries that came to the table eventually reject the international three strikes rule but later have problems passing a better version of ACTA that actually tries to achieve a solution without invading privacy.
That's exacty what corrupts democracy from an open discussion of ideas towards a power game more akin to chess playing. Entertaining, but missing the point.
One of the pieces of US legislation I'm most envious of, as an European is FOIA (the time span should be considerably shorter, but over here, governments are free to keep things secret forever).
Keep politics and admin honest by making known as much as possible as early as possible.
Wasn't the minister of privacy supposed to spy on you?
But... the future refused to change.
I'm pretty sure it violates law in pretty well every continent where it's planned to be implemented.
The nicer approach was to just wait for his term as a president to finally run out.
Right. Because the new guy was going to repeal all those horrible decisions.
Oh wait, he didn't.
Well at least he wasn't going to make the same types of horrible decisions going forward.
Oh wait, he did.
I can't wait for THIS guy's term to run out, so we can deal with the next guy.
I just bet he'll be different...
*chuckle* The people making ACTA know very well how much resistance there is to their plans, and that's precisely WHY it's been kept secret. This guy isn't even near the top of the list of people in power (Senators and Representatives in the US) who have already demanded transparency and been ignored, so I'm not sure why this is news.
All the political powers not on the payrolls of the media industry are going to make a fuss about this, but they're in the minority, and obviously between Biden and Obama, between ACTA and the newly organized FBI police task force to back them up, this only gets worse from here.