ACTA Referred To Europe's Top Court For Analysis

superglaze writes "The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is to get an extra level of scrutiny in the EU after the European Commission said it would refer ACTA to the European Court of Justice, to check that it really does comply with fundamental freedoms in the union. This obviously follows mass protests over ACTA, and it seems justice commissioner Viviane Reding was the one who pushed for ECJ scrutiny. It's not currently clear if this will delay the European Parliament ratification process, but it is hard to imagine the parliament voting on ACTA (scheduled for June at the moment) before the ECJ has had its say — and no-one can say right now how long that will take to happen."

Comments

Kill it

[L4t3r4lu5]

with fire. This thing needs to be buried and forgotten so we can be just as outraged at "ACTA 2.0; Now with a name to make you look like a pedo if you vote against it!"

Re:Kill it

[Spottywot]

Fair point, but if it is stopped on a legal basis then surely whatever you call ACTA 2.0 it would have to differ in its content. If you simply rename it it could be stopped again under the same legal basis.

Re:Kill it

[SharpFang]

All you need to do is to smuggle it under the radar. ACTA has been in the works for years now. Only the recent SOPA protests have drawn eyes of crowds to it, and only that encouraged politicians to scrutinize the act for conflicts with existing bills of rights.

Polish division of EFF got the government's declaration a YEAR ago that no step will be done towards accepting ACTA without getting it through a precise scrutinity. Then they outright broke the promise.

Re:Kill it

[L4t3r4lu5]

I'm fairly certain that a team of lawyers could come up with some new terms for those which breached EU law which were ambiguous enough to not cause the same problems getting it through the ECJ, but have the same effect for the general public. "Lesser of Two Evils" is a political system for the US; I'm confident they can shoehorn enough weasel-words in.

Then they'll rename it the Protecting Efforts to Distribute Offerings to Stabilised Current eUroprean Markets Act.

Re:Kill it

[forkfail]

You're being sarcastic, but you're actually right on the mark.

This one gets beat, another one will surface.

The politicians and the people who buy them never tire - it's their job and the foundation of their wealth and power to keep pushing.

For the rest of us, for the population at large, we've got daily jobs, we've got kids and all of that. So, yeah, it can be difficult to keep pushing back.

And it's made worse by the fact that we've allowed ourselves to all too often automatically reject activists as some sort of fringe; those who would lead the fight on our behalf are all too often not supported. We listen to the media tear them down; we fight against our own self interests.

Re:Kill it

[Daniel Dvorkin]

And it's made worse by the fact that we've allowed ourselves to all too often automatically reject activists as some sort of fringe; those who would lead the fight on our behalf are all too often not supported. We listen to the media tear them down; we fight against our own self interests.

This.

You know all the "stupid commie anarchist trustafarians with iPhones" stereotyping of the Occupiers that we saw here on Slashdot? Those stereotypes were present in the MSM, too, of course, but you kind of expect it from CNN and the NYT. But for a bunch of people who are, as a group, generally strongly opposed to corporate power grabs to turn against another large group of people who were on their side was disheartening, to say the least. And that's why Occupy made a bunch of noise and then faded away without accomplishing anything -- not because the Occupiers were morons (they weren't; I know a lot of them well, and they're smart, committed people who had very clear goals) but because people who should have known better let themselves be told, "don't pay any attention to those dumb hippies over there." The people who were sending this message were, of course, the exact same people behind ACTA, SOPA/PIPA, etc. Good going, guys.

Re:Kill it

[voidphoenix]

Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...

Re:Kill it

[msobkow]

I find it interesting that even though the article (yes, I READ them!) says that ACTA is being sent to the courts for analysis and judgement, the writer of the article is already stating their position as if it were court-determined fact:

ACTA will not censor websites or shut them down; ACTA will not hinder freedom of the internet or freedom of speech.

Such concerns are precisely why ACTA is being submitted to the courts for review. With this comment posted in the article as if it were fact, it would seem to me that the author is hoping this is nothing more than a checklist review item for getting it passed. And I don't think it's fair to the public OR the courts to be making that recommendation or decision before the courts have done their due diligence.

It would be as bad as Harper claiming that the Senate review of our (illegal!) Canadian ACTA legislation is "fine, but we need to dot our I's and cross our T's. The Canadian version includes DMCA-like clauses that violate a 50+ year history of Canadians being allowed to make back-ups of the media they own, and to format-shift it as well. Preventing people from using the tools needed to make those backups would be illegal, and our government has been notoriously silent about that issue here in Canada.

They flat out don't want to talk about it. They wish a concerned public would just shut up and let the jackboots come down on their neck without question like good little sheeple.

Thank God Canadians seem more interested in flagging the issues with all levels of government and media than our government is in hearing what the public has to say!

Re:Kill it

[Wattos]

This is a very unfair fight for us. The big coorps only need to get lucky once, while we have to keep our guard up all the time.

To me it seems that it is only a matter of time until such a law passes, unless we change the way how copyright is handled.

Dear *IAAs

[Anonymous Coward]

The people of the world have spoken. Your business model is flawed and obsolete. If you *truly* believe in capitalism half as much as you claim, you will accept that it is you who must adapt or die.

Re:Dear *IAAs

[DigiShaman]

When Napster was all the rage, just about everyone in IT including the younger generation started sharing MP3s all over the world. On one hand, free music. Yeh! On the other, it was piracy and I really did feel bad for the industry. It wasn't hard to see how unsustainable wonton piracy would be. *IAAs have no choice but to adapt. The problem is that rather than take a rational approach with improved marketing and distribution, they decided to turn into one the largest litigation firms ever to sweep across America. That group was hellbent on screwing teenagers and their families financially while screwing the artists at the same time. A form of paper terrorism by making a nasty example out of a select few.

As for me? I'm pretty rational about the whole thing. I'll purchase music online, collect used late 90s or earlier CDs, or hit up Pandora. But I don't pirate music. It's a scummy thing IMHO.

Re:Could this be it for ACTA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, it's mostly the European Commission getting rid of a hot potato. The debate is guaranteed to be VERY tense, so if ACTA can be disqualified on a purely legal basis, it will avoid some ugliness.

Re:Could this be it for ACTA?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a european, my personal take on this is that the EU commission is simply looking for a way to stall without looking bad in the process. In the last week, it became clear that ACTA would not simply pass through the parliaments (both national in some member states and the EU parliament), and by referring the whole thing to the court they are gaining time to work behind the curtains to see if they can get it passed, or maybe simply to stall until the public outrage is over an no one is interested in it anymore. And if in the end the court says that this treaty is not compatible with existing legislation, they can still quietly bury the whole thing.

what is the EU?

[Anonymous Coward]

The overriding purpose of the EU is to promote corporatism by pushing for "competition" with just enough regulation that only the big boys get a real say.

While today people think of the EU as some left wing socialist pinko monster, it was founded very much as a businessman's government neutering and takeover effort - the EEC - and the majority of philosophy and law are about promoting business, not promoting individual freedoms. As a result, EU law tends to be that which has been lobbied for by friendly businesses, including competition law which charges sufficiently large firms relatively small amounts and sufficiently small firms relatively large amounts - IOW protection money to the former, crippling fines for the latter.

Your government's being half-owned by private business, dear EU citizen, is based on competition principles pushed by the EU. The neutering of regulatory bodies which protect public property from the airwaves to energy supply is promoted by EU Directives. The US federal government has nothing on the EU when it comes to requiring individual states to favour business.

The best way of stopping international law is to neuter international legislators who gradually consolidate power and work toward a common aim: lining their own pockets.

Just Smoke & Mirrors

[mseeger]

This is just a move to get ACTA out of the public eye. The time should be used for further actions...

ACTA is bad for so many reasons...

[Tastecicles]

...not least because of the implications of it.

Forget actual copyright infringement claims for a moment, please, this isn't what it's about (ACTA or this rant).

It's about Government intervention in content. Suffocation of the relation of ideas from brain A to brain B-Z and beyond, because someone doesn't like the idea that their vision of a society they have total control over is still somehow so far off, that they have to strangle freedom of expression any way they think they can get away with.

Well, fuck you, I'll say what I like, because MY freedom to express myself in forums available to me trumps your claim of entitlement to my hard-earned whether or not I choose to buy the shite you peddle and try to pass off as art, and it certainly trumps your deluded perceptions of entitlement to freedom from being offended or your plans for total control of every minor aspect of my life being undermined. I will resist you because I am a Human Being with a Soul, with a sense of self responsibility and self governance; I do not need or want your unnecessary intrusion into my life, and ACTA represents something I DO NOT WANT NOR WILL I CONSENT TO.

Sincerely,

A CONTENT CREATOR.

Re:ACTA is bad for so many reasons...

[Tastecicles]

from various sources (including EFF and the UK Government website):

ACTA has several features that raise significant potential concerns for consumers’ privacy and civil liberties for innovation and the free flow of information on the Internet legitimate commerce and for developing countries’ ability to choose policy options that best suit their domestic priorities and level of economic development.

ACTA is being negotiated by a select group of industrialized countries outside of existing international multilateral venues for creating new IP norms such as the World Intellectual Property Organization and (since TRIPs) the World Trade Organization. Both civil society and developing countries are intentionally being excluded from these negotiations. While the existing international fora provide (at least to some extent) room for a range of views to be heard and addressed no such checks and balances will influence the outcome of the ACTA negotiations.

The Fact Sheet published by the USTR together with the USTR's 2008 "Special 301" report make it clear that the goal is to create a new standard of intellectual property enforcement above the current internationally-agreed standards in the TRIPs Agreement and increased international cooperation including sharing of information between signatory countries’ law enforcement agencies. The last 10 bilateral free trade agreements entered into by the United States have required trading partners to adopt intellectual property enforcement obligations that are above those in TRIPs. Even though developing countries are not party to the ACTA negotiations it is likely that accession to and implementation of ACTA by developing countries will be a condition imposed in future free trade agreements and the subject of evaluation in content industry submissions to the annual Section 301 process and USTR report.

-

Considering the actual text of the document under discussion is STILL CLASSIFIED COMPARTMENTALISED, the only public leakage being a 2008 white paper, we the Joe Sixpacks must assume that those discussing it behind closed doors are up to something which is NOT CONDUCIVE TO THE PUBLIC BENEFIT. And until we see the exact document under discussion, in its current format, and are invited to those meetings, then we must assume that until we are shown to absolute 100% proof to the contrary, those involved in those discussions are those to whom enactment of such legislation are the sole beneficiaries to the total detriment of everybody else. I think we are PERFECTLY ENTITLED TO COMPLAIN. THOSE WHO TALK ABOUT SOPA BEING A GOOD THING DO NOT SPEAK FOR THE MAJORITY. THE MAJORITY ARE SPEAKING AND WE WILL BE HEARD: WE DO NOT WANT!

now from IPO:

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a plurilateral treaty that seeks to improve the global enforcement of intellectual property rights through the creation of common enforcement standards and practices and more effective international cooperation.

Counterfeiting and piracy of intellectual property rights is recognised as a global issue. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that the international trade in goods infringing intellectual property rights accounts for more than $250 billion a year. In Europe alone, we are losing more than €8 billion annually through counterfeit goods entering the market. This impacts the competitiveness of our businesses depriving workers of jobs and can harm consumers through the distribution of dangerous products.

ACTA is about tackling these large-scale infringement activities, often pursued by criminal organisations and which frequently pose a threat to public health and safety. ACTA aims to establish shared international standards on how countries should act in these cases. Importantly, ACTA will not create new intellectual property rights, laws, or criminal offences in the UK or EU. It simply establishes efficient and broadly common rules for how intellectual property right-holders can enforce their

The Invariable Nature of Gov't Institutions

[andersh]

I don't think they're that bad really, the commissioners are fighting for their own country's benefit within the Union as well as doing their actual jobs. It's fair enough, it's how things work most places.

The European Parliament is at least clearly on the citizen's side, even if they don't have the power to act on it yet.

The Court of Justice is a very good check and balance, at least the system works.

Re:Could this be it for ACTA?

[mindstormpt]

If it doesn't comply with existing IEEE basic freedom protections, the ECJ will shoot it down. They have never been afraid to go against the comission, the parliament or a member state before.

Now, why is the comission referring it to the ECJ? They may be stalling in order get people to calm down, as other commenters suggested, although that would be a very risky maneuver. If you ask me, they're folding and trying to save face, by being the ones stopping it instead of having the EP kill it in a very public manner.

misdirection

[Tom]

This move by the commission is not to get a critical review. The commission is the undemocratic EU-level force pushing ACTA forward. The (elected) parliament is the one that would rather not have ACTA and one of the few entities that put massive pressure on the secret negotiations and has repeatedly voiced its disgust with the secrecy of it all.

This move by the commission is an attempt to put pressure on the EU parliament. If the court says that ACTA does not conflict with EU laws, then the parliament will have a harder time to justify voting against ACTA.

By getting the court's opinion now, the commission is disarming the EU parliament, taking away one of their reasons to refuse.