By Chloe Albanesius
Now that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) are on the backburner here in the U.S., attention has turned to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), with everyone from Anonymous to the Electronic Frontier Foundation slamming ACTA as unconstitutional and a threat to the Internet.
“If there’s one thing that encapsulates what’s wrong with the way government functions today, ACTA is it,” the EFF said in a Friday blog post. “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 (IP) enforcement laws to the Internet.”
The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) describes ACTA as a “groundbreaking initiative by key trading partners to strengthen the international legal framework for effectively combating global proliferation of commercial-scale counterfeiting and piracy.” But secrecy surrounding the drafting and approval of the measure has made it difficult to really understand its impact. Back in 2009, leaked documents suggested that stakeholders were looking into a “three strikes” policy for ISPs.
The document that was released, however, says that countries that sign ACTA can force infringers to hand over profits gained from pirated works to the rightsholders. They can also crack down quickly once evidence of infringement is presented, but must reimburse businesses that are found to not have actually trafficked in pirated goods.
ACTA was first proposed in 2007, and formal negotiations were launched in June 2008. The United States, Australia, Canada, Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Morocco, and Singapore signed ACTA on Oct.1 and the EU followed suit on Thursday. It must now be ratified by the European Parliament.
A French official, Kader Arif, who served as the rapporteur for ACTA in the European Parliament, quit over yesterday’s vote.
“I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement,” he said in a statement posted on TechDirt . “Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications.”
The EFF said there are constitutional concerns about how the U.S. came to sign ACTA.
“If ACTA were categorized as a treaty, it would have to be ratified by the Senate. But the USTR and the Administration have consistently maintained that ACTA is a sole executive agreement negotiated under the President’s power,” the EFF said. “On that theory, it does not need Congressional approval and thus ACTA already became binding on the US government when Ambassador Ron Kirk signed it last October.”
EFF pointed to constitutional scholars who argued that “the president has no independent constitutional authority over intellectual property or communications policy.” The group urged opponents to sign a petition on the White House Web site that calls on the administration to submit ACTA to Congress for a vote.
Also voicing their opposition is the hacker collective Anonymous. The group has already gone after Polish government Web sites for their support of ACTA, prompting officials to say they would review their stance on the agreement.
In a video (below) about ACTA, Anonymous argued that copies of MP3s or movies distributed on the Internet are not actually “counterfeit” goods, just a copy. “Countefeiting has nothing to do with it,” they said. Anonymous also contended that countries will use “excessive surveillance” to detect infringement.
“Say NO to #ACTA. It is essential to spread awareness and get the word out on ACTA,” @AnonOps tweeted today.
For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.
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