ACTA Moves Closer To Final Draft

The controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has progressed through another round of talks, and negotiating governments have agreed on most of its terms, the European Commission said.

The current draft is due to be published sometime this week, according to the Commission. The agreement aims to harmonise copyright law and enforcement provisions on a global scale.

Secret negotiations

However, activists and MEPs criticised the secrecy around ACTA, with MEPs demanding greater participation in negotiations.

The latest round of talks concluded in Tokyo over the weekend, according to the office of European trade commissionner Karel De Gucht, with the participation of 40 governments, including the US and the European Commission.

The Commission said “nearly all substantive issues” had been resolved, with participants aiming to finalise the text of the agreement as quickly as possible.

‘[ACTA] will include state-of-the-art provisions on the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR), including provisions on civil, criminal, and border enforcement measures, robust cooperation mechanisms among ACTA Parties to assist in their enforcement efforts, and establishment of best practices for effective IPR enforcement,” the Commission said in a statement.

Activist group La Quadrature du Net said the Commission was attempting to give “the impression that ACTA is a done deal, that parliaments have no other choice than to accept it”. It accused the Commission of aiming to “fake” transparency by publishing the latest text without having permitted effective participation by the public and their representatives, including MEPs.

‘Harmful influence’

“If adopted, ACTA will exert a harmful influence on the global framework of rights of expression, communication, access to knowledge and access to health,” said La Quad founder Philippe Aigrain, in a statement.

Four MEPs issued a joint statement calling on the Commission to give the European Parliament better access to the ACTA materials, and warning the Parliament will not approve the agreement without sufficient time to study the final draft of the agreement.

“We… call on the Commission not to proceed to any provisional application of the agreement before the European Parliament has the chance to express its informed opinion on the issue,” said the statement from Greek Socialist MEP and European Parliament vice president Stavros Lambrinidis, French Socialist MEP Francoise Castex, Czech centre-right MEP Zuzana Roithova and German liberal MEP Alexander Alvaro.

Draft published

After rejecting repeated requests for access to drafts of ACTA, a draft version of the agreement was first published in April of this year.

According to that draft, the treaty is to include provisions to crack down on illegal file-sharing and the circumvention of digital rights management.

Some member states have pushed for ISPs to be made partially liable for any copyright infringement by their users, but currently that provision has been withdrawn if ISPs agree to cut off access to repeat infringers.