ACTA Fight Heats Up in Europe as Government, Legislative and Public Opposition Grows

A considered reaction is necessary at a time when many outside Europe doubt the ability of EU institutions and members to act together, the intellectual property groups said. Failure to ratify it would also jeopardize the future of copyright protection at the EU level just when the European Commission is about to review the copyright directive, they said. “ACTA is good for Europe,” the letter said. Signers included the European Publishers Council (EPC), International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue, and European Grouping of Societies of Authors and Composers, better known as GESAC.

British legislator David Martin was appointed to take over the European Parliament ACTA file after former official reporter Kader Arif resigned, the EPC said over the weekend. Green Party members are lobbying for rejection of the agreement and the Socialists and Democrats and Alliance of Liberals and Democrats are split, jeopardizing legislative ratification, it said. Confronted by demonstrations and mass email campaigns, EU governments are also questioning the pact, with Poland rethinking its approval and the Czech Republic suspending its ratification procedure, it said.

In light of the announced protests, the German government decided Friday not to move forward on ACTA for the moment, Hogan Lovells (Berlin) telecom and media attorney Christoph Wagner told us. That doesn’t mean it will refuse to sign, he said. A government spokesman tweeted Sunday (http://xrl.us/bmrym5) that officials are still convinced that intellectual property must be protected, even online, Wagner said. The spokesman confirmed Monday that ACTA is “important and appropriate” to the fight against piracy and counterfeiting, he said. Therefore, Wagner said, “we do not think that the hesitation of the government means the end of ACTA."

ACTA doesn’t spell the end of the Internet, privacy, free speech or democracy either, Wagner said. While the fears and concerns of the “digital public” are understandable, most of the emotional criticism of the treaty is based on lack of knowledge of its contents and the fact that the general public only recently became aware of it, he said. ACTA won’t change the scope of intellectual property protections, he said. Copyright limitations such as private copying and criminal penalties for infringement reflect current German standards, he said. The vagueness of ACTA’s wording is due to the year-long debate on it, and will require adequate interpretation and proportional application in practice, as does any legal instrument, he said.

New European Parliament President Martin Schulz also opposed the proposal, EUObserver reported. On a German TV show Sunday, Schulz said the necessary balance between copyright protection and Internet users’ fundamental rights was “very poorly enshrined” in the treaty, it said.

Most EU governments are part of the conservative European People’s Party, said European Digital Rights Advocacy Coordinator Joe McNamee. Even though there has been little or no discussion in those governments about ACTA’s merits -- specifically the merits of freezing European intellectual property law -- they still support the treaty, he said. As a result, they expect and demand that their EU legislators toe the government line, he said. The vast majority will do so, a situation that underlines some “deep institutional problems of the Parliament as an independent and equal partner in the EU institutional framework,” he said in an email.

The Spanish and British “Socialist” parties always take a strongly conservative stance on copyright issues, McNamee said. So the choice of a U.K. Labor Party member to shepherd ACTA through the EU Parliament is “tactically clever from the pro-ACTA side” because it will help the Socialists and Democrats, he said.

But the left-wing European United Left/Nordic Green Left and Greens-European Free Alliance groups will oppose ACTA, as will the Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Democracy party, McNamee said. The right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group, of which ACTA reporter Schulz is a member, would instinctively back anything claiming to boost intellectual property rights enforcement, but there are “a lot of thoughtful MEPs that will take the time to judge ACTA on its merits and, therefore, will oppose it,” he said.

Meanwhile, public opposition to ACTA turned into “one giant, distributed protest all over Europe” over the weekend (WID Feb 13 p5), said Jérémie Zimmermann, spokesman for French citizens’ advocacy group La Quadrature du Net. The fact that demonstrations occurred in hundreds of places, across probably all 27 EU countries, with no political party, union or non-governmental organization taking the lead, made them “new, fresh and impressive,” he told us. It was a “spontaneous, decentralized expression of political outrage” to protect a free Internet and users’ fundamental freedoms, he said.

Parliament’s International Trade Committee plans its first debate on ACTA Feb. 29, followed by a March 1 workshop on the document’s content, the EPC said. That workshop will largely determine lawmakers’ final reaction to the agreement, Wagner said. Parliament can’t change the text but can okay or reject it, withhold agreement or ask the European Court of Justice to review it, committee Chairman Vital Moreira said on parliament’s website.