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In a plenary vote today, the European Parliament has rejected ACTA by 478 votes to 39, with 165 abstentions. That followed a failed attempt by the right-of-center EPP Group to call for a postponement. Although the final result was not totally unexpected, since the signs
had been pointing this way for a time, it nonetheless represents a huge
victory for campaigners who had more or less given up hope of stopping
ACTA in Europe even a few months ago. So the question now becomes: what
are the ramifications?
On
Techdirt.
If you watched the stream of the plenary session in the European
Parliament yesterday, you will know that what we saw was an incredible
parade of politicians from all parties denouncing ACTA - with one exception. The centre-right EPP Group is asking for a decision on ACTA to
be postponed until after the European Court of Justice hands down its
judgement on the compatibility of the treaty with EU law. That's likely
to take a year or two, and amounts to a massive delaying tactic, as
I've explained before.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Well, never a dull moment in the world of ACTA.
After I wrote yesterday's column summing up what I thought was the
final state of play, things got very interesting in Strasbourg. Rumours
swirled that the right-of-centre EPP Group would be trying to use the agenda meeting last night to call for ACTA to be postponed. After a flurry of excitement, nothing happened then. But a little later, this tweet was posted on the EPP Group account:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As Techdirt has reported over the last few months, the passage of
ACTA through the European Union's approval process has been little short
of extraordinary. At the end of last year, ACTA seemed almost certain
to be approved without difficulty. Then, inspired by the Internet
community's success in stopping SOPA, European citizens woke up to
ACTA's problems and took to the streets in huge numbers.
On
Techdirt.
So, here we are: the final decisive week that is likely to determine the fate not just of ACTA, but
also the course of digital copyright law in the world for the next few
years (for the full background to how we got here, and what has happened
along the way, see previous ACTA Updates.) That's because ACTA is not a law as such, but a treaty that sets the context for future laws of its signatories. It's why ACTA is so dangerous: it effectively neuters the sovereign power of nations - and hence of their citizens.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Marielle Gallo is probably best known for the Gallo Report, which Techdirt described
back in 2010 as a "similarly draconian intellectual property
enforcement" to ACTA, with which it has much in common. So it's no
surprise that Gallo has been one of the few vocal supporters of ACTA,
and it was widely expected that the EU's Legal Affairs (JURI) committee
she chairs would support her draft opinion calling for ACTA to be
ratified. As we now know, that didn't happen, and JURI formed one of five committees that all recommended that ACTA should be rejected.
On
Techdirt.
One of the the reasons why legislation like SOPA and treaties like
ACTA are so dangerous is that their loose definitions allow measures
intended to deal with copyright infringement to be used to censor
inconvenient opinions. Unfortunately, that's not just a theoretical
problem with future legislation, but one that is already happening, as this post from Rick Falkvinge makes clear:
On
Techdirt.
Something seems to be going on in the European Union. Over the next
few weeks a range of really important debates and votes are taking
place, all connected with openness in some way. Quite why everything is
happening at once is not entirely clear - unless politicians are trying
to get everything out of the way before their summer hols, perhaps....
On
Open Enterprise blog.
The day before the EU's International Trade committee (INTA) recommended
that the European Parliament should reject ACTA, the EU commissioner
with responsibility for the treaty, Karel De Gucht, had given a speech
to its members, trying to win them over. Although it was short, it
turns out to be highly revealing about the European Commission's future ACTA strategy. Here's what he said:
On
Techdirt.
Once more, there's good news on the ACTA front. Today, the important European Parliament committee responsible for handling international trade issues, INTA, voted to recommend that the European Parliament reject ACTA when it comes to a plenary vote on 4 July.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Another major milestone has been achieved in the push to get ACTA
rejected by the EU: a fifth parliamentary committee has recommended that
the European Parliament should refuse to ratify it when it is put to
the vote on July 4th, effectively killing it in Europe. The other committees
– on legal affairs, civil liberties, industry and international
development – recommended rejection a few weeks ago, but today's vote by
the international trade committee (INTA) was seen as the most
important.
On
Techdirt.
On the not-very-scientific basis of several calls to MEPs yesterday, the impression I get is that the right-of-centre ECR group on the INTA committee will be pushing for delay until after the ECR has delivered its judgement. That could be in more than a year's time, and would be a big problem in terms of getting ACTA rejected, since all of the momentum that has built up over the last six months would be lost.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
So, we arrive at the penultimate stage of the battle to stop ACTA in
Europe. Before the final plenary vote in the European Parliament in
July, there is a vote in the International Trade committee (INTA) this Thursday. As its home page explains:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
The Belgian EU Commissioner Karel De Gucht is the driving force
behind ACTA, and is apparently really keen to combat crimes like
counterfeiting and piracy. It also seems he has a slight problem with the tax authorities:
On
Techdirt.
Since my last ACTA update, quite a lot of good stuff has happened. For a start, all four European Parliament committees have recommended that ACTA should be rejected
when the plenary vote takes place at the beginning of July. That just
leaves one more committee - that for International Trade, or INTA - to make its recommendation, which should take place next week. I'll be writing more about this vote soon.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Most people have concentrated on the ITRE, JURI and LIBE committees
(as I did in my previous posts this week). But there's a fourth
committee that is meeting to decide upon its recommendation to INTA: that of Development. Here's how it describes itself on its home page:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the most dishonest aspects of ACTA was its attempt to equate
genuinely dangerous products like fake medicines with totally harmless
ones like unauthorized digital copies. Fortunately, that's such an
absurd equivalence that more and more people have voiced their concerns
over it -- including the Liberals and Democrats in the European
Parliament, who cited it as one reason why they would be voting against ACTA:
On
Techdirt.
Yesterday I posted my submission to the ITRE committee; today I include my email to the JURI (legal affairs) and LIBE (civial
liberties) committees, both of which are voting on what their
recommendations should be on May 31. I have lumped them together since
both are largely concerned with legal issues. Here's how JURI describes itself:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
This is the first of my posts about the various committees that will
be offering their recommendations to the European Parliament through the
main INTA (international trade) committee. It concerns ITRE, the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, which will be holding its crucial vote on May 31 - so, no time to lose.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
I have been writing about ACTA here for what seems several centuries. The good news is that I will stop doing that soon, because the key vote on ACTA will be taking place in the European Parliament at the beginning of July. Contrary to some reports, ACTA is
not dead: although there have been some important shifts in the last
few months - actually, pretty staggering ones when you consider the
situation at the end of last year - votes in the European Parliament are
notoriously hard to predict. This means we must assume that the battle
is still on, and not become complacent.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
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