Electronic Frontier Foundation. Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The main issues with ACTA are three-fold: Process: Negotiated in secret, ACTA bypassed checks and balances of both domestic and existing international IP norm-setting bodies without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens. The first text was only officially released in , once it had already been finalized following eight rounds of closed-doors negotiation. Enforcement: It creates a new supra-national ad-hoc institution, an "ACTA Committee", constituting non-elected members to oversee ACTA implementation and interpretation with no legal obligation to be transparent in their proceedings.
This can lead to ISPs extra-judicially terminating accounts of subscribers alleged to have engaged in repeat copyright infringement. Greater Civil and Criminal Penalties for Copyright Infringement: ACTA expands the definition of infringement in a way that could even include non-commercially-motivated infringement, requiring countries to have criminal penalties for aiding and abetting copyright infringement.
ACTA has no such provisions. Not really. Scott Fulton on ReadWriteWeb. We may collect cookies and other personal information from your interaction with our website. For more information on the categories of personal information we collect and the purposes we use them for, please view our Notice at Collection. Become a Member Sign In. General Newsletters Got a news tip? In addition to calling for strong legal frameworks, the agreement also includes innovative provisions to deepen international cooperation and to promote strong intellectual property rights IPR enforcement practices.
Together, these provisions will help to support American jobs in innovative and creative industries against intellectual property theft. Representatives of the remaining ACTA negotiating parties, the European Union, Mexico, and Switzerland, attended the ceremony and confirmed their continuing strong support for and preparations to sign the Agreement as soon as practicable.
The next step in bringing the ACTA into force is the deposit of instruments of ratification, acceptance, or approval from each of the signatories. It has been negotiated, mostly in secret, between various countries and the EU over the last four years.
Many states have already signed up for Acta, well before the widespread web furore over Sopa. The European Union, Mexico and Switzerland have supported the treaty and shown a commitment to signing it in the future. Acta was slipped through the European Council in an agriculture and fisheries meeting in December. Some of its more aggressive language has been removed from more recent iterations of the treaty, particularly concerning "disconnection of internet access".
It is expected to be signed by the EU on Thursday, before the European Parliament has a chance to vote on it. Is it really a trade agreement? Acta has been negotiated as a trade agreement, which has allowed it certain freedoms from democratic scrutiny.
Critics argue that this is copyright legislation being pushed through under the guise of a trade agreement so that it doesn't get debated as much. However, the European Commission was not allowed to negotiate over Article 23 -- the controversial part of the treaty which not only insists on criminal penalties for piracy but also for those accused of "aiding and abetting" copyright infringement -- the member states had to be represented at the table.
They negotiated these new criminal sanctions behind closed doors. Acta is such an unusual beast that when the European Commission pledged to create a guide about how Acta could be ratified, it took months instead of weeks.
It has been described as a "mixed agreement". The particular criminal sanction is up to the signatories, but it will mean prison and large fines for companies that that are accused of copyright piracy on a "commercial scale" explained in more detail further down. This could mean any website found to be hosting pirated content that has a large audience or even those companies deemed to be "aiding and abetting" copyright infringement, which could extend to ISPs, but not necessarily to the average individual at home using Bittorrent to download a song.
Who supports it? Acta is supported by major copyright holders including pharmaceutical companies, movies studios and record labels. It looks like the European Commission supports it but the European Parliament are unanimously against it.
Acta is an international treaty that aims to protect intellectual property rights across borders.
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