ACTA back in the news
The controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is back in the news and matters are as confusing and opaque as ever (see the IPKat's earlier reports here).Last week 22 of 27 EU countries (including the UK) signed up to ACTA (in Tokyo... of all places) and it is now for the European Parliament to approve the agreement, withhold the agreement or ask the European Court of Justice to check it.
According to news reports there appears to be call for an EU wide Anti-ACTA protest on 11 February 2012 (see report by German news site n-tv.de). The European Commission feels the need to defend its support of ACTA and last week published a document called "10 Myths about ACTA" (read it here), essentially saying that ACTA is good for the EU's competitiveness and that ACTA will not infringe and/or encroach upon privacy, freedom of expression and data protection. ACTA critics maintain that ACTA will do exactly this and are concerned by the secrecy surrounding the ACTA negotiations which were conducted "behind closed doors".
Today, the European Parliament published a press release concerning ACTA (which you can read by clicking here) stating that following ACTA "what was allowed will be allowed". In the meantime, according to a report by CNET, the hacker group Anonymous appears to have decided to target the European Parliament calling ACTA, "Europe's SOPA".
Last week hackers already attacked several Polish government websites. This all follows the news that Kader Arif, the European Parliament's rapporteur ACTA resigned from his position last Friday because of the "never-before-seen manoeuvres" by officials behind the scenes (see a BBC news report here). German news site n-tv also cited German law Professor Axel Metzger of the University of Hanover who is of the view that ACTA does indeed foresee harsher criminal law provision for the infringement of IP rights and diminishes the rights of potential defendants. A detailed interview with Professor Metzger can be found in the respected German legal review Neue Juristische Wochenschrift (in German only, sadly).
Do our readers have any views on ACTA and its consequences? Is it as bad as feared or is this all a storm in a teacup?
