ACTA: First, do no harm
The debate around ACTA is in full swing. The European Commission pretends that there’s nothing to see here, please move on. The informed European public thinks otherwise, prompting tens of thousands of people to take to the streets repeatedly.
This has prompted the Commission to play for time. It has asked the European Court of Justice to check whether ACTA is compatible with Europe’s current laws (the “acquis communautaire”). As La Quadrature du Net explains, this question misses the point entirely. It is so limited that the EC can be pretty sure of getting the answer it wants.
That’s because in reality, ACTA is a political issue, not a legal one. The real question is not “is ACTA legal?”, but “do we need ACTA?” The assessment commissioned by the European Parliament’s INTA committee says no, as do most other people who have taken a close look at the agreement.
Now it’s the turn of the European Parliament to make up its mind. Do MEPs really want to ratify a treaty that offers no visible advantage to most people in Europe, but comes with lots of risk for repressive implementations by member states?
And will MEPs accept that they were sidelined during the negotiation process, and kept in the dark about most things relating to ACTA? Will they rubberstamp a text of questionable value?
Or will they demand (and earn) respect as the elected representatives of Europe’s citizens?
I wish they would.
Comments
sorry but i disagree with your opinion. The question is not to say if Acta is a good solution or not; this is a moral opinion.
In my opinion, we have to think more about the european commission and his real function.How is it possible to negociate this treaty in secret and without any authorization from national’s parliament of each country ? UE is not a democracy, that’s the problem…
@Juritel: Regardless of whether you take a moral viewpoint or not, ACTA is a bad solution in practical terms too.
An “anti-counterfeiting” agreement that doesn’t involve the countries from which most counterfeit goods originate (think China), but that spends lots of political capital on battling unlicensed downloads of digital files will not be effective.
By now it’s pretty much a consensus among observers (including the ACTA assessment study commissioned by the European Parliament) that ACTA will do very little good, if any; but at the same time, that it carries lots of risk for harmful implementations.