[x-pubpol] ACTA: Unredacted Docs Show European Commission Negotiation Failures

[Joly MacFie]

https://torrentfreak.com/acta-unredacted-docs-show-european-commission-negotiation-failures-120528/

Newly unredacted European Commission notes for four of the negotiation
rounds for ACTA show that the Commission failed to negotiate effectively on
behalf of European citizens and businesses. That’s the assessment of
digital rights organization EDRi and AccessNow, who gained access to the
previously censored documents.

[image: acta]This week and next there will be several key votes in European
Parliament Committees on ACTA, the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement.

In advance of these votes, European digital rights group
EDRi<http://www.edri.org/> and
AccessNow managed to obtain documents showing European Commission notes on
four of the earlier negotiation rounds.

The notes, which were previously redacted, cover the meetings in Paris
during 2008, Rabat and Seoul in 2009 and Guadalajara in 2010. EDRi have
conducted their analysis and are disappointed with their findings.

“The documents made public today provide an extensive guide to the failures
of the European Commission to negotiate effectively on behalf of European
citizens and businesses. They also provide an insight into the ways in
which the Commission’s public relations ‘spin’ seeks to hide these
failures,” EDRi explain.

Ever since the very existence of ACTA was confirmed, the issue of
transparency (or lack of it) has been high on the agenda. Little surprise
then that this area is the first to receive criticism.

“From the earliest stages, the Commission made weak and unsuccessful
efforts to have a transparent process,” EDRi reports. “The EU ultimately
agreed to work to keep all versions away from the public.”

The documents also show that the Commission failed to handle the United
States effectively, having agreed to be bound by a confidentiality
agreement that created a huge advantage for the US.

“Specifically, [the agreement] permitted the US to show ACTA documents to
‘selected stakeholders’ under non-disclosure agreements while the EU had no
equivalent mechanism, thereby giving a big advantage to the stakeholders
selected by the US authorities,” EDRi add.

Perhaps of even more concern were problems closer to home experienced with
the Swedish Presidency of the European Council. At one stage the Presidency
proposed not keeping other Member States in the picture “..with the
explicit intention of preventing Italy and the United Kingdom from raising
concerns about penal sanctions for online infringements.”

The much-discussed “3 strikes” regime for dealing with illicit file-sharing
also raises its head as a thorny issue. After the Commission first denied
but was then forced to admit that negotiations on disconnections for
infringement had taken place, it later said that all such proposals had
been completely rejected. However, the meeting notes show no such
discussion or conclusion.

The criticisms by EDRi continue through several more pages of apparent
failures, including that the Commission knew that it was lying when it said
that ACTA is “only about enforcement and not about substantive law.” For
Europeans, EDRi’s conclusion is damning.

“The comprehensive failure of the European negotiators is concerning for a
number of reasons, and begs the question of what kind of influence the EU
would have in the unelected ACTA Committee if the Treaty passed and was
implemented.

“It also underlines the fact that this agreement, from beginning to end,
was driven by the United States — the documents were drafted in the image
of US copyright law, do not include particular aspects of IP that are
considered important to the European economy, and even on such seemingly
trivial aspects, like defining what is meant by ‘digital environment’ could
not be achieved by the European representations,” EDRi concludes.

So what next for ACTA?

“There are four committee votes coming up – three this week and one next
week,”
EDRi Executive Director Joe McNamee told TorrentFreak. “It is now or
never<http://edri.org/stopacta>
.”

*The four newly unredacted documents can be found below (pdf)*

Paris 2008 <http://www.edri.org/files/01Paris_December_2008.pdf>
Rabat 2009 <http://www.edri.org/files/02Rabat_July_2009.pdf>
Seoul 2009 <http://www.edri.org/files/03Seoul_November_2009.pdf>
Guadalajara 2010 <http://www.edri.org/files/04Guadalajara_January_2010.pdf>

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