This is the day when citizens of Europe and the world won over unelected bureaucrats who were being wooed and lobbied by the richest corporations of the planet.

The battleground wasn’t some administrative office, but the representatives of the people – the European Parliament – which decided in the end to do its job beautifully, and represent the people against special interests.

The road to today’s victory was hard and by no means certain.

What lead us here?

Six months ago, the situation looked very dark. It was all but certain that ACTA would pass unnoticed in silence. The forces fighting for citizens’ rights tried to have it referred to the European Court of Justice in order to test its legality and to buy some time. But then, something happened.

A monster by the name of SOPA appeared in the United States. Thousands of websites went dark on January 18 and millions of voices cried out, leaving Congress shell-shocked over the fact that citizens can get that level of pissed off at corporate special interests. SOPA was killed.

In the wake of this, as citizens realized that they don’t need to take that kind of corporate abuse lying down and asking for more, the community floodlights centered on ACTA.

The activism carried over beautifully to defeat this monster. Early February, there were rallies all over Europe, leaving the European Parliament equally shell-shocked.

The party groups turned on a cent and declared their opposition to ACTA in solidarity with the citizen rallies all over the continent, after having realized what a piece of shameless mail-order legislation it really was, to the horrors of the corporate shills who thought this was a done deal. Those shills tried, tried hard, tried right up until today, to postpone the vote on ACTA past the attention of the public and the activists.

Alas, they don’t understand the net. And there’s one key thing right there: the net doesn’t forget.

But the key takeaway here is that it was us, the activists, that made this happen. Everyone in the European Parliament are taking turns to praise all the activists across Europe and the world for drawing their attention to what utter garbage this really was, not some run-of-the-mill rubberstamp paper, but actually a really dangerous piece of proposed legislation. Everybody thanks the activists for that. Yes, that’s you. You should lean back, smile, and pat yourself on the back here. Each and every one of us has every reason to feel proud today.

What comes next?

In theory, ACTA could still come into force between the United States and a number of smaller states. Ten states have been negotiating it, and six of those need to ratify it to have it come into force. In theory, this could become a treaty between the United States, Morocco, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, and Switzerland. (But wait, the Mexican Senate has already rejected ACTA. As has Australia and Switzerland in practice. Oh well… a treaty between the United States and Morocco, then, in the unlikely event that the United States will actually and formally ratify it. You can see where this is going.)

As described before on TorrentFreak, without the support of the European Union, ACTA is dead. Doesn’t exist.

The European Commissioner responsible for the treaty, Karel de Gucht, has said that he will ignore any rejections and re-table it before the European Parliament until it passes. That’s not going to happen. Parliament takes its dignity very seriously and does not tolerate that kind of contempt, fortunately. This is something relatively new in the history of the European Union’s democracy – the first time I saw Parliament stand up for its dignity was during the Telecoms Package, where the Commission also tried to ram through three-strikes provisions. (Instead, Parliament made “three strikes” schemes illegal in the entire European Union.)

That said, many of the bad things in ACTA will return under other names. For the lobbyists, this is a nine-to-five job of jabbing against the legislation until it gives way. Just another day at work. We need to remain vigilant against special interests who will return again, again, and again, until we make sure that the legislative road for them is completely blocked. We must remain watchful.

But not today.

Today, we celebrate a job extraordinarily well done.

Today, on July 4, Europe celebrates a day of independence from American special interests.

Today, we stood up for our most basic rights against corporate giants, and won.

Congratulations to all of us, and thanks to all brothers and sisters on the barricades across the world who made this happen.

(This article is also posted on falkvinge.net.)

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

One recognized the calls from citizens that there were problems with legal ambiguity, with the slippery-slope actions of the treaty, and that for a treaty on counterfeiting it’s odd that the main counterfeiting countries were not included. This group of MEP’s also noted several times that the treaty just won’t work, and that it should “go in the bin” as German MEP Cornelia Ernst put it. These MEP’s plan on rejecting ACTA.

On the other side were those calling to refer things to the European Court of Justice. This call is widely seen as a delaying move, pushing the vote months (maybe even years down the line) and allowing it to pass when public opposition isn’t so united. The main arguments here reiterated figures of job losses and economic impacts. Claims of a hundred thousand jobs lost every year were mentioned, and billions of euros in lost revenue and taxes were brought up several times, but the real heartstring-puller was counterfeit medicines. Plenty of pro-ACTA supporters mentioned that counterfeit medicines have killed people, and so this treaty is needed.

It was the end statements that were probably most interesting though. Karel De Gucht, the European Commissioner for Trade, played down the concerns of secrecy and lack of transparency by claiming he was the one that brought ACTA into the open. Clearly he forgot about when MEP’s were forbidden to discuss the contents of ACTA while he was in charge, causing Pirate MEP Christian Engstrom to walk out. He also tried to put the blame for any surveillance society that arises on member states, as that’s where the criminal sanctioned were negotiated.

Meanwhile, ACTA rapporteur David Martin commented on the parallel discussion on twitter, and observed there were two main demographic groups opposed to ACTA. One was the Under25’s, but the other group were central and eastern Europeans, who had previously lived with their freedoms curtailed and were frightened about it happening again. He also noted with incredulity that the impression of listening to the people that elected the MEP’s to office is being populist, while listening to multinational corporations is being responsive. His point being that it’s the job of the European Parliament to represent their Constituents, who are emphatically saying ‘no’.

The stage is now set for a showdown tomorrow. The decision will be between the European Court of Justice and more delays; or an outright rejection.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

I say “coup” as the agenda is usually set in mutual understanding, and is not considered a place for political last-minute sniping if you can’t win your issue in the public and honest debate.

The agenda is set in a small Europarl meeting tomorrow Monday at 17:00, before most Members of European Parliament (MEPs) have arrived to the weekly plenary session. It’s supposed to be a matter of formalities.

But the good news is that all other parts of Parliament – and indeed even some parts of the EPP group – are listening to citizens. They’re seeing their inboxes fill up with mails urging them to reject ACTA, mails coming in from all over the world.

And this is where we need to get working in a final gigantic effort in mailing the European Members of Parliament. That’s regardless of where in the world we live – ACTA is a global concern. It’s even quite the statement for an American or Brazilian to ask the Europarl to reject ACTA.

I have taken the liberty of setting up a mail alias, europarl-all@falkvinge.net, that resolves to all the official addresses of the 750-plus Members of European Parliament. This is your time to tell them why you don’t want ACTA, in polite, courteous, and personal words.

(If you want example letters to look at and send, I have three examples over at my own blog. Do not under any circumstances write in a threatening or aggressive manner.)

It is not readily visible from the outside, but the street protests and concerned mails from citizens in Europe and elsewhere have made all the difference in turning the tide on this treaty that locks in the incumbents and shuts out the next generation. Every mail makes a difference. A mail a minute is a torrent. We know we can do better than that, we can do much better than that.

The European Commission – the pro-incumbent-business administration of Europe – has been rumored to be contacting Members of European
Parliament individually to get them to postpone the vote. The responsible Commissioner Karel de Gucht even went on record that he’s going to be so furious with a Parliament that rejects ACTA, he’s going to keep it in the desk and present it again to the next Parliament in 2015 if it is rejected this week.

(We’ll see about that, by the way. Parliament takes its dignity very seriously, and it’s Parliament that appoints the Commission. I’m not sure that a Commissioner with that poor a judgment and that much a disrespect for Parliament will keep his job when the next Commission gets appointed.)

This week, a half-decade of political trickery, sneakery and thievery comes to its end. Let’s indeed make sure it comes to an end. This is the political and business nobility against the rest of the people, against all of us. Fortunately, the European Parliament knows who to listen to when nobody else does – so we must make sure that ACTA doesn’t pass there.

Just to give an impression of how desperate the monopoly proponents have become, one MEP in the EPP group – Marielle Gallo – has called the citizen protests “a soft form of terrorism”, and says that “the politicians should be doing the thinking for the citizens”.

Did you mail the MEPs yet? What are you waiting for? The vote is on Wednesday at noon.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Six months ago, it looked like a no-brainer. Then, protests on the streets in Poland appeared, spreading through Europe like wildfire. The Polish government promised to put ratification of ACTA on hold, pending the outcome of the European Parliament. Shortly thereafter, so did pretty much everybody else.

So, all eyes on the European Parliament.

I have written before on why ACTA lives or dies with the acceptance of Europe: if two of the world’s three largest economies do not accept a trade treaty, it does not exist. China (#3) is not a party to ACTA, and it is being pushed by the United States (#2). If the European Union rejects it, the treaty is without practical effect.

So, again, all eyes on the European Parliament.

For an acceptance or rejection in the European Parliament, one committee becomes primarily responsible for every issue, recommending a course of action to their colleagues. For the many issues handled every day, this is usually a very helpful process – getting input from the people most knowledgeable on the topic. For complex topics, another committee can sometimes join in, sending their own recommendation to the responsible committee in turn.

For ACTA, there have been four such advisory committees in addition to the responsible main committee. Those four were Industry, Civil Liberties, Development, and Legal Affairs. They voted on May 31 and June 4, and all voted to recommend a rejection. This was encouraging for the net activists, very encouraging, but didn’t really say anything about the vote in International Trade – the main committee – for such a high-profile issue.

There has been no shortage of stunts pulled that were, at best, questionable. Yesterday at 18:00, the person responsible for ACTA in the European Commission (roughly the executive branch of Europe), Karel de Gucht, held a firebrand speech to the committee, telling them how to vote. He added that if Parliament votes the wrong way, he’ll just re-submit ACTA to the next parliament (!). He was later rightfully scolded by some Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) for showing an unacceptable level of disrespect for the separation of powers and for the democratic institution of Parliament.

So this morning, the INTA committee gathered for its vote. Some industry group had managed to put up a poster across the entire door, urging them to vote for adoption. This breaks a very long set of very bureaucratic rules and raised quite a few eyebrows. The room was filled to and over capacity – TV cameras were lining the walls, and people were standing in the back and along the sides, all seats being taken in the quite large room. INTA had 32 items on its agenda, starting at 10:00, and ACTA was last.

When an issue is adopted or rejected in committee, the committee starts out from a draft report suggesting a stance it should take, and then, any MEP on the committee can suggest a change – an amendment – to the draft. The draft report in INTA said that the committee recommends parliament to reject ACTA (“withhold its consent”). Some MEPs wanted these particular words to be replaced by others, so there were some amendments on the table. The two first amendments said the exact same thing – replace the words “reject ACTA” with “adopt ACTA” – and the third replaced “reject ACTA” with “postpone a decision until the European Court of Justice has said whether ACTA is legal or not.”

The party group lines were quite defined. The positions had been established, the prestige had been bet, the trenches had been dug. Those in favor of ACTA were the EPP and the ECR party groups, comprising almost exactly half of Parliament, and those against were the rest.

INTA started out with 29 MEPs present, and everybody kept counting who was present to try to figure out which side had the majority. Early counts said that the for and against sides had 14 votes each, so there was frantic activity figuring out where the 29th vote went.

Then, mid-session, an INTA MEP with voting rights showed up, bumping the total vote count to 30. Lather, rinse and repeat all the frantic guesses about majorities for ACTA.

Fifteen minutes later, repeat the same thing happening all over again as the 31st MEP appeared in committee.

At 11:30, the INTA committee finally got to the thirty-second item on today’s agenda, ACTA. The first thing that happened was that the first two amendments, those wanting to adopt ACTA, were withdrawn.

This led us to the situation where there was not even a proposal on the table to adopt ACTA. It was “say no now”, or “decide later”. So ironically, the trade group who was breaking half of the rules in the book by putting the “adopt ACTA” poster on the outside of the committee door couldn’t even theoretically have their will.

Moment of truth. Amendment three, changing “reject” to “postpone”. The vote was called, the vote was closed, and the numbers came up on screen. 13 votes in favor of the amendment, 19 votes against it, no abstains. WE WON! WE WON!

…but wait…?

19 plus 13 is … thirty-two. There are 31 MEPs. There was one vote too many. The vote was repeated, but at this time, it was practically over: one vote less from either side would not change the outcome. The amendment would be rejected, and the draft report would be adopted, recommending the European Parliament to reject ACTA.

The new vote said 19-12. The amendment was defeated by 19-12, and the draft report recommending a rejection of ACTA was adopted by the same numbers.

Thunderous applause interrupted the session. WE WON!

So what does this mean? The ironic thing is that it doesn’t really mean much in terms of the adoption or rejection process. ACTA is such a high-profile issue that people are already decided, quite regardless of the committee recommendation. But it does give you an indication of how the majorities lie — and what the vote in plenary in about 10 days will look like.

In the press conference after the INTA session, the sentiment in the room was one of a post-mortem. “Exactly where did this ACTA drive the crazy train off the nearest cliff?” Even though the ultimate vote in the European Parliament plenary still remains, the vote some time July 2-5, the sentiment was clear: it’s over. (Hint: it’s actually not. Not at all.)

Everybody in the press conference reiterated at today’s vote would not have had this outcome without energetic and persistent activity from citizens, urging MEPs to oppose ACTA. Yes, that’s you: you should pat yourself on the shoulder here.

In the press conference, we also learn that the reason for the large majority in INTA against ACTA was due to Polish MEPs not following the party lines, but referring to their home constituencies and saying they couldn’t do anything but reject. This changed the majority from harrowingly even between adoption and rejection, to having a safe margin on the side of rejection. It is a reasonable assumption that this phenomenon will carry over to the parliament at large.

Thank you, Poland!

5-0 to the Internet. Now, on to the final vote in July and ACTA’s final dismissal.

(This article is also published at falkvinge.net.)

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

It is true that there are other horrific backroom deals in the process – the Trans-Pacific Partnership, notably – but a visible defeat of ACTA due to public outrage will be sure to have effects on TPP, as well as on all other attempts to legislate some middlemen’s right to profit at the expense of our civil liberties. The opposite also holds true: if ACTA passes in the European Parliament despite us having held rallies across pretty much all of Europe, the damage to democracy, to the net, and to our civil liberties is going to take two decades to repair.

Such a defeat would be a concession that the European Parliament is not an elected body of representatives, but a doormat for so-called “corporate stakeholders” – the monopolists of yesterday who are threatened by our next generation of entrepreneurs at every level.

So this is it. Man your barricades.

The ACTA approval or rejection process in the European Parliament consists of a so-called “responsible committee” recommending the European Parliament as a whole to accept or reject the treaty. All proposals have such a responsible committee. In the case of ACTA, the committee is “International Trade”, known by its abbreviation, INTA.

But before INTA makes its recommendation to accept or reject, four other committees have left recommendations to INTA from their own respective point of view, and INTA is expected (but not required) to weigh their recommendations into INTA’s final recommendation to European Parliament. The four other committees are Industry (ITRE), Development (DEVE), Legal Affairs (JURI), and Civil Liberties (LIBE). All four of them have voted to recommend INTA to recommend a rejection in turn (yes, the roll of red tape is quite long).

Meanwhile, the proposed decision on INTA’s table is to recommend a rejection of ACTA, but the corporate monopoly interests are fighting harder by the hour to change this into an adoption. Therefore, we must fight, too. INTA makes its decision this Thursday – on June 21, around 10:00 Brussels time. This recommendation will weigh very heavily on Parliament’s final vote.

In this game, the proponents of ACTA are currently trying to get the vote postponed, seeing that public opinion is currently horribly against it. (This is politics as usual – it’s pretty much like the ACTA opponents were trying to stall a vote before the public had woken up to what was going on.) This game is far from over – party lines in the European Parliament can and do shift at the last minute, and the individual voting Members of the European Parliament are not bound to toe those party lines anyway.

So some people are trying to push for an outright adoption of ACTA by the European Parliament. The person leading that ratification effort in INTA is the Swedish Christofer Fjellner, who has tabled an amendment to INTA’s meeting – an amendment to change the decision to recommend European Parliament to accept ACTA.

Some important people have also invited themselves to INTA’s meeting in order to sway the vote. The public can’t do that, of course. But we can contact the Members of European Parliament before the meeting – and that’s exactly what we need to do. To make that easier, I have set up a mailing list at europarl-inta@falkvinge.net that goes to all the MEPs on the INTA committee. If you want inspiration of what to send, I have a sample letter over at my own blog. Above all, remember to be courteous as a citizen voicing your concern, and being clear that you urge them to vote for a rejection. (You don’t need to live in Europe to do this – ACTA is a global concern.)

For those on the outside of Parliament, the institution seems like an impenetrable fortress. Once you get on the inside, though, you realize that citizens’ voices are heard very clearly. It’s our job to make that happen between now and the final vote on the floor on the European Parliament on July 3.

Send a mail to INTA right now, and then, let’s build an overall showdown campaign between the INTA vote on June 21 and Parliament’s vote on July 3, spanning all the major tech sites, to make sure the citizen outcry becomes the stuff of legend for decades to come in the European Parliament.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

To take a real-world example, the United States’ embargo against Cuba hurt Cuba immensely, but barely the United States at all (save for the sudden absence of decent cigars). Also, Cuba would have been hurt just as much, if Cuba had initiated the trade embargo. A larger economy can hurt a smaller, but not the other way around.

The second reason is also the second method of enforcement, which would be military. A larger economy can ultimately impose its terms of trade on a smaller economy by the rattling of weapons, where the larger economy will have the resource advantage.

ACTA has been designed as a global treaty, and yet only two of the world’s three largest economies have been involved in its creation. China, #3, has been left out of negotiations – which is odd, given that ACTA is designed as an anti-counterfeiting agreement, and all of the countries known for counterfeit goods have been left out of the agreement. That leaves economies #1 and #2.

The ACTA agreement is primarily being pushed by trade representatives and industries in economy #2.

(The three largest economies of the world are, in descending order, the European Union, the United States, and China.)

As we have already seen, the world’s #2 economy – the United States – cannot impose its will on the world’s #1 economy – the European Union – through trade sanctions, and military action is politically and economically impossible. Therefore, if the European Union should choose to tell ACTA and its proponents to take a hike, it is effectively dead in the entire world, regardless of who else signs it in economy #4 or smaller. But if the US and EU were to agree voluntarily on this agreement, the combined economic power of the two largest economies will be plenty enough to bring everybody else in line.

There is exactly zero chance of the United States voluntarily backing out of ACTA, declaring it unconstitutional, ineffective, or whatever other negative term. Every legal body that would have had the compentence to do so – including Congress – have been kept out of the loop. This show goes down in the European Union.

Fortunately, nobody can keep this treaty from coming to a vote on the floor of the European Parliament, in the one elected body of the world’s largest economy. That happens some time in the parliamentary session of July 2-5.

No matter what you may have heard, ACTA is not dead. This beast is very much alive and for every cent us liberty activists spend on throwing it out, the corporations who want to own our culture and knowledge spend thousands on getting it passed. If you think you can sit back and relax now, those corporations couldn’t be better off – for they are moving in for the kill, lobbying-wise, as the final vote approaches in early July. If us activists consider the battle over, we will lose something that will take decades to repair once we’ve even started repairing it.

The good news is, that with the SOPA battle in the United States, we learned how to do this. We know that we can make a difference. When I spoke to the office of a Member of European Parliament (MEP) last week, they told me that one mail every other minute is practically a deafening torrent of citizens, impossible to avoid (unlike lobbyists). We know that 30 mails per minute – polite, honest, courteous, personal mails – is a pigshit number compared to what we can accomplish when we really get organized. Also, of course, we can (and should) call those MEP offices as the vote appears, in addition to mailing them.

We can win this. We know that we can win this. But we will not win it without fighting. We are only winning, barely winning, because of the demonstration of strength in the February 11 rallies. Now’s when we need to keep that up.

Last week ended well with three key committees recommending that the European Parliament reject ACTA as a whole. There are three votes left. The first is the vote in the Development Committee (DEVE) tomorrow (Monday), which will vote on whether ACTA adversely impacts third world health. Yeah, we know it does, but several bureaucrats are prepared to overlook that problem or whitewash it. It is our job to make them understand that we’re holding them accountable. You should let them know you care, whether you live in Europe or not.

The second vote happens on June 20. It is the final vote before the European Parliament floor. On June 20, the INTA committee – the committee responsible for international trade, and therefore “owning” the question of ACTA within the European Parliament – will summarize the opinions of the previous committees, mix in its own, and recommend the European Parliament as a whole to vote yes or no to ratifying the treaty.

That final, crucial vote happens some time in the July 2-5 parliament session in Strasbourg. That’s where ACTA lives or dies.

As the two next crucial votes approach, I’ll take the liberty to remind you here on TorrentFreak and on my own blog. For now, make sure to send a mail to those DEVE committee members!

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The three committees are Legal Affairs (JURI), Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), and Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE).

ITRE had previously recommended that it be rejected, and the proposal to that effect was written up by Pirate MEP Amelia Andersdotter and was voted on today. It passed 31 to 25

Meanwhile, the “pro-ACTA” proposal by author and lawyer Marielle Gallo (France, Modern Left party) was defeated narrowly in the JURI vote, 12 to 10 with 2 abstentions. Their new proposal will now be written by Evelyn Regner (Austria, Social Democrat)

The biggest defeat for ACTA came in the LIBE committee, where the proposal that ACTA did not comply with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights passed 36-1 with 21 abstentions. Their concern, stated in the EU press release on the topic, noted that any agreement should “ensure full respect for private life or full protection of sensitive personal information” and that “ACTA entails various layers of ambiguity” where fundamental rights are concerned.

One last committee, the Third World Development Committee (DEVE) is left to give their recommendation, which will happen June 4^th. INTA is due to make their own vote on June 21^st, before it then goes to the full Parliament in early July, which Rick Falkvinge has termed the “end-of-level boss fight”

These three votes may not be a knockout punch yet, but they increase the likelihood of the EU rejecting ACTA, which could leave it dead in the water.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In advance of these votes, European digital rights group EDRi 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.”

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

Paris 2008
Rabat 2009
Seoul 2009
Guadalajara 2010

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in the European Parliament have just announced that they will reject the controversial treaty.

“Although we unambiguously support the protection of intellectual property rights, we also champion fundamental rights and freedoms. We have serious concerns that ACTA does not strike the right balance,” announced Guy Verhofstadt, ALDE group leader.

Verhofstadt said that ALDE continues to support multilateral IP enforcement efforts, but only those with a transparent, publicly discussed mandate. He added that ALDE shares the legitimate concerns of those who participated in the anti-ACTA protests in recent months.

“Civil society has been extremely vocal in recent months in raising their legitimate concerns on the ACTA agreement which we share. There are too many provisions lacking clarity and certainty as to the way they would be implemented in practice,” Verhofstadt noted.

One of the key problems raised by anti-ACTA activists is the way the treaty has morphed and grown since its inception. From its roots as a mechanism to deal with counterfeit goods, ACTA grew to encompass the unauthorized sharing of digital media online. This means that from targeting strictly criminal enterprises, ACTA now risks sucking in the man in the street. This one-size-fits-all approach is opposed by the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats.

“Furthermore, ACTA wrongly bundles together too many different types of IPR enforcement under the same umbrella, treating physical goods and digital services in the same way,” said Verhofstadt. “We believe they should be approached in separate sectoral agreements, and following a comprehensive and democratically debated mandate and impact assessment.”

Yesterday the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said that ACTA may have unacceptable side effects on fundamental rights of individuals.

“While more international cooperation is needed for the enforcement of intellectual property rights, the means envisaged must not come at the expense of the fundamental rights of individuals,” assistant European data protection supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli said in a statement.

“A right balance between the fight against intellectual property infringements and the rights to privacy and data protection must be respected. It appears that ACTA has not been fully successful in this respect.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“The first committee to file a recommendation, the Industry, Research and Energy committee (ITRE), has just published their draft opinion on ACTA,” writes Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge this morning.

Crucially, the final point in the ITRE’s draft opinion advises the Committee on International Trade to withhold its consent to the agreement [ACTA].

The next step will see Amelia Andersdotter, the MEP responsible for the drafting of an opinion and presenting the issue to the committee, do so on April 24th. Andersdotter is the Member of European Parliament for the Swedish Pirate Party.

The vote on this stage will probably take place May 8th 2012.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.