14 DAY TRIAL // Douwe Korff and Ian Brown, members of the Greens/European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament, officially stated their opinion regarding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) as it is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights & the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Recently, eight of the world's leading economies have signed the agreement that has been around since 2006 when Japan and the US designed it to aid the media industry which loses a lot of money because of the piracy phenomenon.
“Protecting intellectual property is essential to American jobs in innovative and creative industries. The ACTA provides a platform for the Obama Administration to work cooperatively with other governments to advance the fight against counterfeiting and piracy,” revealed U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk not long ago.
The paper released by the Greens states that the ACTA will actually deprive some people from the benefits offered by innovation, creativity and scientific progress that human rights organizations fight for.
“The tendency is to enhance intellectual property rights in ways that disproportionately protect the interests of big business and that threaten to undermine the careful balance between private and public rights to benefit from the production and distribution of culture and knowledge,” revealed one of the authors.
On the matter of account holder monitoring by the ISPs, Korff and Brown believe that service providers monitor users to allow them to connect to the internet and because the information might be needed for the bill. It is their opinion that except for special circumstances, client data should not be recorded and retained for a longer period of time.
In regards of three-strike policies and extended ISP liability, the document shows that by not clearly stipulating that states which sign the agreement should not allow three strike laws required by the private-sector and should not impose excessive ISP liability, ACTA will not be implemented in accordance with human rights.
“In this document we try to explain aspects of our work and the negative impact that the adoption of the ACTA would have on it. We hope you find enough reasons for not supporting the treaty when an opinion to the European Court of Justice can still be requested and the treaty still not be signed,” reads the end of the paper.