Today is day three of the seventh round of ACTA negotiations, currently taking place in Guadalajara, Mexico.<\/i> <\/p>\n
La Quadrature Du Net<\/a> is a French advocacy group formed to promote digital rights and online freedom. Its name comes by analogy between the unsolvable mathematical problem of “squaring the circle”, and similarly impossible attempts to “effectively control the flow of information in the digital age by the law and the technology without harming public freedoms, and damaging economic and social development”. In our ongoing series of perspectives on ACTA from around the globe, today J\u00e9r\u00e9mie Zimmermann and F\u00e9lix Tr\u00e9guer of La Quadrature du Net describe how the trade agreement undermines democratic challenges to IP policies in France and beyond. <\/i><\/p>\n ACTA: An agreement between lobbyists who hate democracy<\/b><\/p>\n For the past fifteen years, with the advent of the networked society, we have seen a growing confrontation between rightsholders, whose business-models rely on the control of culture, and ordinary citizens. Recently, a new battle has emerged, as a growing number of policy-making arenas consider implementing “three-strikes” schemes and Net filtering practices to deter filesharing. <\/p>\n In these important debates, citizens and public-interest groups have scored a few successes, convincing lawmakers that such proposals are at their core irreconciliable with fundamental rights and freedoms. Our own victories include amendment 138<\/a> in the Telecoms Package by the European Parliament &mdash which provided that no restriction on users’ access to the Internet could be imposed without a judicial decision —, and the groundbreaking first decision of the French Constitutional Council on HADOPI, stating that the French Declaration of the Rights of Man implied the “freedom to access [public online communication] services”. 1<\/a>. <\/p>\n However, in the face of such opposition in traditional democratic forums, rightstholder lobbyists 2<\/a> have pushed<\/a> for a global agreement that would establish extremist IP enforcement standards to all signatory countries. <\/p>\n As a result of this effort, ACTA is being negotiated outside of the traditional and relatively transparent IPR policy-making arenas, such as the WTO<\/a> or WIPO<\/a>. As made clear by a leaked summary<\/a> of the draft Internet chapter of ACTA written by the Commission, this multilateral agreement could impose three-strikes schemes and Internet filtering practices: <\/p>\n To benefit from safe-harbours, ISPs need to put in This policy laundering endeavor on the part of the EU, the US and their home-grown IPR lobbies needs to be strongly opposed. Since the adoption of the TRIPS<\/a> agreement in 1994, other countries have been compelled to implement increasingly harsher IP regimes. Bit by bit, the already shaky balance found in TRIPS between rightsholders and users of informational goods is neutralized at the expense of the latter. <\/p>\n The EU and the US have put an increasing pressure on countries such as Canada or Brazil – who understand the value of flexible copyright and patent laws for fostering free speech and democracy, social justice and development3<\/a>. Through bilateral and multilateral agreements, international trade law is aligning with the most maximalist IP regimes that benefit only a few corporations located in the richest countries4<\/a>. Even worse is the fact that such trade agreements are debated out of way of public scrutiny (although they significantly impact domestic law and go way beyond tariff regulations). Through undemocratic means, the development of an inclusive knowledge society is undermined. <\/p>\n But with copyright and patent law, more is not always better5<\/a> – especially for developing countries. This trend must be stopped. The ongoing negotiations on ACTA must be made transparent. Once these extremist IP enforcement measures are debated democratically, it will become clear that they do not rest on a principled basis and that they do not foster socio-economic progress. It is up to citizens and public-interest groups all around the world to act so that this fundamental debate can occur.<\/p>\n Today is day three of the seventh round of ACTA negotiations, currently taking place in Guadalajara, Mexico. La Quadrature Du Net is a French advocacy group formed to promote digital rights and online freedom. Its name comes by analogy between the unsolvable mathematical problem of “squaring the circle”, and similarly impossible attempts to “effectively control […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nplace policies to deter unauthorised storage and transmission of IP infringing
\ncontent (ex: clauses in customers’ contracts allowing, inter alia, a graduated
\nresponse).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n