The European Commission has emphasised the damage that counterfeit goods are doing to the European economy, and the threat they represent to jobs. Here, for example, is what it said in its latest ACTA press release (http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/12/354&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en):

“ACTA is an international trade agreement that will help countries work together to tackle more effectively large-scale Intellectual Property Rights violations. Citizens will benefit from ACTA because it will help protect Europe’s raw material – innovations and ideas

…

As Europe is losing billions of Euros annually through counterfeit goods flooding our markets, protecting Intellectual Property Rights means protecting jobs in the EU. It also means consumer safety and secure products.

The EU’s national customs authorities have registered that counterfeit goods entering the EU have tripled between 2005 and 2010.

Statistics published by the European Commission in July 2011 show a tremendous upward trend in the number of shipments suspected of violating IPR. Customs in 2010 registered around 80,000 cases, a figure that has almost doubled since 2009. More than 103 million fake products were detained at the EU external border.”

But the Commission’s own statistics on counterfeiting, referred to above, have the following to say (http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/11/506&format=HTML&aged=0&language=en&guiLanguage=en):

“In 2010, 85% of the total amount of articles infringing IPR came from China. This represents an important increase compared to 2009 (64%). Other countries were the main source of provenance for different product categories, notably Turkey for foodstuff, Thailand for non-alcoholic beverages, Hong Kong for memory cards and India for medicines.

None of those countries is a signatory to ACTA. This means that even if ratified, ACTA will have zero effect on those countries’ output of counterfeits. ACTA will only affect signatories, and the only signatory that is mentioned in the Commission’s own list of top counterfeits is Greece, which supplies 0.91% of counterfeit goods in the EU. In other words, 99.09% of counterfeit goods will be unaffected if ACTA goes into effect. ACTA will do nothing to protect European citizens against counterfeits, which must be tackled with the laws we already have. We simply don’t need ACTA.

It seems fairly clear from Mary’s post that MEP’s have, in the case of potential infringements of personal liberties, done what they can to modify this part of the act. But what of those parts of the act that deal with other issues and matters?

This bill is about as good for consumers and a free and just society as the Patriot Act is good for the rights of American Citizens. It has every appearance of being a very dangerous piece of legislation indeed, in the interests of furthering the multinational corporations relentless encroachment on human and societal values.

Let us have a clearer exposition of why the UK government has signed the Agreement, and what the position is over ALL the provisions of ACTA, not just the privacy issues.

Thank you for taking on some of the extremes of ACTA, but just because of these improvements, the legislation is still not acceptable to me & millions of others. The issue of generic drugs is completely unaddressed, ACTA would make many generics asn offense to sell, increasing health care costs for the very poorest.

Seed patents are another cornerstone of this legislation, giving more power & control of our food to corporate agribusiness giants.

But it is the multitude of issues which would effect the internet, you touched on a couple, ACTA introduces a concept of ‘illegal software’, making ISPs liable for free, open-source software, which circumnavigates Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes. Free, open source software, has been one of the gifts the Internet has managed to spread, and should be protected at all costs. Would this poart of ACTA effect Linux? It is unclear, the language is, maybe intentionally, vague.

ISPs would still be liabel for the content that they deliver, meaning that all it would take is a complaint from a business (with no court order), for the ISP to feel compelled to remove the site, ie. block it. Internet blocks are incompatible with democracy, which demands a free & functioning flow of information to thrive.

ISPs would also be compelled to hand over user details to any party which suspected the user of online fringement. Again, this would be a matter carried out without the courtsd, on the say so of a media company, many of which have been caught lying already, for them only tio be given more powers.

ACTA cannot be voted for by anyone who truly believes in freedom, democracy, openness & expression. It is the enemy of the people, created by corporations & is little more than a power grab. Please reconsider your opinion on this matter, this really coiuld be a definiing piece of legislation of the 21st century.

Thank you,
Frank,