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Kader Arif, докладчикът на ЕС за ACTA е предал своя доклад и подал оставка от длъжността, която заема като прави следното изявление относно процеса по водене на преговорите и придвижването за ратификация на този международен договор: Искам да отрека по най-силния възможен начин целия процес, който доведе до подписването на това споразумение: без включване на организациите на гражданското общество, липсата на прозрачност от самото начало на преговорите, многократно отлагане на подписването на текста, без да бъде предоставено обяснение и изключване на исканията на Европейския парламент, които бяха изразени на няколко пъти в зала. Като докладчик на този текст, съм изправен пред невиждани преди маневри от „дясното крило“ на този парламент, които включиха темата в дневния ред, преди обществото да може да формира мнение, като по този начин лишиха парламента от правото на дебат и отнеха възможността за представяне на основателните искания на гражданите. Всеки знае, че споразумението ACTA е проблематично, по отношение на въздействието му върху гражданските свободи, на начина, по който вменява отговорност доставчиците на интернет достъп, възможностите за производство на генерични лекарства или минималната защита, която дава на нашите географски означения. Това споразумение може да има значителни последици върху живота на нашите граждани, и въпреки това се прави всичко възможно за отнемане на възможността Европейския парламент да се произнесе по този въпрос. Ето защо днес, с предаването на този доклад, за който съм отговорен, искам да сигнализирам и да насоча общественото мнение към тази неприемлива ситуация. Аз няма да взема участие в този маскарад. Напомням, че ACTA е международен договор, а на основание чл. 5. ал. 4 от Конституцията ратифицираните международни договори имат предимство пред тези норми на вътрешното законодателство, които им противоречат.
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SOPA and PIPA were not the beginning, and they won't be the end. The Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been years in the making, and does everything bad SOPA and PIPA would have done. It's already been signed by the several governments, including the U.S., Japan and the European Union - but the European Parliament has to vote on it. If ACTA were being treated like a treaty the Senate would be involved in ratifying it. But it's not. ACTA was negotiated as a "sole executive agreement" which means that the Senate has no input on it. That means that the it became part of U.S. law when it was signed last October without Senate input. The EFF's Deeplinks blog has an excellent entry on ACTA. Christian Engström, Member of the European Parliament and ACTA opponent, posted an eye-opening entry on his blog on January 28th. He compared damages allowed by current EU law and damages required by ACTA: A two-terabyte disk can hold roughly half a million songs. If you calculate that at the market price of 1 euro per song, which is quite normal, then the damages for having a 2 TB disk full of music would be half a million euro. Would that be proportionate or not? Remember that this is not an extreme example, it is something that lots of teenagers do. Would it really be proportionate that the family would have to sell their house and all their possessions if they were found out? Under current European laws, damages are (at least in principle) limited to actual losses that the party that wins can show that he has actually suffered. They have to be proportional. Not even the lawyers for a film or record company would be able to convince a European court that they have actually lost half a million euro in non-purchases from a teenager who has never seen that kind of money in his life. But according to ACTA, the film or record companies would no longer have to prove that they have actually lost the money. All they need to do is to multiply the number of songs with the price for one song to get the amount of damages measured by the suggested retail price. A half million euro claim against a teenager with a 2 TB disk would be considered disproportionate and absurd by any European court today. With ACTA, awarding those damages becomes mandatory. As bad as that sounds, Mr. Engström is only looking at half the absurdity. If the hypothetical teenager is also sharing the files he can be held liable for the loss represented by each time the files were shared. Now that half a million euros can balloon to millions, even though the combined annual income of all of the infringers might be a fraction of that. ACTA has already had an effect on U.S. ISP's. One of the removed ACTA provisions required a "three strike" rule. If you were accused of improperly downloading or sharing copyrighted material your household was to be denied Internet access for a year. Though the provision was removed, last November my internet was cut off. When I tried to get online I was directed to a page telling me I had been cut off for copyright infringement. I called to see what happened and was told that there had been a complaint, but the ISP did not know what I had downloaded or even if I had actually downloaded anything. The takedown was a warning, and if there were continued complaints after three or four they would cut me off for good. Even though they didn't even know if I had actually downloaded anything. ACTA is a bad thing. With nothing other than an unverified complaint you are judged guilty. And it is outside of any national - or international - law. According to Zack Whittaker of ZDNet's "London Calling" blog, ACTA requires the formation of an ACTA Committee: Who will enforce ACTA? The agreement will create an “ACTA Committee” to make amendments to the agreement. The problem is that this committee is not accountable to anybody. It is outside the public and judicial process, and not accountable to a nation or an international body. The committee won’t even be accountable to those countries governed by the agreement, including the U.S. government and the European Commission. As ReadWriteWeb explains: “Folks in the United States can vote out Lamar Smith and others who endorsed SOPA/PIPA, but we would have no real influence on the ACTA Committee.” Ethan Geabel at Collegiate Times reports that ACTA has been cut back to a great extent, but the powers it grants are still very disturbing powers to groups that shouldn't have them: But ACTA still poses a threat to the free and open Internet. ACTA allows media companies and other rights holders to demand the personal data of Internet users from their service providers, without a court order. This is an improvement, since media companies would have to ask Internet providers “nicely” for your data. Copyright holders are given another tool to coerce information from Internet providers: the threat of slapping them with aiding and abetting charges. What good business would deny a demand when there are criminal and civil penalties at stake? The powers that ACTA gives copyright holders over Internet service providers are disturbingly similar to those given to the government in the PATRIOT Act. It's disturbing that governments are delegating enforcement powers to the groups with the most to gain by (ab)use of those powers. ACTA allows this, and even watered down, is so problematic that Kader Arif, the official assigned to investigate ACTA for the European Parliament resigned his position earlier this month in protest: I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly. As rapporteur of this text, I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens' legitimate demands.” Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications. This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.