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About two years ago I blogged about zombie provisions of the failed ACTA treaty, which resurfaced in other treaties such the the“Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement” (CETA). In the new multingual Eutopia magazine I have now published an article on the currently debated Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP):
The dispute over the planned TTIP transatlantic free trade agreement between the European Union and the United States goes far beyond the treaty itself, the reason being the tradition in which TTIP is grounded.
It is merely the most recent acronym in a constantly expanding family of abbreviations, its best known members including GATT, TRIPS, GATS, MAI, ACTA, CETA and TPP*.
[…]
Last week the European Parliament rejected the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA, see also “ACTA as a Case of Strategic Ambiguity“) with 478 voting against the treaty, 39 in favour and 165 MEPs abstaining. Commenting on this outcome, Joe McNamee from the ACTA-critical NGO European Digital Rights (EDRi) stated that “ACTA is not the end. ACTA is the beginning.” In his optimistic account, the rejection of ACTA has substantially changed the debate on intellectual property rights regulation in Europe:
Thanks to SOPA, European citizens better understood the dangers of ACTA. Thanks to the anti-ACTA campaign, it would be politically crazy for the Commission to launch the criminal sanctions Directive. Thanks to ACTA, there is broad understanding in the European Parliament of just how bad IPRED really is and any review now, if the Commission has the courage to re-open it, is more likely to improve the Directive rather than increase its repressive measures.
However, a recent op-ed by Canadian copyright scholar Michael Geist, illustrates why ACTA’s contents might not be so dead after all. Referring to leaked documents of negations between Canada and the EU Commission on the “Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement” (CETA):
According to the leaked document, dated February 2012, Canada and the EU have already agreed to incorporate many of the ACTA enforcement provisions into CETA, including the rules on general obligations on enforcement, preserving evidence, damages, injunctions, and border measure rules. One of these provisions even specifically references ACTA.
governancexborders.com 