ACTA Attacks Internet! Let’s Attack ACTA!

Paris, Jan 25th 2009 – Negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)¹See our web-dossier about ACTA: http://lqdn.fr/ACTA will take place from January 26th to January 29th in Mexico. ACTA aims at controlling the Internet, while conveniently circumventing democratic processes. Unelected negotiators – carrying out the orders of the entertainment industries – are attacking the very essence of the Internet. Let’s attack ACTA! Let’s expose its negotiators to make them face their responsibilities!

From Jan 26th to Jan 29th, representatives of a handful of countries (including the EU represented by the Commission) will meet in Mexico to decide the future of the Internet and other issues such as access to medicine. With no supervision from international organizations and no democratic oversight, conditions are ideal for entertainment lobbies to dictate their dream: enforcing a fundamentally unadapted copyright regime in order to control the Internet and access to knowledge. More than 80 NGOs from all over the world (including Consumers International, Reporters without Borders, the Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation) already signed an open letter strongly opposing ACTA²ACTA: A Global Threat to Freedoms – open letter: http://www.laquadrature.net/en/acta-a-global-threat-to-freedoms-open-letter.

The last leaked analysis of the European Commission³http://sharemydoc.org/files/philip/ec_analysis_of_acta_internet_chapter.pdf unmasks the global intent of the text: imposing extra-judicial “voluntary” agreements between Internet service providers and rights holders to combat copyright infringements through “three strikes” schemes or automated content filtering or removal. To force Internet operators into accepting such access restrictions, ACTA will make them liable for the copyright infringements done by their users.

“By creating legal uncertainty for the Internet operators, ACTA will force them to bend under the pressure of entertainment industries. ACTA will compell Internet service providers to filter and remove content and services, turning them into private police and justice auxiliaries. We cannot tolerate that restrictions to fundamental rights and freedoms be imposed by private actors. Such a modification of criminal law by governments themselves, in total opacity, shows how much the people behind ACTA hate democracy.” analyzes Jérémie Zimmermann, spokesperson for the citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net.

La Quadrature du Net calls on every citizen to participate in raising awareness on the dangers of ACTA (see policy brief⁴http://www.laquadrature.net/files/LaQuadratureduNet-20100124_Policy_Brief-Shedding_the_Light_on_ACTA.pdf
) and to expose its negotiators in order to make them accountable. A dedicated participative campaign page⁵Campaign page “Attack ACTA” on La Quadrature’s wiki: http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Attack_ACTA is provided for this purpose.

“Obeying to the music and movie industries, unelected negotiators are deciding the future of the Internet. We must make them accountable and make sure they face the consequences of their decisions.” concludes Zimmermann.