Is ACTA an act of Big Brother?

 

Voices in Malta were raised by the Labour Party, Alternattiva Demokratika, students group Pulse and individuals in the social media as soon as Malta’s endorsement was revealed.

 

The Maltese Government, the signatory of ACTA on behalf of Malta, was forced to react to the negative mood created in Malta when the news broke out. A statement by the Ministry of Finance (how come it was not handled by the Minister for IT Austin Gatt?) tried to reassure that the agreement would not impinge on the rights of Maltese citizens. Nationalist MEPs Simon Busuttil and David Casa took the government’s side. This prompted even more negative feedback from Maltese citizens who vented their anger online.

 

What is ACTA after all? Wikipedia describes ACTA as a “plurilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement. The agreement aims to establish an international legal framework for targeting counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement on the Internet, and would create a new governing body outside existing forums, such as the World Trade Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, or the United Nations.”

 

There is nothing wrong in thwarting wrongdoing such as producing and distributing fake goods, especially medicines. However civil liberties groups around the world have dubbed the whole exercise as “policy laundering” and it will restrict fundamental civil and digital rights, especially the right to privacy and data protection. They denounced the fact that there was no consultation with developing countries and civil society. Details of the draft ACTA were published by Wikileaks. The full text is available here: http://euwiki.org/ACTA/Tokyo_oct2

 

While the European Union signed the agreement, the European rapporteur on ACTA, Kader Arif, resigned a few days ago after denouncing the treaty "in the strongest possible manner" for having "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, [and] exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in [the] assembly.” 

 

While Malta and 21 other EU countries signed a few days ago, the European Parliament is yet to sanction the EU’s endorsement.

 

ACTA is just one of several attempts across the world to combat new forms of counterfeiting and piracy, especially digital piracy, which is costing businesses billions of euros each year in lost revenues. Attempts to push the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the United States, with significant pressures from the motion picture industry which feels it is loosing good money to online piracy, have so far failed.

 

Malta does not have a very positive track record in terms of digital piracy, although the situation has improved in recent years.

 

According to the Business Software Alliance, Malta has a computer software piracy rate of 43%, which is 8% higher than the EU average. This is a far cry from the 90% piracy rate registered in Malta in the mid-1990s.

 

This situation has led to the BSA launching an anti-piracy campaign in Malta and a few years ago Microsoft Malta even hired an executive specifically tasked with tackling software piracy locally.

 

While it is true that Internet has made it much easier to infringe copyright, it is today considered as a very important communication tool. In some developed it is even considered a human right.

 

The negative reaction of the Maltese towards ACTA seems to be focused on the impact of this agreement on Internet communication rather than fake physical goods.

 

The Maltese customs regularly report the discovery of counterfeit goods entering the Malta Freeport en route to Europe. This includes all kinds of goods but especially cigarettes, electronic equipment, clothes and footwear. The rate of the success of the Maltese customs dramatically improved after the American government donated special scanning equipmenta few years ago. Most of these fake items originate from Asia and most of items are copied from American brands, hence the American’s interest in the Maltese customs.