[Chapter-delegates] EU consultation on ACTA

[Christine Runnegar]

Dear ISOC colleagues,

Thank you Alejandro for alerting the ISOC community to the upcoming European
Commission public consultation on the negotiations concerning the
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).


EC public consultation on ACTA

As many of you may already know, a document said to be a section of the
draft treaty known as the "Digital Chapter" was recently made available on
the Internet. As far as I am aware, there has been no official confirmation
of this document or its contents, so we need to be careful in drawing
conclusions.

We hope that the European Commission's public consultation on 22 March 2010
in Brussels will provide further information regarding the substance of the
matters being negotiated as they relate to the Internet so that ISOC can
speak from an informed position. To this end, ISOC proposes to send Frederic
Donck (Director European Regional Bureau) and Christine Runnegar (Senior
Manager Public Policy and coordinator of the ISOC Working Group on emerging
policy responses to online copyright infringement) to observe and report
back to the broader ISOC community.

If anyone else in the ISOC community is planning to attend, perhaps we could
arrange (off list) to meet before the meeting starts. 

ISOC is also proposing to submit a brief statement in advance of the meeting
on Monday (attached). We apologise for the short time frame, and welcome
your comments and suggestions by cob Friday 19 March 2010 please.


Additional background

It appears the participants in the ACTA negotiations intend to include
provisions to specifically address the enforcement of intellectual property
rights in the digital environment (see See Background in the NZ Invitation
for Submissions on Enforcement in the Digital Environment
http://tinyurl.com/yz6xurp).
 
Further, the Summary of Key Elements Under Discussion provided by the
European Commission Director General for Trade, in November 2009, (see
http://tinyurl.com/yfd7ste) states:

"This section of the agreement addresses some of the special challenges that
new technologies pose for enforcement of intellectual property rights.
Elements under discussion in this section include the availability of
remedies:
    - 	in cases of third party liability, without prejudice to the
availability of exceptions and limitations;
    - 	related to infringing material online, including limitations on the
application of those remedies to online service providers;
    - 	related to the circumvention of technological protection measures,
including the availability of exceptions and limitations;
    - 	related to the protection of right management information, including
the availability of exceptions and limitations."


NZ Consultation

The New Zealand Ministry for Economic Development has also launched a public
consultation. More information regarding this consultation can be found
here: http://tinyurl.com/yarv743. We are also presently proposing to submit
a brief statement along the lines of the statement for the EU consultation,
but we will shortly provide you with further information regarding this.

Kind regards,
Christine

______________________

Christine Runnegar
Senior Manager Public Policy
Internet Society
Galerie Jean-Malbuisson 15
CH-1204 Geneva
Switzerland

Tel: +41 22 807 1455
www.isoc.org 
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