[Chapter-delegates] EU consultation on ACTA

Sun Mar 21 01:52:33 PDT 2010

Thank you very much Christian for this information. 

I am familiar with the UK Digital Economy Bill and have been watching its
progress. 

The Spanish case also looks very interesting. Do you know if the judgment is
available on the Internet?

Best regards,
Christine

-----Original Message-----
From: Christian de Larrinaga [mailto:cdel at firsthand.net] 
Sent: 19 March 2010 5:30 PM
To: Christine Runnegar
Cc: chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] EU consultation on ACTA

Christine 

Excellent note.  I hope the meeting spends its time pushing for an
unequivocal opening up of ACTA. 

One thought I'd welcome you taking (at the back of your mind) into the
meeting with you is the Digital Economy Bill in the UK. To give one example
of an issue. There is a risk to community wifi hotspots that could make it
so onerous to operate due to requirements to defend IPR, filtering measures
and so forth that some senior telecoms policy experts see the UK losing its
community and small business open wifi hotspots. 

The linkage in the Bill between networks and IPR enforcement of content is
breaking neutral carrier status of access networks and this will ossify the
deployment and evolution of edge networks. If something similar is in ACTA
then this could extend around the world. 

A second thought to have in the bottom draw is the recent judgement by a
spanish judge in relation to the legality of linking to content and use of
P2P services for not for profit reasons. This is yet another indication that
the position of the IPR lobby is not a legal one at least not everywhere and
is primarily defensive of a business model. 

http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2010/03/15/spanish-court-declares-p2p-link-site
s-filesharing-legal

Spanish Court Declares P2P Link Sites, File-sharing Legal Authored by Mark
Hefflinger on March 15, 2010 - 11:21am.
Madrid - A Spanish court has upheld its previous finding that a site
aggregating links to downloads on file-sharing networks does not infringe
copyrights, TorrentFreak reported.

The judge in the case previously rejected Spanish copyright society SGAE's
petition to shutter ElRincondeJesus.com as an injunction before the trial
started.

Judge Raul N. García Orejudo ruled that providing links is not the same as
distribution of media, and noted that the site does not derive direct or
indirect profits -- and is therefore not a business.

However, the judge went even further, and commented directly on the legality
of file-sharing by individuals.

"P2P networks are mere conduits for the transmission of data between
Internet users, and on this basis they do not infringe rights protected by
Intellectual Property laws," Orejudo said in the ruling.

"Therefore, if an individual uses P2P networks like eDonkey or BitTorrent to
obtain copyright material for non-profit reasons, the act is completely
legal."

This suggests to me that there is an important discussion to be had on IPR
by governments but that there really is not sufficient harmonisation nor
consensus between the legal systems to establish a one solution fits all
approach. 

A third thought. Internet can support diversity in and between markets. We
do not need a one size fits all solution. It is not a technical requirement.

best regards

Christian de Larrinaga

On 19 Mar 2010, at 08:10, Christine Runnegar wrote:

> 
> 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
> <Draft letter re ACTA 18 Mar 
> 2010.pdf>_______________________________________________
> Chapter-delegates mailing list
> Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
> http://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/chapter-delegates

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