Studies and Opinions on ACTA

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Today there will be over 200 demonstrations against ACTA in Europe. I made a one page handout that lists studies and opinions on ACTA: http://people.ffii.org/~ante/acta/Studies-on-ACTA.pdf

Below a version with more quotes:

Opinion of European Academics on ACTA: “Contrary to the European Commission’s repeated statements and the European Parliament’s resolution of 24 November 2010, certain ACTA provisions are not entirely compatible with EU law and will directly or indirectly require additional action on the EU level.” They invite “the European institutions, in particular the European Parliament, and the national legislators and governments, to carefully consider the above mentioned points and, as long as significant deviations from the EU acquis or serious concerns on fundamental rights, data protection, and a fair balance of interests are not properly addressed, to withhold consent.”

Opinion of European Academics on ACTA http://www.iri.uni-hannover.de/acta-1668.html

Douwe Korff & Ian Brown: “Overall, ACTA tilts the balance of IPR protection manifestly unfairly towards one group of beneficiaries of the right to property, IP right holders, and unfairly against others. It equally disproportionately interferes with a range of other fundamental rights, and provides or allows for the determination of such rights in procedures that fail to allow for the taking into account of the different, competing interests, but rather, stack all the weight at one end. This makes the entire Agreement, in our opinion, incompatible with fundamental European human rights instruments and -standards.”

Douwe Korff & Ian Brown, Opinion on the compatibility of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) with the European Convention on Human Rights & the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, 2011 http://rfc.act-on-acta.eu/fundamental-rights

European Parliament study: “for those European Parliamentarians for whom conformity with the EU Acquis is sine qua non for granting consent, this study cannot recommend that they provide such consent to ACTA as it now stands.”

European Parliament study
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/INTA/studiesdownload.html?languageDocument=EN&file=43731

Media Piracy in Emerging Economies: “The failure to ask broader questions about the structural determinants of piracy and the larger purposes of enforcement imposes intellectual, policy, and ultimately social costs. These are particularly high, we would argue, in the context of ambitious new proposals for national and international enforcement—notably ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement recently finalized by the United States, the European Commission, and a handful of other countries.”

Media Piracy in Emerging Economies, edited by Joe Karaganis http://piracy.ssrc.org

Sean Flynn with Bijan Madhani “In doing so, it increases the risks and consequences of wrongful searches, seizures, lawsuits and other enforcement actions for those relying on intellectual property limitations and exceptions to access markets, including the suppliers of legitimate generic medicines. This, in turn, is likely to make affordable medicines more scarce and dear in many countries.”

Sean Flynn with Bijan Madhani, ACTA and Access to Medicines http://rfc.act-on-acta.eu/access-to-medicines

Opinion of the European Data Protection Supervisor on the current negotiations by the European Union of an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, paragraph 44 http://www.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/edps/Consultation/OpinionsC/OC2010

Oxfam Statement regarding ACTA and Public Health http://www.oxfamsol.be/fr/IMG/pdf/Oxfam_ACTA_analysis_FINAL.pdf

Public Citizen http://www.citizen.org/documents/Letter-to-Members-of-the-Committee-on-Legal-Affairs-on-the-ACTA.pdf

ARTICLE 19 http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/2901/en/european-parliament:-reject-anti-counterfeiting-trade-agreement-%28acta%29

Sakharov price winners on ACTA
http://en.rsf.org/union-europeenne-online-freedoms-threatened-by-15-12-2011,41557.html

European Economic and Social Committee
http://www.laquadrature.net/files/EESC_on_IPR_Streategy.doc

Amnesty International: “EU urged to reject international anti-counterfeiting pact”
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/eu-urged-reject-international-anti-counterfeiting-pact-2012-02-10