Workshop Audience Barred From 'Demonstrating' Approval Of Michael Geist's ACTA Takedown

Free Speech

from the this-is-openness? dept

Although ACTA has now been referred by the European Commission to the European Court of Justice, it continues its passage through the various committees of the European Parliament, each of which will provide input on the final decision of whether to ratify ACTA or not. The first of these took place last week, when the International Trade (INTA) committee had a preliminary ACTA workshop. This included hearing from external experts, one of whom was Michael Geist, well known to Techdirt readers.

It will come as no surprise to learn that his ten-minute speech succeeded in distilling the key flaws of ACTA in a highly-accessible way that left the treaty’s supporters desperately trying to undo the damage to their arguments for the rest of the day — and failing.

You can either watch the video (embedded above), or read the text — they offer perhaps the best summary of ACTA’s problems so far, and are highly recommended. Since some of the points he made have been discussed elsewhere, I’ll focus here on the issues he covered that haven’t received so much attention.

After summarizing his views as “ACTA’s harm greatly exceeds its potential benefits”, Geist broke down his analysis into three parts: the process, substance and likely effectiveness of ACTA. On the process, he made this great point that hasn’t been brought out much before:

That is, if ACTA is ratified it will harm a wide range of global bodies because of its go-it-alone approach. Of course, for the leading signatories — the US and the EU — that’s a feature, not a bug, since they were finding it increasingly hard to impose their one-sided plans on global institutions where the rising BRICS economies were beginning to assert themselves.

As far as ACTA’s substance is concerned:

This is a crucial point. Defenders of ACTA emphasize that many of the worst provisions, detailed above, are optional — signatories are not obliged to implement them. But as Geist points out, “may” has a habit of turning into “must”, and he cites concrete evidence that the USTR is already working to make that happen.

In the same section, Geist also shows why claims that ACTA does not go beyond TRIPS are simply not true:

Finally, in the effectiveness section, he underlines the key failing of ACTA:

Geist’s speech was greeted with rapturous applause by the vast majority of the 600 people who were present at the workshop — an unusually large number for such meetings. One person who was visibly annoyed by this warm reception was the workshop’s chairman, Vital Moreira, who declared:

That’s rather rich, since he opened the session by claiming that the high attendance at the workshop “bears witness not only to the importance of this file, but also to the openness and transparency of this parliament, which in my view is second to none.” Clearly, that openness only goes so far. The pointed contrast between his first and second thoughts on the subject can be enjoyed in the video below.

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Filed Under: acta, eu, free speech, inta, michael geist