[Advocacy Advisors] CETA [was Re: EU Monitoring Report - September 2014]

Thu Oct 2 09:07:01 UTC 2014

Hi Luis,

A good (recommended to me) summary has been released by the Canadian Centre
of Policy alternatives. [1]

Here in Brussels, I am sitting currently on a desk next to the
Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue [2] who follow international trade
agreements from an IPR perspective. They've been very helpful in making it
possible for me keeping to keep an eye on this. It is a structure in which
organisations like the EFF and BEUC (European Consumer Protection
Association) are participating. Among EDRi members, the most active
organisation following this right now is probably Bits of Freedom from the
Netherlands. Generally, I would expect any actions to be formed around
these actors.

I will make sure I keep you up to date about things in the pipeline.

Dimi

[1]
https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2014/09/Making_Sense_of_the_CETA.pdf
[2]http://tacd.org/

2014-10-01 23:43 GMT+02:00 Luis Villa <lvilla at wikimedia.org>:

>
> On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 8:14 AM, Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov <
> dimitar.parvanov.dimitrov at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> What happened?
>> The consolidated text of the Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA) was
>> released last week. [9] It contains chapters on IPR and e-commerce and
>> rules on data protection. It talks a lot about Digital Rights Management, a
>> circumvention prohibition thereof and a prohibition on software that can be
>> used to circumvent DRM. It also has an article on IPR enforcement (Article
>> 18), which foresees the seizure of property on alleged infringers,
>> including blocking of bank accounts and assets. This sounds a lot like ACTA
>> (I’d say about 80 percent of the text is identical). It is also intriguing,
>> because we still have not harmonised copyright and enforcement rules in the
>> EU, raising the question on what grounds the Commission is negotiating this
>> with Canada.
>> There’s also a so-called “follow the money” approach for pursuing
>> infringers who knowingly violate copyright law. They can be asked to pay
>> compensations which would include alleged lost profits.
>>
>> What comes next?
>> The major question here is, if this treaty is out of scope for the
>> European Commission. If it touches upon policies which are not the
>> exclusive competence of the EU, it would have to be ratified by the
>> European Parliament, the Council and the parliaments of the 28 Member
>> States. If it falls within EU law an okay from the Parliament and Council
>> would be enough.
>> It is also important in light of the talks on a similar EU-US trade
>> agreement (TTIP). The negotiation logic in free trade agreements is that if
>> you offer something to Canada, you’ll have to offer at least the same
>> conditions to the USA.
>
>
> Is there any good commentary/summary elsewhere on the details of this? And
> are any of the activist groups trying to organize around it?
>
> Luis
> --
> Luis Villa
> Deputy General Counsel
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 415.839.6885 ext. 6810
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