Dear all,

Commissioner Kroes held yesterday a Twitchat and was flooded with questions regarding ACTA. (Note though that Kroes is not in charge of ACTA.
It is her colleague Karel De Gucht, responsible for international trade).
She said that ACTA would require no changes or new laws in the EU. It only enables common standards across nations to make international cooperation easier in fighting large-scale IPR infringements.

On a similar note, this article in Ars Tecnica gives a balanced view of the bad and good reasons to counter ACTA http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/internet-awash-in-inaccurate-anti-acta-arguments.ars

FWIW, you can also find the official text of the ACTA treaty in 23 languages, including Spanish and French at http://bit.ly/xPDyNj  (redirects to the EU Council web site)

As the Ars Tecnica article points out, many of the current reactions are based on early drafts of the treaty, and the secrecy of the process, which leads some people to think there are two treaties: the one we are given to look at and a set of unpublished documents. I am not an adept of the conspiracy theory, hence I only believe what I see.

As Markus pointed out in a parallel e-mail, some provisions of the treaty are very broad, and can be interpreted and translated in different ways in local law. An example is article 27 which could mean anything, from distributing information leaflets to deep packet inspection.

Alejandro is right in suggesting that, beyond the treaty itself, there is the spirit. I personally think that IPR infringment, as damageable as it could be, have never killed anyone. Hence, considering this as crime deserving long periods in jail, as the IP lobbyists do, is disproportionate.

The fact also that ACTA encourages extra-judicial processes is worrying.
Note though this is not new in the context of the Internet. UDRP and  URS, in the domain name system have been widely accepted by the Internet community. Consequently, the IPR community just took it one step further.
We should take the blame for accepting that in the first place.

We should also keep in mind our previous positions and not contradict ourselves. We have advocated in the context of SOPA that international law enforcement cooperation was a key to fight large scale IPR infringements.
ACTA is a treaty that makes it (among others) possible. The issue at stake for parliaments is that a treaty, they either “take it or leave it”. It cannot be amended, like a draft law could be.  One of our axis for countering ACTA should be this: whatever acceptable provisions there are in the treaty, others are unacceptable, but you are hands-tied to the whole treaty if you approve it.

Patrick Vande Walle