ACTA THREATENS:
DEMOCRACY:
ACTA aims to create a new model of global governance that bypasses the normal procedures of multilateral international institutions, the European Parliament and national legislatures.
A FAIRER WORLD:
ACTA is a vast protectionist initiative to defend a few economic interests of the richest countries and to limit access to knowledge and other socially essential goods like medicines in the developing nations. Poorer countries will be forced to agree to ACTA’s unfair provisions as a condition for free trade agreements and other bilateral accords.
ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE, SAFE MEDICINE:
ACTA willfully confuses fake, fraudulant drugs with legal, generic drugs under the same suspicion and same possible confiscation. Draconian border measures and criminal enforcement imposed on third countries will create barriers to trade in essential, life-saving medication and other goods.
PRIVACY:
ACTA attempts to increase legal liability of Internet service providers in order to promote filtering and policing of the web. Such measures would turn operators into a private police and judicial auxiliaries. This privatization of intellectual property enforcement – presented as “self regulation” – would induce widespread surveillance of the Net and undermine citizens’ privacy.
DUE PROCESS AND JUSTICE:
ACTA seeks to establish mandatory criminal sanctions for intellectual property violations on a global scale. It does so by setting up disporportionate procedures denying the judicial guarantees and the rule of Law guaranteed in most democratic national laws.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION:
ACTA leads to the legalization of the filtering and blocking of digital sources of information in the name of IPR protection. It will have direct negative consequences on freedom of expression and communication. With ACTA, the EU could lose its moral legitimacy on issues of human rights.
FAIR TRADE OF GOODS:
ACTA proposes to drastically increase border inspection and seizure policies, which could be used broadly to inhibit legal international trade by SMEs and developing countries. The introduction of criminal sanctions where civil penalties are already in place could have a chilling impact on innovation worldwide.