ACTA Defeat Seen as 'Only Option,' Victory for Civil Liberties
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement may be dead, but the need for intellectual property protection is not, said business community representatives, as electronic freedom advocates hailed the defeat of the controversial legislation in European Parliament on July 4.
Director general of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Mait Palts told ETV that the IT sector had the greatest need for more effective intellectual property protection.
"Over the years, situations have arisen where a product or idea has been hijacked and Estonian entrepreneurs have clearly had a complicated time getting effective legal protection in faraway countries," he said.
Grass-roots activists who said the act could stifle creativity and individual liberties celebrated the defeat of ACTA even as they used the opportunity to warn that a trend had not been reversed.
"This is definitely a victory for us and we are happy about it. But it is just one battle," Siim Tuisk, coordinator of the Estonian Internet Community, said on uudised.err.ee.
"Actually users' rights have been under stable and continuous pressure during this period. ACTA is a great victory, but it has not yet turned the trend in the other direction."
Among the 479 MEPs who voted down ACTA on July 4 was Estonian member Tunne Kelam of the European People's Party (EPP) group. The EPP had tended to support the agreement, and Kelam earlier this year was the only Estonian MEP to vote against an anti-ACTA resolution.
Kelam said the debate had eclipsed the real issues but that voting the agreement down was the "only right move."
"The positions have strayed very far from the content," said Kelam. "On one hand, the point of ACTA was to check and prevent sale of counterfeit goods over the Internet. This field has fallen completely by the wayside. On the other hand, it's clear that the rules and development of the digital environment have not been taken into consideration sufficiently by the ACTA drafters."
"Civil liberties required clearer protection and thus I consider it right that the parliament rejected it," he added.
Meanwhile, MEP Indrek Tarand, who attended anti-ACTA demonstrations in Estonia this year and also voted against ACTA on July 4, noted that while the European Parliament vote is not binding on member states, it was a "recommendation that resembled an order" as the majority of national legislation first arises at the EU level.
Nor did the European Court of Justice's opinion - pending at the time of the vote - matter now, said Tarand.
"No executive body can (…) say to a representative assembly that we are not interested what you decided here," said Tarand, referring to the European Commission. "The political signal is very clear: that there is no point coming back here with this agreement in its current form."
Kristopher Rikken