Tech policy & human rights
Big tech accountability? Read how we got here in The Closing of the Net
ACTA
The Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement or ACTA was negotiated between 2008-2010. It was put to the European Parliament in 2012, and was rejected. But what was it? And why was it so controversial?
It was an attempt to create a trade agreement around a specific issue area of intellectual property rights. It was led by the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the EU and Japan. One of the key aims of its proponents was to establish in international trade law, a set of measures to address copyright enforcement online. To that extent it incorporated a chapter on enforcement of intellectual property rights on the Internet, including copyright and trade marks. This chapter is what grabbed the attention of lawyers, academics and activists around the world. There were two main areas of conflict. One of them was copyright enforcement, which at that time entailed the so-called "3-strikes" measures ( see my section on France) and which is covered extensively here in my posts on ACTA. The other issue was access to medicine ( which I do not cover).
If you like the articles in this section and you are interested in ACTA and copyright enforcement policy, you may like my book A Copyright Masquerade: How Corporate Lobbying Threatens Online Freedoms which discusses ACTA in detail. You may also like The Copyright Enforcement Enigma - Internet Politics and the ‘Telecoms Package’
And you may like my book The Closing of the Net which discusses the issue of secondary liability in the context of the UK copyright blocking judgments and the Megaupload case in New Zealand.
More Articles...
- EU Parliament Trade committee says no to ACTA
- EU Parliament: we will not be pushed, Mr DeGucht!
- Committees give thumbs down to ACTA despite dirty tricks
- ACTA: what is commercial scale?
- European Parliament go-ahead for ACTA vote
- Barroso’s confusion: trade marks or trade committee?
- EU Commission fires back at data protection chief
- ACTA would prematurely strangle debate, says civil liberties rapporteur
- ACTA: EU Parliament takes a step to the right
Online Safety Bill: latest
- Online Safety Bill: does government want to snoop on your WhatsApps?
- What is content of democratic importance?
- Online Safety Bill: One rule for them and another for us
- Online Safety Bill - Freedom to interfere?
- Copyright-style website blocking orders slipped into Online Safety Bill
- £2 billion cost to British businesses for Online Safety Bill
- Online Safety Bill: Ministers to get unprecedented powers over speech
- What's the point of the Online Safety Bill?
IPtegrity commentary
- UK bulk intercept surveillance - court ruling calls for tighter safeguards
- Not a blank cheque: European Parliament consents to EU-UK Agreement
- Oversight Board Decision moves Facebook into human rights ambit
- UK border safety alert - mind the capability gap
- What? Will UK government ignore security as it walks away from EU?
- Britain unplugged: the security risk of no-deal
- Betting on a costly space race: MPs probe OneWeb satellite deal
- Disrupting supply chains: how leaving the Single Market means systemic breakdown
- Big tech and anti-trust: an ill-fitting suit?
- Schrems ruling puts a spoke in UK data flows from 2021
- Russia Report: how to balance social media and national security?
- Digital rights - why they matter in a time of coronavirus
- EU upload filter - Germany’s crucial deciding vote
- Copyright Directive upload filter - why EU Council should block it
- Data and Brexit – a mis-calculation?
- EU lawmakers seek to protect free speech in online content rules
- How Brexit rips up business models Part 2: visas for money and music
Published work
- Algorithms Patrolling Content: Where’s the Harm?
- Content responsibility: The looming cloud of uncertainty for Internet intermediaries
- Freedom of Expression, Human Rights Standards and Private Online Censorship
- The Policy Challenge Of Content Restrictions: How Private Actors Engage The Duties Of States
- Internet Policy Review - The Aereo dilemma and copyright in the cloud
My Linked In profileIptegrity in brief
Iptegrity.com is the website of Dr Monica Horten. I’ve been analysing analysing digital policy since 2008. Way back then, I identified how issues around rights can influence Internet policy, and that has been a thread throughout all of my research. I hold a PhD in EU Communications Policy from the University of Westminster (2010), and a Post-graduate diploma in marketing. I’ve served as an independent expert on the Council of Europe Committee on Internet Freedoms, and was involved in a capacity building project in Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine. I am currently (from June 2022) Policy Manager - Freedom of Expression, with the Open Rights Group. For more, see About Iptegrity
Speaking engagements
Iptegrity.com is made available free of charge for non-commercial use, Please link-back & attribute Monica Horten. Thank you for respecting this.
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States v the 'Net?
Read The Closing of the Net, by me, Monica Horten.
"original and valuable" Times higher Education
" essential read for anyone interested in understanding the forces at play behind the web." ITSecurity.co.uk
Find out more about the book here The Closing of the Net
FROM £15.99
In 2012, I presented my PhD research in the European Parliament.
The politics of copyright
A Copyright Masquerade - How corporate lobbying threatens online freedoms
'timely and provocative' Entertainment Law Review
