Pirate Party Australia has decried the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
ACTA’s claimed objectives are the establishment of new global standards for enforcing intellectual property rights, including increased international co-operation to address counterfeiting and ‘piracy’. The European Union became a signatory to ACTA last Thursday, joining Australia, the United States, Singapore and others.
The European Union’s rapporteur on ACTA resigned over the Agreement last week, claiming that there has been “no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations,” and “everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable [and] its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing.”[1]