Protest against ACTA on Saturday

The Malta Anti-ACTA Group (MAAG) has announced a public protest for Saturday 11 February at 11am in Valletta, organised by various civil society organisations and political parties.

"The ACTA Treaty has been negotiated behind closed doors without engaging public debate and has suffered from numerous problems of transparency.  This treaty establishes a committee which operates outside the normal framework of the World Trade Organisation and which has powers to amend the treaty itself in a way which potentially circumvents the normal democratic process," spokesperson Reuben Zammit said.

"MAAG is urging the public to attend the protest on Saturday to express its concern regarding a treaty which poses a threat to democratic processes, right to privacy, freedom of expression and medicinal distribution."

Zammit said MAAG was worried ACTA would result in disproportionate actions against intellectual property rights infringement becoming the norm.  "The ambiguous nature of the treaty also makes the measures introduced for protecting intellectual property rights liable to abuse."

"In particular, the implementation of these measures can have a detrimental effect on the rights to privacy of individuals, forcing ISPs to reveal personal information about alleged infringers.  The treaty also paves the way for courts to consider ordering compensation for infringements consisting of amounts based on questionable criteria defined arbitrarily by rights holders themselves."

Organisations such as the Malta Linux User Group, Moviment Graffitti, Front Kontra ċ-Censura, Kunsill Studenti Junior College, Malta Alliance for Freedom, Malta Humanist Asociation, ir-Realtá Collective, MOVE Progressive Students, Alternattiva Demokratika Żgħażagh, Forum Żgħażagħ Laburisti and Pulse, support and will be attending the demonstration.

Zammit also saijd ACTA's ambiguous language puts generic medicine at the risk of being targeted unjustly as a counterfeit product. " This is further aggravated by the border control provisions in the treaty, which would also allow for the interruption of the transit of these medicines between two non-signatory countries whenever they pass through a signatory country."

The finance ministry has insisted that ACTA - the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement signed by the Maltese government as part of the EU bloc - will "not censor websites and has nothing to do with how individual citizens use the internet."

The ministry was reacting to comments in the media regarding the signing of the ACTA in Japan in 26 January.

Labour MP and spokesperson on consumer rights Michael Farrugia said ACTA was not negotiated at an inclusive multilateral forum, such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) or the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO. "ACTA is intended to go beyond former agreements and the signed version of the ACTA contains words which are not clear and could be misconstrued to encompass various things," Farrugia said.

Alternattiva Demokratika said the agreement will target internet distribution and prosecute people for sharing news links or posting videos on YouTube.

"The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was created with the aim of establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement, yet will deal with tools targeting internet distribution and information technology, meaning people could be prosecuted for merely sharing a link to a newspaper article or posting a video on YouTube," AD spokesperson for IT and communications Henrik Piski said.