EU Parliament rejects secretive ACTA in vote for openness

Computerworld UK - The European Union's Parliament has approved a common resolution that calls for openness over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), voting 663-to-13 vote that ACTA contradicts agreed EU laws on counterfeiting and piracy online.

In addition, the parliament said it is ready to go to the Court of Justice if the European Commission does not reject ACTA rules, or give parliament access to the draft ACTA texts.

The action is asetback for the highly secretive ACTA, an international anti-counterfeiting framework that has been in development for over two years. ACTA, a draft of which was leaked online in February, seeks to establish international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement.

However, critics say ACTA would allow "US-style draconian" policies to penalize piracy, including the controversial "three strikes" rule that requires ISPs to cut off an illegal file-sharing subscriber's Internet connection after two warnings.

Today's vote will mean negotiators will have to go back to the drawing board and come up with a compromise to appease objections raised by the parliament.

Christian Engstrm, MEP for the Swedish Pirate Party, welcomed the decision. "This is just the beginning. This is a resolution by a virtually unanimous parliament, but it is not formally binding for the commission. If they want to ignore us, they technically can. Then we will have to fight on."

The participating countries in the ACTA talks are the U.S., the E.U., Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, Jordan, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates.

Their next meeting will be held in New Zealand in April. The 11 negotiating parties aim to conclude the treaty by the end of this year.