Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
31.1.2012
Question for written answer P-001085/2012
to the Commission
Rule 117
Syed Kamall (ECR)
I have been contacted by a civil society organisation which tells me that according to the Commission’s summary of its ‘Civil Society Meeting’ on 25 March 2011, ‘many rumours have circulated on “three strikes” measures and other measures restricting the access to Internet. It is important to clarify that no such rules were ever proposed by any of the parties involved in the ACTA negotiations’[1].
The civil society organisation claims that this assertion from the Commission directly contradicts an alleged leak of the digital chapter of ACTA (originally published in March 2010 and reproduced in a European Parliament briefing document[2]), which contains a footnote which proposed disconnection of (presumably ‘alleged’) repeat infringers as ‘an example of such a policy’. The full text of the footnote was:
‘[a]n example of such a policy is providing for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscriptions and accounts in the service provider’s systems or network of repeat infringers’.
1. Can the Commission either confirm or deny the existence of that footnote in the preparatory works of ACTA?
2. If it confirms the existence of that footnote, can the Commission point to subsequent preparatory work that confirms that disconnection of end users is not an example of the type or severity of punishment that should be imposed in the proposed private law enforcement foreseen by ACTA?
- [1] http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2011/february/tradoc_147497.pdf
- [2] European Parliament briefing document: http://www.edri.org/files/acta_disconnection.pdf
OJ C 88 E, 26/03/2013