Journal articles on the topic 'ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)'

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is the most recent international agreement by which Canada and other countries have sought to strengthen the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights. While it was originally feared that ACTA would impose obligations that are in tension with the principles of Canadian copyright law, the final outcome of the ACTA negotiations moderated or removed many of the most controversial provisions in the agreement and thus has alleviated many of the concerns about the impact of ACTA on Canadian copyright law. Canada has taken the first steps toward satisfying ACTA’s copyright obligations with Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act, which addresses some of the agreement’s digital copyright measures. Some legislative change still remains before Canada will have fully met ACTA’s copyright obligations, in particular to enhance the powers of customs and border authorities to enforce intellectual property rights. This article discusses ACTA’s evolution, negotiations, final text, and the extent of its rightsholder orientation. It then details the differences between ACTA’s provisions and the current Canadian Copyright Act, as amended by the Copyright Modernization Act, identifies which obligations in ACTA require further amendment, and suggests how these obligations may best be implemented to reflect important values and principles underlying Canadian copyright law.

This paper explores the influence of regulatory instruments in media content gatekeeping model and especially, the impact of ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) in online media industries. The author argues that both developments in the regulatory field worldwide as well as the emerging role of international agreements' negotiators on internet access and security issues are going to influence also the media gatekeeping model. The analysis shows that even an updated by the ICTs' evolutions media gatekeeping model should follow the developments on regulations' global debate related to online media and on their impact to the electronic and mobile (e/m) business models. The actions taken by EU institutions indicate the establishment of EU as a global negotiator in cultural industries as well as the global internet users' communities as an informal negotiator for online media issues.

Abstract The paper critically observes the current legal and political happenings around the international multilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), including criticism for its rejection by the European Parliament in the year of 2012. This example is treated in the sense of the collision of values in today’s information society, e.g. political freedom on the one hand, and intellectual property rights on the other. The collision of values is balanced fairly by the laws, for example by the statutory licenses and compulsory licenses, too. This text also critically considers some aspects of the contemporary political ideology of information. The author considers the majority of the European public reaction to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement as fearful, irrational and populist by politicians. “Electronic Violence” remains violence like any other and everyone must have the courage to face it. The information society itself is based on the same values as any other human society. Likewise, the information society is prone to various vices, such as greed for foreign assets without any compensation. This greed is only masked by political rhetoric about freedom and human rights. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between legal ideology of information from legally regulated economic shifts.

AbstractThe Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) had sought to augment intellectual property (IP) enforcement practices, to counter the proliferation of counterfeit and pirate goods and to regulate digital infringements. This paper examines the collapse of ACTA and challenges the traditional orientation of the debate concerning the tension between the ‘enforcement’ and ‘development’ agendas. The ACTA negotiating partners, mainly developed states, created a forum outside the aegis of international IP norm-making bodies to avoid the distractions posed by developing countries whilst promoting an alternative ‘enforcement agenda’. Despite this effort, ACTA collapsed from ‘within’. The paper argues that ACTA failed due to the extemporaneous emergence of a random configuration of civil society groups, academics, ‘netizens’ and legislators within ACTA negotiating countries independently pursuing an agenda that can be called the ‘network agenda’. This new agenda aimed to protect the right to privacy, data protection and freedom of speech within the digital medium. While current debates on the global IP legal order are generally limited to, and characterised by the Global North-South considerations, the ‘network agenda’ cuts longitudinally through territorial configurations and squarely places the interests of the IP owner against those of the public. Consequently, the paper highlights the potential of the network agenda to dilute the existing polarities in the IP debate and impact on the dynamics of international intellectual property law by creating an inclusive platform within IP discourse that attempts to integrate colliding rationalities present within the world society.

Indonesia sulit melakukan penundaan isi perjanjian, amandemen dan pengakhiran perjanjin AFCTA , Ketentuan yang paling memungkinkan untuk dilakukan oleh indonesia adalah menggunakan aturan WTO dimana pemberlakuan ini dapat diterapkan bagi negara yang belum dapat mengikuti perkembangan liberalisme perdagangan, aturan ini difasilitasi dengan mekanisme perlindungan seperti anti dumping dan saveguard. Oleh karena itu ketentuan yang dapat digunakan indonesia dalam penerapan ACFTA adalah dengan menerapkan fasilitas saveguard dalam WTO sebagai solusi untuk menyelamatkan kepentingan nasional.

The practice of dumping is the practice of selling imported goods below the normal price of domestic products. This governmental regulation is logical consequence in implementing the dumping regulation on the framework of GATT. Govermental regulation No. 34 Year 2011 on Antidumping and Safeguard Measures Trade does not regulate the substance in detail. The Government Regulation more regulates about procedures. Whereas in Anti Dumping Agreement (ADA) is arranged detail. Currently, foreign products are easy to find in various shopping centers, especially imported goods from China, China's export activities to Indonesia unstoppable since the existing of ACFTA agreement. In the free trade dumping practice and allegation of dumping practice are problems that received big attention by various countries relating effort to realize fair trade practice Praktik dumping merupakan praktik penjualan barang impor di bawah harga normal produk domestik. PP ini wujud konsekuensi logis pemerintah Indonesia dalam melaksanakan ketentuan dumping dalam rangka GATT. PP No. 34 Tahun 2011 Tentang Tindakan Antidumping, Tindakan Imbalan dan Tindakan Pengamanan Perdagangan tidak mengatur substansinya secara detail. Peraturan Pemerintah tersebut lebih mengatur tentang prosedur. Padahal dalam Anti Dumping Agreement (ADA) diatur sedemikian detail. Saat ini produk-produk asing mudah sekali kita temukan diberbagai pusat pembelanjaan, terutama barang-barang impor dari Negara China, kegiatan ekspor China ke Indonesia semakin tidak terbendung tatkala sejak berlakunya perjanjian ACFTA.. Dalam perdagangan bebas praktik dumping dan tuduhan praktik dumping merupakan persoalan yang mendapat perhatian sangat besar oleh berbagai negara karena berkaitan dengan usaha untuk mewujudkan praktik dagang yang adil. DOI: 10.15408/jch.v5i1.6583

AbstractSeveral recent detentions of generic pharmaceutical products transiting through the European Union (EU) for suspected infringements of intellectual property rights raised serious concerns for public health advocates and threatened to expose systemic problems existing in the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The detentions not only garnered international attention, but India and Brazil formally began WTO dispute settlement proceedings against the EU. The parties recently reached a mutually agreed solution to the matter and the proceedings have been halted, leaving unanswered the complex legal and technical questions raised by the detentions of pharmaceuticals in transit. Despite a solution being reached in this dispute, the matter will undoubtedly resurface in the near future for a number of reasons. For instance, the EU is attempting to export its laws to its trading partners through the negotiation of free trade agreements and in other forums such as the recently concluded Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement which increases the likelihood that similar detentions will occur at some point in the future. Moreover, recent trends in international intellectual property law indicate a move towards increased protection and enforcement in at least the short and medium term. The issue therefore offers the opportunity for rich legal analysis into an underexplored, yet increasingly important, aspect of WTO law.

This article explores the relationship between non-electoral representatives and democratic legitimacy by combining the recent constructivist turn in political representation with systemic work in deliberative theory. Two core arguments are advanced. First, non-electoral representatives should be judged by their position in a wider democratic system. Second, deliberative democracy offers a productive toolkit by which to evaluate these agents. I develop a framework of systemic representation which depicts the elemental parts of a democratic system and assigns normative standards according to the space occupied. The framework gives priority of democratic analysis to the systemic level. This helps mitigate a central concern in the constructivist turn which suggests that representatives mobilize constituencies in ways that are susceptible to framing and manipulation. I engage in case-study analysis of the collapsed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement to unpack the different spaces occupied by non-electoral representative and elucidate the varied democratic demands that hinge on this positioning.

There is a global consensus that domain of Intellectual Property should be subjected to criminal enforcement in order to secure the rights of owners of such Intellectual Property Rights. The TRIPS Agreement was, to some extent, successful in crystallizing the consensus as regards the criminal measures to be taken by States in the event of the infringement of Intellectual Property Rights through article 61. However, the standard set by the provision by minimal, to say the least. The advent of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has broader obligations, while also addressing some unsettled issues that have surfaced in disputes such as the China-IPRs case.

Governments and scholars have for some time grappled with the question of whether there is a connection between intellectual property (IP) and economic development, and if so, how strong is the link. Economic literature is equivocal, with some studies concluding that the connection is strong while others conclude it to be fairly weak (and that there may not even be a connection for LDCs). What is quite clear is that countries have historically shaped and amended their IP regimes to promote domestic needs and objectives. It is also clear that several countries with weak IP policies achieved rapid economic growth and development over the last five decades. For these countries, the strengthening of IP rights (IPRs) occurred after the initial stages of increased growth and development. It is also well known that countries failing to adequately protect IP limit the upside of their economic development.Domestically implementing the obligations set out in the TRIPs Agreement provides stability, assists domestic inventors and sends a positive signal to foreign investors. Of course, implementing TRIPs also has its downside, namely by forcing countries to pay a higher price for technology. Herein lies the dilemma, in which developing countries raise IP standards in order to fulfill international obligations and attract foreign investment but at the same time potentially stifling economic, financial and social development by increasing payments to the developed world for superior (and sometimes essential) technologies.This article argues that IP is critical to full-scale technological and economic development for developing countries. Linking IPRs and economic development is not often a popular perspective, but it is clear that developing countries must now operate from the perspective of TRIPs being the minimum level of protection mandated by the international community – substantially deviating from the TRIPs standard is not a viable option. With IPRs and protection being raised in almost every free trade agreement negotiated by developed countries, as well as through the negotiation of new multilateral treaties, such as the proposed Substantive Patent Law Treaty and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, the time is ripe for developing countries to revisit the role of IP and economic development. Countries must seek the answers to a number of questions – have increased IPRs impacted upon poverty reduction strategies? Have IPRs encouraged or led to increased growth? How have IPRs impacted access to information, knowledge, education and research? Is the IP policy coherent with other public policy issues such as investment, public health, trade and competition?

Teesid: Artikli eesmärgiks on avada eesti paremäärmuslaste tähendusloomet hüpermeedias. Roger Griffini teooria järgi iseloomustab paremäärmuslaste võrgusuhtluse väikeste mitteparteiliste üksuste – grupuskulite (nt veebilehed, blogid) paljusus ja suhteline marginaalsus, rahulolematus praeguse maailmakorraga, ideede revolutsioonilisus ning risoomne ehk mitte-hierarhiline kommunikatsioonistruktuur. Täiendame Griffini teooriat kultuurisemiootika ideedega. Semiosfääri kontseptsioon võimaldab paremini analüüsida grupuskulite kommunikatsiooni eripära ja seal tekkivaid tähendushierarhiaid. Koodteksti mõiste selgitab aga, miks, vaatamata hüpermeedias kättesaadavale arvamuste paljususele, domineerivad grupuskulaarses kommunikatsioonis väga kindlad tähendusloome viisid. S U M M A R YThe purpose of this article is to create a conceptual framework which would aid in the understanding of the characteristic ways the Estonian extreme right has created the prevalent identities and meanings that are currently in circulation in the media. The analysis is based on non-participant observation, by means of which we have attempted to isolate the main foci and dominant practices of self-description found in web communications among members of the Estonian extreme right. Based on the number of visitors to sites, the concentration of topics posted and frequency of citation, we take the following as representatives of extreme right positions: the blogs „The Nationalist“ („Rahvuslane“), „NS“, and „Nationalist“ („Rahvuslik“), and the alternative web pages „Be Aware“ („Ole Teadlik“) and „BHR Ruzzland“. Markers of the extreme right were present in the pages we examined at different levels of intensity; in fact, not every post to these pages clearly, not every page could be labelled as extreme right. Yet the general tonality of the webpages we examined included the following: an urgent need to conserve „core Estonianness“ and protect it from foreign influences; the belief that the world order (including Estonian power structures) are controlled by a secret alliance between Zionists and Masonic orders; the danger of mixing races and cultures; the need to exert strong state control over a range of areas of life; euroskepticism. According to the authors of this article non-institutionalized extreme right movements operating in hypermedia have been most extensively examined by Roger Griffin’s research. Griffin has developed the concept of the groupuscule, which can be defined as small, political, (though almost never directly partypolitical) unit in the context of contemporary extreme right-wing politics, and which strive toward revolutionary, ideological, organizational, and activist goals, the overall purpose of which is to overcome the decadence of the liberal democratic system. Groupuscules can have diverse physical manifestations: webpages, magazines, and why not also underground meetings of extreme-right cell groups. Indeed, according to Griffin, groupuscules can be treated as non-nuclear cellular networks without a leader. The communication of groupuscules reflects the characteristics of hypermedia itself: nonhierarchical or network-like structure, internal multiplicity, the lack of a centre or a central axis of organization, fluidity, and temporariness, all of which are most often connected with the abstract textuality of the hypermedia environment. In our view, the main limitation of Griffin’s account of groupuscules is the undertheorization of communication both within and among groupuscules. Too little attention has been directed to the primary mechanisms of meaning-creation, which organize navigation on the groupuscular information field and the development of hierarchies. In this article we aim to supplement Griffin’s theory of the groupsucule by means of a cultural-semiotic approach, particularly through the concepts of the semiosphere and the code text. Focusing on meaning-creation by the groupuscular extreme right, one can examine groupuscules communicating in the internet environments as different semiotic wholes, or semiospheres: these can be specific posts, popular discussion topics, or the network as a whole. The semiotic wholeness of a groupuscule is guaranteed by a boundary. By means of the boundary, a groupuscule can distinguish itself from its semiotic other, filter information from outside, and restate this in its own language. Groupuscules of the extreme right bring those people together who use the web medium both for the formation and the confirmation of their personal racial/ethnic identity. Their relatively marginal status as a „public voice“ can be explained by the fact that on the webpages we examined, a dominant strategy for identity formation was creating the image of an extreme rightist as a sufferer or victim. They often presented themselves as persecuted and unjustly excluded from public discussions. In the communications of the Estonian extreme right, the designated antagonists are the mainstream media, the European Union, and its corrupt politicians. In terms of its internal structure, the groupuscular extreme right is heterogeneous. When a specific groupuscule enters interaction with other extreme right cells, it is no longer identical with itself, since its identity is largely determined by connecting with other groupuscules; that is, its particularity only emerges through communication with other groupuscules. The Estonian extreme right groupuscules we studied are relatively well known publicly in the so-called local counterculture; some of their articles are frequently commented and cited (on the pages we studied, reciprocal reference and quotation was frequent). However, in every semiotic whole, dominants or nuclei develop, which, compared to more marginal semiotic units are usually more rigidly structured. Similar nuclear structures also play an important role in groupuscular identity formation, where, in the course of communication, certain topics become major themes that unify many groupuscules, and begin to determine the meaning-formation of the semiotic units that belong to it. For example, in the case of the topic of ratification of ACTA (The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), a reference to extensive corruption among various administrative units of the European Union percolates through the Estonian groupuscules (on a broader level, a reference to the decadence of liberalism and the new world order). On another level, opinion leaders emerge on the groupuscular field; their postings are read most often, and their ideas are referenced most often. On the Estonian groupuscular field, the most cited sources are the blogs „DeCivitate“ and „The Nationalist“. It seems that if Griffin points out that groupuscular information networks lack a „center-periphery“ relation, then he bases that claim on 1) the technological characteristics that structure the web environment. However, he does not take into account 2) the relativity of the centre-periphery opposition and 3) the hierarchical nature of the processes of signification themselves and their role in organizing groupuscules. We attempt to explain groupuscules’ relatively hermetic meaning-creation by using the cultural-semiotic term code text, which is an invariant system of connections originating in the shared memory of a community, the role of which is conceptualizing specific fragments of information and locating them in habitual patterns of meaning. The self-descriptions of right-wing groupuscules are largely built around the code text of a conspiracy theory, which allows the representation of one’s ideological opponents as extremely ill-intentioned or ignorant, and themselves, by contrast, as moral and heroic. The code text that narrates the decline of the liberal-democratic world constellates narratives of a conspiratorial world system, in which the cause of every event can be explained by the „evil“ intent of the conspirators. Groupuscules do not limit themselves to passive complaining about the decadence of the prevailing world order; often ideas are expressed of radically reforming this decadent world order, which should in turn lead to the rebirth of nation-states. The specificity of the code text leads participants in the extreme right to perceive causal connections between events that have occurred in different places at different times, and which seem totally unconnectable in the eyes of outsiders. Those phenomena that do not fit the code text, and which could make way for other explanations for sociocultural realities are virtually invisible in the self-descriptions of gropusucules, and are relegated to the periphery as unimportant.