A working party representing 37 EU countries is currently negotiating the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which intends to tackle online copyright infringements on an international level. The Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEA), a new UK law aimed at reducing illegal peer to peer file sharing activity, has recently been introduced and ACTA aims to widen similar legal provisions across the EU. One of the main issues for the working party to overcome is the lack of legal harmonisation across the EU at present; Individual countries have adopted very different methods for tackling illegal file sharing and definitions of what constitutes an offence. However the main debate concerns how ACTA could contravene EU citizen’s privacy and personal data protection rights in favour of the rights of copyright holders and commercial companies. Controversially, ACTA could see laptop hard drives and files being searched in borders and customs checks and large scale monitoring and law enforcement procedures being introduced. The finalised agreement will have to be adopted by member states and could mean further implications for UK online copyright law.
For the full article on these developments please go to http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/100005358/eu-concerned-about-acta-privacy-implications/