DATA PROTECTION : ANTI-COUNTERFEITING TALKS: EDPS ON ALERT.

Following on from the telecoms sector, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Peter Hustinx, is voicing concerns over the negotiations under way on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Launched in June 2008, the talks resumed on 25 January in Guadalajara (Mexico) for a seventh round(1) (see Europolitics 3905).

The EDPS notes that the agreement raises "significant issues" as regards the right to privacy and data protection. More specifically, Hustinx views with concern a legal framework that could be put in place to fight piracy on the internet and "which could include large-scale monitoring of internet users and the imposition of obligations on internet service providers to adopt three-strike internet disconnection policies' - also referred to as graduated response' schemes".

The spectre of the graduated response is thus reappearing. As the talks resume, ETNO, the European association of former telecoms incumbents, says it fears a global challenge to the European principle of non-liability of internet service providers for the dissemination of counterfeit online content. This non-liability is written into the 2000 E-commerce Directive. Internet users' rights were strengthened recently through revision of the telecoms directives ( telecoms package') in response to a European controversy over the graduated response scheme (warning followed by disconnection from the internet by an independent authority) considered by France to combat illegal...