On 21 August 2012, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault asked three ministers to work on relating CSA (the Superior Council of the Audiovisual) and Arcep (Telecommunications and Post regulator) asking them to coordinate their work with that of Pierre Lescure on Hadopi future.

The request made by the prime minister is obviously intended to take Internet regulatory powers from Hadopi and give them to CSA. This is a real concern having in view CSA’s intentions to filter content and give up net neutrality.

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Deutsch: Kommt ACTA mit CETA durch die Hintertür?

The European Parliament rejected ACTA with a large majority on 4 July 2012, but just one week later the EU is accused of pushing back the rejected agreement through the back door, that is, through CETA, the EU–Canada trade agreement that includes measures similar to ACTA.

The negotiations between EU and Canada on the bilateral trade agreement CETA started in November 2009 and will probably be ended by the end of this year.

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Deutsch: Danke SOPA, danke ACTA

The digital rights world can be grateful that the intellectual property lobby employs too many lobbyists and too few strategists. Lobbyists are salespeople, the sell potential clients or employers amazing things, international agreements, Directives, the ability to stop time and enjoy old business models with no need for innovation or creativity, they sell smoke and mirrors. It was this approach that led to the proposal of SOPA in the United States and ACTA in Europe and beyond.

This interview was translated and republished with the kind permission of PCinpact. We have added our comments on some of the misinformation in Ms Gallo's statements. See notes 1-6 at the end of the article.

Marielle Gallo, who is a member of the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament in Brussels, proposed a draft Opinion that was in favour of ACTA.

For the past few months, the European Commission and industry lobbyists have tried to pressure the European Parliament into abdicating responsibility for ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Instead, the Parliament has given the proposal an inordinate amount of attention, with five different committees devoting huge amounts of time and resources to the proposal. Five different committees looked at the proposal from a development, industry, civil liberties, legal and international trade perspective.

One by one, each of the Committees analysed ACTA, with an ever-dwindling degree of support for the proposal.