Democratically speaking, Saturday, 11th of February, was quite a remarkable day: Thousands of mostly young people followed the Europe-wide call for protests against the ratification of the new Internet copyright agreement ACTA. Protesters gathered in the streets and places of cities from Sofia to London, and in Germany they were at least 25,000. Supported by activist groups like Anonymous and political parties like the Pirates or the Green Party, protesters denounce the threat of censorship and restriction of individual liberties in the Internet through ACTA. On the other hand, many reporters consider the “internet community’s” anger to be caused by misinformation and unwillingness to respect the right of intellectual property. The European Publishers’ Council stressed the urgent need to calm down the discussion and look at the facts rather than rely on false information spread in the Internet.
Difficult to say which side is right. In any case, the way European politics (and media) has interacted with European citizens concerned about ACTA sheds a rather poor light on them. As Heise Online reports, discussion protocols show that the responsible expert committees of the European Commission judged the opposition as consequence of a misguided information policy. No substantial causes considered. As many user comments claim, also the media has failed by insufficiently covering the protests happening in the UK, for example, and by not recognizing the ongoing online debate. Nevertheless, the surprisingly high numbers of protesters on the 11th finally drew the attention of politics: Some countries that have not yet ratified ACTA, like Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and even Germany are reconsidering their commitment. European Parliament’s President Martin Schulz announced on Sunday that he was not happy with ACTA either, since it lacked the right balanced between protection of intellectual property and individual freedom.
From our perspective, the issue show that EU politicians (as well as the traditional media institutions) have failed to put the question on the democratic agenda and make it a subject to public political discussion. Only when European places became crowded despite the freezing temperatures on Saturday, politics realized that this was something they couldn’t just get done in Brussel’s back rooms. Seen in this light, whether ACTA is illegitimate or was just badly communicated is only secondary. The important question is how to conduct such a policy discourse next time.
