Comparison ACTA ESTA

Negotiations between the EU and Singapore on a free trade agreement started in March 2010. On 16 December 2012, EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht and Singapore's Minister of Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang completed final negotiations on the EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (ESTA). The EU and Singapore released this text on 20 September 2013.

ESTA covers numerous issues, including protection of "intellectual property" in its chapter 11. Despite Commissioner Karel De Gucht having stated in front of the PE, speaking about TAFTA: “ACTA, one of the nails in my coffin. I’m not going to reopen that discussion. Really, I mean, I am not a masochist. I’m not planning to do that”, some ESPA articles are directly copied from ACTA.

Counter-argument:

These articles determine the amount of damages based on the false assumption that a shared file is a lost sale. Read the studies on file sharing we gathered.

Counter-argument:

"Although DRM is supposed to help copyright owners by protecting digital content from illegal copying or distribution, it is controversial because DRM imposes restrictions on even legal users, and there are many industry practitioners who believe that the industry would be better off without DRM. [...] Our analysis suggests that, counterintuitively, download piracy might decrease when the firm allows legal DRM-free downloads. Furthermore, we find that a decrease in piracy does not guarantee an increase in firm profits and that that copyright owners do not always benefit from making it harder to copy music illegally." (Marketing Science, 2011).