 On actor. I want to make it very clear right at the start and Frances is giving me a very good introduction to the background to actor. I'm not critical of the European Commissioner's motives for negotiating actor or even the objectives in terms of negotiating actor. The European Union does lose, and it's pointless even trying to figure it because there are NO accurate figures for this. Llawd is put it no stronger than the substantial sums of money through counterfeit and fake goods and other breaches of Intellectual Property. There's no question about that, that it damages our economy. I also take the view that here in Europe we are not going to compete in the global economy on the basis of low wages and I would hope we wouldn't want to compete in the world economy on the basis of the low wages. We're not going to compete in ond mae'r bwysig ymddangosol natur, ond, felly gydag hwn o'r bodun salio hefyd yn meddylu gael, yn siaill wedi bod yn gwneud arsig draws natur. Felly mae'n dweud gyda'r thangosol ar gyfer y lleiddiant o bwysig ar gyfer y bwysigol, ond yr inventiaddol yn cyffredinol, cyn ei ddweud o'r cydysgol i gydag oherwydd. Mae er mwyn i chi'n bwysig i chi'n addysg y cwysig pwysig. Felly nid byw drwy'n cyffredinol i'r ddysgol i'r ddechrau yn teimlo fwy ond ac yn gyfodol. I think they were right to do so, but there ends the positives in a sense. Acta, firstly, I think was negotiated in an unfortunate manner. It was negotiated behind closed doors and as a former ambassador, the chairman knows very well that that's the way most international treaties are negotiated. But normally there are at least position papers, reports about the general content of treaty development. We didn't really know anything about Acta until almost three years into negotiations. It was really done entirely behind closed doors. The European Parliament pressed for the commission to make available some documents, some background documents in relation to Acta, and to generally inform us of the state of negotiations. According to the commission, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, they were prepared to do that, but it took them some time to get their other negotiating partners to agree to allow them to do that. In fact, it took to the end of 2010 before the commission was in a position to come and inform the parliament properly of what was happening inside the Acta negotiations. There is, apart from the politics of that, there is a legal issue there as well in that the Lisbon Treaty now puts a clear responsibility on the commission to inform the parliament on an informed and timeless basis of any international trade negotiations that's taking part. And yet we do not feel that that was satisfactory dealt with in relation to the Acta negotiations. Why, in a sense, do I even bother mentioning that? Well, it's served the whole discussion since. It's meant that people don't trust much of the reassurances that we're receiving about Acta because it was negotiated behind closed doors. People are now suspicious when vaguenesses in the treaty are raised and the commission has asked for an explanation. People don't entirely accept the commission's justification. And I'm going to come to where we think the treaty is vague to explain that. One other criticism of the treaty, though, before I get down to the structure of the treaty, before I get down to some individual criticisms, I think if we hadn't had what I've described as apples and pears dealt with in the same treaty, we could have had a much less controversial debate in Acta. We've dealt with physical goods and virtual goods in the same treaty in identical ways and they are different products. If we had simply dealt with physical goods, Acta would probably by now already have been ratified. There are one or two concerns about the way physical goods are dealt with in Acta, but by and large the physical goods side could have been pushed to one side and accepted. My concerns about the physical goods would be the responsibility of putting customs officers to identify, for example, generic medicines and separate them from counterfeit and other goods, but that's a problem that exists with or without Acta. There is an argument that Acta intensifies that problem because it puts a greater onus on border agencies to check for counterfeit products. There's also the question of penalties and sanctions that Acta provides and there I think some of that is exaggerated. Frankly, I do not believe that if a kid in Suburban's Athens buys a replica of Manchester United Strip at €4, you're actually denying Manchester United a sale that would have been worth €50 if they'd bought the proper original branded strip because, in fact, in my view, there wouldn't have been a sale at all. You've not denied them €50, you've denied them nothing probably, but if you read Acta and take it literally, the compensation required would be the €50, not the €4 or the profit made or whatever. In pushing to one side, which I'm about to do, the physical goods, I'm not to say there are no problems with the way the physical goods are dealt with an Acta, but the main problems of Acta are how it deals with virtual goods. Firstly, I worry that reading Acta appears to put an obligation in internet service providers to act as the internet police force and I'm not in any circumstance in favour of privatising law enforcement and I'm not in favour of privatising in this field either. Once Acta became public, one of the more extreme, people might want to challenge me afterwards, even using that expression in relation to this, but one of the more dangerous concepts that was an Acta, which was definitely in the negotiating phase, the three strikes where a user, if identified by the internet service provider, three times downloading illegally would have been removed from the internet, that was dropped partly because once Acta became subject to public scrutiny, that was dropped towards the end of the negotiations, but nevertheless the existing treaty does put obligations in internet service providers to monitor the usage of the internet and it's a question of whether you believe that the internet service providers are simply, as they would claim, acting like a postal service where they're simply the vehicle by which messages and access to the web passes through or whether they have an obligation as internet service providers to check in advance the organisations that use the internet or use their service to be on the internet. On some extent, this was answered by the electronic, anyway, the European legislation we passed in 2000 on electronic information where we took the view, not just as European Parliament, but as European institutions, that it wasn't internet service providers' duty to have an advanced view of the people using their service, we went for what was called notice and remove procedures. Now, some people, the commission, to be fair, commission will argue that that's all they have in mind with Acta, that it's simply continuing with notice and remove processes that are rather to read this opposite and take the view that if you look at the obligations put on ISBs, that they will feel obliged to monitor the usage of the internet to resource. So that would be our first major criticism. The second one is commercial usage. Acta clearly outlaws stealing other people's intellectual property for commercial usage. I have no problem with that. I have no problem largely with the existing jurisprudence in that area and what the commission say is that that's all that Acta does. But if you read Acta, there is no definition of commercial usage and this is why I go back to this point about people being suspicious of Acta because of the way it was negotiated. People ask, well, commission say it's all about, it's all about reinforcing existing European jurisprudence. There will be no change to European law, maybe, but Acta doesn't say that. Acta simply says that outlaws commercial usage and I put to the commissioner, I said to the commissioner, take my two parliamentary colleagues as an example, and I wouldn't do this, but if I was to download a film illegally and pass it to my two colleagues and they pass it to their children, their friends or whatever and they pass it to two or three people and in the end that film ends up in the hands of 100, 200 people, has that suddenly become commercial usage? It wasn't my intention, I haven't made any money out of it. Commercial usage isn't defined, and I want to make this clear, it's not defined in Acta as about making money, it's about the scale of the usage. So has that suddenly become commercial usage? I don't think so, I don't think the coach would think so, but Acta is so vague that it doesn't make that absolutely clear and if you're passing an international treaty, these things have to be well defined before you take the risk of passing them. Again, going back to the negotiations, I've said to the commission that in my view, the negotiations had to be more open to public scrutiny before we reached the end. A very simple footnote defining what commercial usage could have saved us a lot of problems, but that footnote is not in the treaty and there's no plans at the moment to put it in the treaty. We then come to the issue of sanctions and again commission say and I believe them that there's no purpose in Acta to criminalise teenagers or other young people using the internet. But in Article 23 of Acta, the definition of criminal sanctions is weak and vague and it is possible that in some countries it could be interpreted as such and the criminal sanctions will be enforced of course by the member's days, not by the European Union. There is also in my view, all of this is, the whole thing about Acta is all of this is subject to interpretation subject to debate and people have different interpretations of what each article means but there's also a view that countries, third parties could question how sanctions are being applied inside the European Union and challenged through the European courts and again push for a stronger and tougher definition of what is first commercial usage and secondly what the appropriate levels of penalties should be. I don't think these are minor issues. They have been exaggerated. Maybe some people here will argue I'm exaggerating them but unless you have a treaty that clearly lays these things down then you're going to be open to suspicion. If any of you have seen and I know that our chairman has and the lawyers among you will certainly have seen them but if any of you have seen international treaties they are generally about that thick and sometimes that thick. That's the whole Acta treaty. That is Acta. You might say there's merit in brevity but we usually say when we talk about international treaties the devil isn't a detail. The problem with Acta is the devil isn't the lack of detail and the lack of definition and I as a politician and I come back to the balance here as a politician on balance I have to judge between the benefits that Acta might bring and I think there are benefits and the threat that it might provide in relation to civil liberties and on balance I've come to the view that I should recommend to the European Parliament that Acta should be rejected. If that happens, if that is course of action's followed Francis has outlined some of the potential options. One is that Acta says that of the 11 signatories there's 37 countries but that's 27 EU countries and we sign as a single entity. Of the 11 countries if six go ahead sorry 11 signatories if six of the 11 signatories go ahead then Acta comes into force in those countries. That may well happen with or without the European Union. Second option is the European Union says no and everybody else says that without us it is not worth it. There are mixed opinions in that I've spoken in Brussels to the Japanese, Australian, New Zealand and Singaporean ambassadors and at the moment three to one they say they wouldn't go ahead without the European Union signing it but that doesn't necessarily mean that that will in the end be the case. There is a third option which I'm not entirely popular in the European Parliament for saying this but there is a third option which one of the other criticisms of Acta which could also be a strength is that in Article 42 it says that this agreement may be amended by the parties. Now this is also one of my worries about Acta is that we could sign up for Acta and Amendment 42 could be used to change the nature of the treaty and find that unacceptable. The Commission has given us on the basis of a gentleman's agreement that if we passed Acta they would only amend Acta throughout further ratification by the European Parliament so if they used Article 42 it would come back for further ratification but at the moment for me that's a further weakness but where it becomes a strength is if the European Parliament does reject Acta there would be the possibility for the European Commission to go back to our negotiating partners and say okay European Parliament rejected Acta let's look at how we can better define what we mean by commercial usage. Let's clarify what obligations of any we're putting on internet service providers to monitor their users. Let's be more clear about where and when criminal sanctions would apply where civil actions would apply. Let's deal with perhaps in two different treaties parallel treaties of the like physical goods and virtual goods all of that would be an option at the moment and I understand why they're saying this because they're still fighting to try and get Acta accepted by the Parliament the Commission is saying it would not go back and renegotiate any of these terms it would accept defeat but if I was a betting man if the European Parliament in July rejects Acta the Commission will be returning to its negotiating partners