An interview for Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) and Novinite.bg with Ivaylo Dinev, one of the organizers of Saturday's protests in Bulgaria against the ACTA trade afreement.

ACTA supporters claim that it is a normal trade agreement that is not seeking to harm users' rights. What arguments can you name that refute this statement?

First of all, ACTA is not a normal trade agreement, since it arrives 18 years after the last one in a similar field – TRIPS, which was signed in 1994 and tackled in a more lenient way the issues of copyright and intellectual property. The difference between ACTA and TRIPS is that ACTA affects a wider framework that allows various interpretations and therefore can be used in a different context in the future.

ACTA makes no difference between counterfeiting and sharing. ACTA is a serious threat for generic medicine production. ACTA allows spying in Internet. ACTA makes Internet Service Providers do tasks they are not accustomed to. Let us pay attention to one of the most controversial texts in the treatment – article 27, paragraph 4:

A Party may provide, in accordance with its laws and regulations, its competent authorities with the authority to order an online service provider to disclose expeditiously to a right holder information sufficient to identify a subscriber whose account was allegedly used for infringement, where that right holder has filed a legally sufficient claim of trademark or copyright or related rights infringement, and where such information is being sought for the purpose of protecting or enforcing those rights...

Innocent till proven guilty – forget it.

That will inevitably violate our privacy rights guaranteed by Bulgaria's identity information protection act passed in 2002.

Much has been said about ACTA as a potential danger to our information access rights. What other aspects of the agreement bother you?

It is not the agreement's different aspects that triggered the most serious concerns among citizens; it is the way it was signed. I mean these four years in which it was discussed in absolute secrecy. I mean Bulgaria's "invisible ink" signature. This is completely unacceptable.

In its essence, ACTA threatens to monopolize the market. It may introduce a "golden standard" monopoly to which Third World countries will find it very difficult to adjust. The fact that generic medicines are among the most discussed topics is no coincidence.

How would you explain the massiveness of Bulgaria's anti-ACTA protests? Is it our love for torrent trackers or something else?

If we are pessimists, we will explain it with that; if we are optimists, we well praise the civil society's activeness; if we are realists, we will protest. ACTA affects all Bulgarian citizens and the size of the protest movement in Facebook comes as no surprise.

Who would benefit and who would lose if ACTA gets ratified?

The mainstream movie and music industry giants will most probably not directly increase their profits as a result of ACTA. In fact, they have doubled their profits over the past 20 years despite the pirating of their products. However, their leaders will sleep calmly, since no one would be able to share their products with friends freely.

This is a question of morality and it should be answered from a moral point of view. Do we need high copyright standards, a strict patent control and do we need to crack down on counterfeiting in times when a big part of the world lives on it.

Won't ACTA make some people shamelessly rich, even richer than now, because of the monopoly it would allow them to create, while the poor will stay poor – but without their fake "Adidas" and their generic medicines? Won't culture collapse in poorer countries whose populations not only lack means to buy "high culture" but also places where it can be promoted and shown?

These are, needless to say, rhetorical questions. In my opinion, the truth about ACTA lies within our understanding of the contemporary. ACTA is mostly a conservative agreement – because it was created in full secrecy and because it contradicts the human development. Everyone knows that we need intellectual property rights, but ACTA imposes draconian measures against habitual human activities in a way the fuels our indignation.

An interview for Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) and Novinite.bg with Ina Kileva, CEO of Prophon, a Bulgarian music licensing company, regarding the ACTA trade agreement can be read HERE.

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!