EU Parlamentarian Gallo: ACTA Dissent 'A Soft Form Of Terrorism'

from the she-finally-said-it dept

Marielle Gallo is probably best known for the Gallo Report, which Techdirt described back in 2010 as a "similarly draconian intellectual property enforcement" to ACTA, with which it has much in common. So it's no surprise that Gallo has been one of the few vocal supporters of ACTA, and it was widely expected that the EU's Legal Affairs (JURI) committee she chairs would support her draft opinion calling for ACTA to be ratified. As we now know, that didn't happen, and JURI formed one of five committees that all recommended that ACTA should be rejected.

Gallo must be a little taken aback by this turnaround: from easily pushing through her Report with its harsh proposals against copyright infringement, she now finds herself increasingly marginalized within the European Parliament on the subject of ACTA precisely because of its disproportionate measures designed to deal with copyright infringement online. A fascinating interview in PC INpact (original in French) gives us an insight into her state of mind at the moment..

As you might expect, she speaks of the "the disinformation campaign we have been enduring for the past months", the standard line taken by the European Commission and its allies. She also makes the interesting claim that "We're supposed to represent citizens, but since they are busy with other things, we are supposed to think for them!" But she reserves her choicest words for the people who have dared to disagree with the pro-ACTA camp: It's not only a disinformation campaign. It's a soft form of terrorism that frightens people. People are being scared. It's a fantasy. ACTA has become a fantasy. And that, that's propagated by the whole Internet network. So there we have it. Anyone who dares to disagree with those politicians doing all that thinking are "soft" terrorists, making subversive use of "the whole Internet network" to spread their "fantasy." It was probably inevitable that someone would play the politicians' trump card -- terrorism – against ACTA opponents; and it's no surprise that it was Marielle Gallo that finally did so.

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Filed Under: acta, european union, gallo report, juri, marielle gallo, terrorism