ACTA's digital chapter

The recently adopted Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and especially its ‘Digital Chapter’, has provoked heated debates and faced strong criticism from both academia and society in general. Although the final text of the Digital Chapter appears to have dropped some of the more controversial proposed provisions such as a ‘three-strike rule’, some problems remain. This article looks at these: whether ACTA establishes criminal liability for private file-sharers; what the ISP liability provisions mean; what the encouragement of ‘cooperative efforts within the business community’ might lead to; and to what extent the provisions on technological measures set WIPO-plus standards.