The Acta debate in Malta has so far excluded the genuine worries of thousands of Maltese citizens as represented by civil society and was mostly focused on the opinions of institutional figure, Malta Anti-Acta Group said.

In a statement the Malta Anti-Acta Group said it representws a broad range of concerns about various aspects of the treaty.

These include the lack of transparency and ambiguity of the treaty, the exclusion of NGOs from the negotiations leading to the treaty, privacy issues, the fear that ACTA could be expanded to further limit digital freedoms, and the concern that developing countries could lose access to affordable medicines.

The coalition also represents citizens who do not accept that present intellectual property laws are the best way to organize the creative economy.

While present intellectual property laws can protect a creative act, they also prohibit the same creative act for all other citizens, and are often abused to create monopolies whose main aim is to protect business models which have failed to be competitive.

"It is our fear that treaties such as ACTA will only serve to further limit the freedom of making our own future choices as a society when it comes to intellectual property law."

The group again called on the public to take part in the protest against the treaty being held in Valletta tomorrow at 11 a.m.