MESSAGE
| DATE | 2010-01-04 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] ACTA
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Anyone keeping up with this?
http://www.eff.org/issues/acta
ACTA has several features that raise significant potential concerns for
consumers’ privacy and civil liberties, for innovation and the free
flow of information on the Internet, legitimate commerce, and for
developing countries’ ability to choose policy options that best
suit their domestic priorities and level of economic development.
ACTA is being negotiated by a select group of industrialized countries,
outside of existing international multilateral venues for creating new
IP norms such as the World Intellectual Property Organization and (since
TRIPs) the World Trade Organization. Both civil society and developing
countries are intentionally being excluded from these negotiations.
While the existing international fora provide (at least to some extent)
room for a range of views to be heard and addressed, no such checks and
balances will influence the outcome of the ACTA negotiations.
The Fact Sheet published by the USTR, together with the USTR's 2008
"Special 301" report make it clear that the goal is to create a new
standard of intellectual property enforcement, above the current
internationally-agreed standards in the TRIPs Agreement, and increased
international cooperation including sharing of information between
signatory countries’ law enforcement agencies. The last 10 bilateral
free trade agreements entered into by the United States have required
trading partners to adopt intellectual property enforcement obligations
that are above those in TRIPs. Even though developing countries are not
party to the ACTA negotiations, it is likely that accession to, and
implementation of, ACTA by developing countries will be a condition
imposed in future free trade agreements, and the subject of evaluation
in content industry submissions to the annual Section 301 process and
USTR report.
While little information has been made available by the governments
negotiating ACTA, a document recently leaked to the public entitled
"Discussion Paper on a Possible Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement"
from an unknown source gives an indication of what content industry
rightsholder groups appear to be asking for – including new legal
regimes to "encourage ISPs to cooperate with right holders in the
removal of infringing material", criminal measures, and increased border
search powers. The Discussion Paper leaves open how Internet Service
Providers should be encouraged to identify and remove allegedly
infringing material from the Internet. However the same industry
rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called
for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and
for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens' Internet
connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the "Three
Strikes" /Graduated Response), so there is reason to believe that ACTA
will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of
Internet Service Providers. While mandating copyright filtering by ISPs
will not be technologically effective because it can be defeated by use
of encryption, efforts to introduce network level filtering will likely
involve deep packet inspection of citizens' Internet communications.
This raises considerable concerns for citizens' civil liberties and
privacy rights, and the future of Internet innovation.
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/obama-admin-mandated-exemptions-can-strengthen-copyright.ars
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2009/12/acta_or_how_what_world_governm.html
http://www.ustr.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/factsheets/2009/asset_upload_file917_15546.pdf
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