The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations continue in a few hours as Seoul, Korea plays host to the latest round of talks. The governments have posted the meeting agenda, which unsurprisingly focuses on the issue of Internet enforcement [UPDATE 11/4: Post on discussions for day two of ACTA talks, including the criminal enforcement provisions][UPDATE 11/5: Post on discussions for day three on transparency]. The United States has drafted the chapter under enormous secrecy, with selected groups granted access under strict non-disclosure agreements and other countries (including Canada) given physical, watermarked copies designed to guard against leaks.
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* * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
* * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
* * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
* * Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)
Michael Geist sez, "According to the official agenda, in a few hours the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement talks will continue on the Internet provisions and then move into the criminal provisions chapter. It is worth highlighting the ongoing criminal provisions as well. As previously leaked, the U.S. and Japan supplied the initial text for this chapter. Their proposal included extending criminal enforcement to both (1) cases of a commercial nature; and (2) cases involving significant willful copyright and trademark infringement even where there is no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain. In other words, non-commercial infringement could lead to criminal penalties. Plus, jail time for unauthorized camcording of films and even for fake DVD and CD packaging."
Where did you get the stuff in your first quote box?
I'm not sure, but I think it would be illegal for the US to negotiate for the first two items on that list. The second two are okay, because that is essentially the current state of the law in the US anyway. But if the Obama Administration is going to go abroad and secretly make new laws--well, that's unconstitutional.
The notice-and-takedown thing can be and has been abused, but it's much much more preferable than the first item on that list. The fourth item is straight bullsht, though.
Doesn't matter, encryption is fast becoming the norm.
Thankfully though, internet access is close to becoming a human right across all of europe. It already is in several countries.
There is also something else to consider, the people that make / use / develop / master technologies are not going to roll over and let old people try and run it into the ground. The very people that developed the internet are not down with this. The box is open, there is no closing it.
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Some of the better ideas in the computing industry never make it into stores, and not because of expensive hardware, complex code or inadequate bandwidth. You can blame laws that keep otherwise desirable products off of the market.
Want a program to copy a DVD to your iPod? You can't pick one up in a shop, thanks to the 1998 vintage Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA bans that software, along with other tools that might help you use movie downloads, e-books and other "protected" files in ways not specifically allowed by their vendors.
We may be watching a sequel to the DMCA story today. An international copyright agreement, negotiated under unusual secrecy, could impose a further round of restrictions on our use of digital technology.
This Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, represents an attempt by the United States and other countries to set common rules for violations of intellectual-property laws. The United States hopes to use ACTA to export its laws, but in the process it might have to import others.
It's difficult to talk about ACTA without using words such as "may," "could" and "might" because of how little has been disclosed about it. The nations involved -- including Japan, South Korea, Canada and the members of the European Union -- have agreed to post little beyond topics that the agreement should address.
The Bush and Obama administrations have cited national security concerns to justify withholding further information. They have revealed ACTA texts only to selected individuals (few representing consumer interests) who sign non-disclosure agreements.
Congress, meanwhile, has no say, as ACTA is being written as an "executive agreement," not a treaty that would require Senate ratification.
Much information about ACTA has come from leaked documents posted to such sites as http://wikileaks.org; other details have been pried out through Freedom of Information Act requests by such groups as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Knowledge Ecology International.
You can weave these scraps into a frightening future in which a site like YouTube couldn't stay in business and allegations of file sharing could lead your Internet provider to kick you offline.
The reality of ACTA doesn't seem that bad: Many of the provisions attacked by critics are part of U.S. law and such bilateral free-trade deals as the pending agreement between the United States and South Korea. But it's bad enough.
ACTA's first problem lies in the idea of making the DMCA a world standard. Globalizing that law's ban on circumventing digital locks would do no favors for people elsewhere. But it would also cement the DMCA's status at home, making it harder to fix its user-hostile provisions.
More important, the ACTA talks would be a rare negotiation if they resulted in one state giving up nothing in return for every other state accepting its ideas.
A U.S. trade official who spoke on the condition of anonymity emphasized that the government's proposals for ACTA color within the lines of existing U.S. laws. But trying to globalize them invites fine-print changes in emphasis or detail that could lead to changes in their enforcement here.
Consider the notion of "graduated response," the idea that Internet providers should discipline or disconnect users who keep sharing movies or music. The DMCA allows for that, but ACTA could increase incentives for Internet providers to act as copyright cops. We can't know for sure without seeing ACTA's text.
Free-trade agreements and ACTA's agenda include stopping counterfeit copyrighted works at borders. The trade official said the United State wants to exempt travelers from mandatory searches of iPods or laptops -- let's set aside the risk of overreach by law enforcement at airports -- but we won't know how much privacy to expect without seeing ACTA's text.
And free-trade deals and ACTA call for more rigorous mandatory penalties, including jail time. But it's tough to gauge how inflexible those punishments might be without seeing ACTA's text.
The U.S. trade official, when asked how ACTA's secrecy squared with President Obama's pledges of open government, said the administration is working to open the process further.
But more official blog posts and news releases won't suffice. An agreement this sweeping won't get far without public debate. Just ask one of the biggest advocates of stronger copyright laws, the Motion Picture Association of America. In a statement sent by its press office, chief policy officer Greg Frazier wrote that "clearly anything other than making the text public will not satisfy the ACTA naysayers," adding that "we will encourage the U.S. government" to do so.
The fair way to craft a deal like this in the daylight. When the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization proposes to write new treaties, it does so in public, publishing drafts and allowing outside parties to report on the progress of talks.
If ACTA's ground rules don't allow that, it's time to scrap this project -- before we inflict a 1.1 version of the DMCA on ourselves and the world.
The issue of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY has been a major concern of me for the past few years , being that i just entered the publishing business, i don't mind some regulation , but when the governement oversteps it's boundaries and determines what it deems proper content then i have a problem....
also this "treaty" will make the worldwide web obselete, what is the purpose of having the net if you can't exchange texts and viral videos....
and the sad thing about is Obama probally isn't going to do a damn thing about it............
Globilization is a muthaphuka
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Will Secret Copyright Treaty Will Ruin the Internet?
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