Via
BoingBoing
by Cory Doctorow
Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:
- * 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)
The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together
[FULL ARTICLE
HERE]
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via
Michael Geist
The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotations 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. 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.
[FULL ARTICLE
HERE]
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Via
EFF.org
Leaked ACTA Internet Provisions: Three Strikes and a Global DMCA
Commentary by Gwen Hinze
Negotiations on the highly controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement start in a few hours in Seoul, South Korea. This week’s closed negotiations will focus on
“enforcement in the digital environment.” Negotiators will be discussing the Internet provisions drafted by the US government. No text has been officially released but as
Professor Michael Geist and
IDG are reporting, leaks have surfaced. The leaks confirm everything that we feared about the secret ACTA negotiations. The Internet provisions have nothing to do with addressing counterfeit products, but are all about imposing a set of copyright industry demands on the global Internet, including obligations on ISPs to adopt Three Strikes Internet disconnection policies, and a global expansion of DMCA-style TPM laws.
[FULL ARTICLE
HERE]
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Via
Huffington Post
Transparency of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)
The letter below reports the views of several groups and individuals concerning the lack of transparency of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). This is something that is so obvious, it should not require comment, on a policy that is completely indefensible.
The. U.S. and 39 or more countries are negotiating a new global agreement on the enforcement of intellectual property rights, and everything so far is secret from the general public. The main topics are civil and criminal rules, such as injunctions, damages and third party liability from infringements, searches of Internet transactions, border measures affecting the import or export of various consumer goods from medicines to cell phones, and a host of other issues. All 40+ countries in the negotiation have access to the proposed text. And, there are processes for
just about any corporate lobbyist with ties to the Administration to see proposed texts, if they sign tough legally binding non-disclosure agreements. So why is it secret from the public?
[FULL ARTICLE
HERE]
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Via
GamePolitics
Letter to Obama Seeks ACTA Transparency
As the 6th round of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations get underway in Seoul, Korea, a dispatch has been sent to President Obama expressing concern over the “lack of transparency and openness” surrounding the initiative.
The letter notes that “Unlike nearly all other multilateral and plurilateral discussions about intellectual property norms, the ACTA negotiations have been held in deep secrecy.”
While a curious mix of entities
have been allowed to see ACTA documents, after signing a non-disclosure agreement, the letter states that “there were no opportunities for academic experts or the general public to review the documents,” adding that “very few” public interest or consumer groups were included as well.
[FULL ARTICLE
HERE]
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Via
Freakbits
Obama Petitioned to Reveal Secret Anti-Piracy Agreement
ACTA is a mysterious thing that no-one is really certain about. That lack of certainty is because of the lack of transparency around the negotiations. KEI wants that changed, and with an open letter-cum-petition, is calling on President Obama to stand up to his election promises, and make ACTA public.
There has been a lot of controversy over the
ACTA treaty. Mostly over the the
scope of the treaty (which could see iPod searches at borders for illegally downloaded music) but there has also been a fuss over the way the negotiations have been conducted. Negotiations have been conducted in secret over the past two years, and the Executive Office of the President (Office of t he US Trade Representative) has denied Freedom of Information (FOI)
requests earlier this year from FEI, citing
Executive Order 12958 – referring to Classified National Security Information. In January, just before the Bush Administration left office, they made similar claims to EFF FOI
requests.
[FULL ARTICLE
HERE]
