The first official meeting of the ACTA has concluded–almost completely unnoticed. An EU page on the agreement hints at why there has been little news on the meetings:
Q: Why are you not pursuing this agreement through the G8, WTO, WIPO or other formal structure ?
A: We feel that the approach of a free-standing agreement gives us the most flexibility to pursue this project among interested countries. We fully support the important work of the G8, WTO, and WIPO, all of which touch on IPR enforcement. The membership and priorities of those organizations simply are not the most conducive to this kind of path breaking project.
“Flexibility” is a luxury of a non-transparent process. The more voices at the table, or perhaps even the more people that know what is going on, the more complicated things can get. The “C” for “counterfeiting” also appears to me as somewhat deceptive. While a part of the treaty addresses a need (?) for border checks for counterfeit media (pirated DVDs), a number of ‘provisions to be included’ have leaked out. Here is a sampling:
- Criminal Enforcement: ex officio authority to take action against infringers (i.e. authority to act without complaint by rights holders)
- Civil Enforcement: Authority to do ex parte searches and other preliminary measures [ex parte means the searches could be carried out without any notice to the alleged infringer]
- Internet Distribution and information technology: Procedures enabling rights holders who have given effective notification of a claimed infringement to expeditiously obtain information identifying the alleged infringer; and Remedies against circumvention of technological protection measures used by copyright owners and the trafficking of circumvention devices
These “strong copyright” rules, if agreed to in a treaty or other covert agreement have the potential to covertly find their way into our law. One doesn’t how how much faith to put into a document uploaded to wikileaks, but if it is genuine the public deserves to know about it [explicitly claiming fair use here].