https://eff.org/issues/acta Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement What Is ACTA? The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is an agreement to create new global intellectual property (IP) enforcement standards that go beyond current international law, shifting the discussion from more democratic multilateral forums, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), to secret regional negotiations. Through ACTA, the US aims to hand over increased authority to enforcement agencies to act on their own initiative, to seize any goods that are related to infringement activities (including domain names), criminalize circumvention of digital security technologies, and address piracy on digital networks. ACTA was negotiated from 2007 through 2010 by the US, the EU, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Singapore, Morocco, Japan, and South Korea. Eight out of the eleven negotiating countries signed the agreement in October 2011. The number of countries that were part of these negotiations is limited, but the agreement’s provisions would have global consequences for digital freedoms. Once six nations ratify the agreement, its implementation will take effect. As of October 2012, it has only been ratified by Japan. Why Should You Care About It? From its inception, ACTA was intended to target the Internet and its users. One of the specific objectives for negotiating ACTA was to extend the existing international IP enforcement norms in the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) to the online environment, and this is due to major US and EU copyright industry rightsholder groups seeking stronger powers to enforce intellectual property rights across the world. ACTA contains several features that raise significant potential concerns for consumers’ privacy and civil liberties, as well as pose threats to digital innovation and the free flow of information on the Internet. The main issues with ACTA are three-fold: 1) Process: Negotiated in secret, ACTA bypassed checks and balances of both domestic and existing international IP norm-setting bodies without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens. The first text was only officially released in 2010, once it had already been finalized following eight rounds of closed-doors negotiation. 2) Provisions: It would require signatory countries to enact new IP enforcement measures that would call for restrictive rules for the Internet that raise significant potential concerns for users’ free speech, privacy, ability to innovate, and due process rights. 3) Enforcement: It creates a new supra-national ad-hoc institution, an ACTA Committee, constituting non-elected members to oversee ACTA implementation and interpretation with no legal obligation to be transparent in their proceedings.
Posted on: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 22:23:18 +0000
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