Finally there is some hope of ending the secrecy around Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Thanks to the European parliament which overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for transparency on ACTA negotiation processes and public access to the negotiation texts. The resolution was approved on March 10, 2010 with 633 votes in favor, 13 against and 16 abstentions. “The resolution also states that it ‘stresses that, unless Parliament is immediately and fully informed at all stages of the negotiations, it reserves its right to take suitable action, including bringing a case before the Court of Justice in order to safeguard its prerogatives.’” European parliament is absolutely against the three strike rule and personal searches by the EU border authorities.

I think this is a right step in the right direction. Ever since the United States, EU, Canada, Japan and some other countries started ACTA negotiations in 2007, there is controversy over its secrecy. A group of countries got together in 2007 and started ACTA negotiations to develop an international framework for better enforcement of intellectual property rights. The purpose of ACTA is to establish international standards to combat counterfeiting and piracy. All the negotiation sessions are conducted in secrecy and the details are not revealed by any of the participating nations at all. Initially, public didn’t even know who the participating nations are exactly! I wonder why negotiations which involve intellectual property laws should be kept secret! Various politicians and NGO groups around the world have been asking for transparency of ACTA negotiations for the past two years. In November 2009, Senators Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown asked United States Trade Representative (USTR) to make ACTA negotiation texts public. The letter states: “ACTA involves dozens if not hundreds of substantive aspects of intellectual property law and its enforcement, including those that have nothing to do with counterfeiting. . . . There are concerns about the impact of ACTA on the privacy and civil rights of individuals, on the supply of products under the first sale doctrine, on the markets for legitimate generic medicines, and on consumers and innovation in general.” Similar requests were made by politicians of Canada, United Kingdom and many other nations. Though people around the world are expressing that the whole secrecy thing is crazy and terrifying, the ACTA negotiations are still not being made public. The reason given by United States government to defend ACTA secrecy is “National Security”. The reason stunned many people, but the USTR repeatedly insists that they need secrecy to negotiate the terms with flexibility.

In spite of all this secrecy, there have been many leaks of ACTA negotiation documents on internet over the past two years. In 2008, an ACTA document was leaked on Wikileaks which has revealed what ACTA dealings are actually about. It is all about corporate business interests of copyright industry. Businesses want border security to be ramped up to better monitor shipments of IPR infringing goods. They want governments to monitor copyright infringement activities, increase fines and share the burden of losses incurred by the industry due to copyright infringement. And finally provide completely identifiable information of the copyright infringers to the copyright holders! The purpose of the copyright law is to protect the interests of consumers, but according to ACTA leaks, regulations are being drafted to protect corporate interests at the expense of taxpayer money.

The most controversial of all leaks is the Internet provision leak in 2009.
As per the leaked document, the US delegation wants to include an internet provision which says that in order “to benefit from safe-harbours, ISPs need to put in place policies to deter unauthorised storage and transmission of IP infringing content”. It means that United States wants the entire world to implement 3 strikes law. The proposal of encouraging ISPs to gradually send threatening warnings to subscribers has been widely criticized by people in the participating nations since this would require changes in domestic laws in some nations as per the international treaty. The publicity for this leak was so wide that some of the participating nations now want to ease the secrecy around the negotiations. Swedish Justice Ministry official, Stefan Johansson said, “The Swedish government believes that we should release a consolidated text as soon as possible” Nations like Germany and Sweden ruled out the possibility of implementing three strikes law, while nations like Australia conveyed that they have no intention of changing domestic laws.

According to Canadian law professor, Michael Geist, there is a “significant disagreement over a range of issues” in the proposed treaty. US wants to implement DMCA rules and encourage ISPs to monitor copyright infringement but many other countries including the EU, Japan, and New Zealand do not want to implement them. The ACTA agreement is not about counterfeit goods anymore but more about US wanting other nations to implement three strikes and DMCA rules.

While some of the participants want to make the process transparent, United States is one of the few nations who still want secrecy. In response to the EU resolution passed on Wednesday, US President Obama reiterated his support to enact ACTA. USTR said that they do not oppose transparency, but they have to keep some details secret for flexibility in negotiations.

It is blatantly clearly that an effort is being made by US to protect the rights of copyright industry by sacrificing the rights of internet users. They want the entire world to change their IP laws so that their corporations can make money and control all their users. They want to make the whole change without letting the public know the details of the negotiation of an international treaty which affects millions of users across the world. In my opinion, such negotiations are completely unacceptable and they should allow access to texts for public scrutiny.

With the pressure for transparency increasing from politicians, lawmakers and people from many participating countries, texts have to be eventually made public, but if the reports of disagreement among participating nations are true, then I doubt if ACTA treaty will ever be finalized at all.

Image Sources:

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