joe, beta

Overall, therefore, there was a general sense from this session that negotiations have now advanced to a point where making a draft text available to the public will help the process of reaching a final agreement. For that reason, and based on the specific momentum coming out of this meeting, participants have reached unanimous agreement that the time is right for making available to the public the consolidated text coming out of these discussions, which will reflect the substantial progress made at this round.   

It is intended to release this on Wednesday 21 April. 

I'll post it when it is available, some time on Wednesday.

Increasing transparency in the ACTA negotiations, including providing improved means for public input into the process, is a priority for the United States,” said USTR spokeswoman Nefeterius McPherson.  “In this upcoming round of ACTA negotiations, the U.S. delegation will be working with other delegations to resolve some fundamental issues, such as the scope of the intellectual property rights that are the focus of this agreement.  Progress is necessary so that we can prepare to release a text that will provide meaningful information to the public and be a basis for productive dialogue.  We hope that enough progress is made in New Zealand in clearing brackets from the text so that participants can be in a position to reach a consensus on sharing a meaningful text with the public.

The United States Trade Representative on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/USTradeRep

once you get a certain number of participants involved (not to mention the stakeholders they consult, with or without confidentiality agreements), it becomes very hard to avoid leaks and other disclosures.  Now maybe some confidentiality is better than none.  But I believe that the age when multilateral negotiators could work largely in secret has passed.  And, if that’s the case, those going into such negotiations need to operate under a different set of assumptions in terms of the positions they advance, and the deals they cut.  In the information age, if those positions and deals are at all disputed, we should expect they’ll get posted somewhere on the Internet, and dispensed with remarkable rapidity to those interested (including, one expects, the Opinio Juris community).

Professor Duncan Hollis teaches, inter alia, property law at Temple. He combines rapid-fire lecture delivery with a more deliberately-paced class discussion. It's my opinion that he's a very effective teacher. But that's not all he is.

Professor Hollis is also an international law scholar who has worked for the State Department in the past. If you read this blog often, you know I'm interested in ACTA, so I was happy to learn my professor's opinion on the issues. He supports some level of secrecy, at least in the drafting phase, and seems to say that transparency may be more appropriate when something like a final candidate document has been developed.

But he goes on to point out that in the "information age"--the age of Wikileaks, for example--the expectation of secrecy is a weakened assumption, and that negotiators of documents like ACTA may need to treat the proceedings as a sort of hybrid between open discussions and secret negotiations.

More about Professor Hollis at the Temple Law website:
http://bit.ly/profhollis

His posts at Opinion Juris:
http://opiniojuris.org/author/duncanhollis/

The US Trade Representative -- who has been negotiating the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement without input from the American people or Congress -- is seeking public submissions on how to conduct US foreign copyright policy. This means that Americans can file comments with the USTR asking for ACTA to be made public

I've mentioned ACTA before. Now, the US Trade Representative wants to know what you think. Find more information on how to submit comments at Public Knowledge.

Some aspects of ACTA, including lack of transparency and secrecy surrounding its negotiation, have raised the ire of many people. A contentious item expected to be on the table is the so-called “three strikes” approach to piracy.

There are many flavours of the three strikes scheme, but the concept is that suspected illegal file-sharers would be met with graduated responses from their Internet Service Provider (ISP).  They would first be sent a warning email, then a letter if they continue. The final strike would result in an appearance before a judge or tribunal.  The judge or tribunal could impose a fine, or suspend their access to the Internet for a period of time.

I'm pretty interested in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement ("ACTA"), and I've been following it, mostly via Boing Boing. This is yet another good perspective on where the shady negotiations are taking the controversial treaty, and what it could mean for end-users.

More on ACTA from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

 

. . . ACTA is an unprecedented copyright treaty (unprecedented in that it reaches farther than previous copyright treaties, and that it is being negotiated behind closed doors, without any public input or oversight) that will force copyright policing duties on Internet companies (vastly increasing the cost of hosting "user-generated content"); create new penalties for infringement (including Draconian penalties such as disconnection from the Internet on accusations of infringement); and require countries to search hard-drives, personal media players, and other personal data at their borders.

 

Last month, Google's DC office hosted a public debate on ACTA, with Steven J. Metalitz, a lawyer and lobbyist representing the International Intellectual Property Alliance; Jamie Love, an activist with Knowledge Ecology International; Jonathan Band, a lawyer representing a coalition of library groups and a variety of tech and Internet companies and Ryan Clough from Silicon Valley Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren's office; moderated by Washington Post consumer technology columnist Rob Pegoraro.

I will be trading in some sleep time to watch this video this week.

More information on ACTA at:

Electronic Frontier Foundation: http://www.eff.org/issues/acta
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
Public Knowledge: http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/acta

The Office of the US Trade Representative has a page dedicated to ACTA:
http://www.ustr.gov/trade-topics/intellectual-property/anti-counterfeiting-trade-agreement-acta

...and hosts a copy of the November 6, 2009 summary of the draft document:
http://www.ustr.gov/webfm_send/1479 (PDF)