Hi. I'm Joe. I like law, tech, and stuff for geeks. I'm an Associate Editor at Phillyist and a contributor to Geekadelphia. I judge people loudly in public but other than that I'm a nice guy.
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I haven't read it yet, but considering my ongoing interest in ACTA's development, you can be sure I'll go over it later today or tomorrow and give my thoughts. For now, Ars Technica has an analysis of it's own. Their breakdown is pretty in-depth, but their conclusion is simple: the draft is, compared to earlier leaked portions, "still bad, but a tiny bit better."
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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.
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There is much to-do in the geekosphere today about development in the United Kingdom and the United States regarding intellectual property protections in the age of ubiquitous internet connectivity. Here is a nugget from Cory Doctorow, in an article about the Digital Economy Act, ACTA, and comments recently-submitted to the American Intellectual Property Czar by the MPAA, RIAA and other rights-holders:
I'm not such a techno-triumphalist that I believe that the free and open internet will solve all our socio-economic problems. But I am enough of a techno-pessimist to believe that baking surveillance, control and censorship into the very fabric of our networks, devices and laws is the absolute road to dictatorial hell.
The comments call for bandwidth throttling and shaping, network filtering and deep-packet inspection (especially on college campuses), and accelerated federal investigations into the theft of "pre-release music and movies...as this is one of the most damaging forms of online copyright theft and requires immediate attention and swift action." Dive in anywhere. It's a minefield of overreaching, unbelievably punitive, alarmist language.
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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:
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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/
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On the surface, it may look like this patent covers techniques for censoring politically sensitive content in specific countries—a practice that Google has recently spoken out against in its ongoing feud with China. A closer look at the patent's claims, however, shows that it has little to do with censorship and may actually relate to the company's controversial book scanning initiative.
An interesting article on how Google may use a newly-awarded patent to control which regions of the world can view certain documents, similar to how movie studios release films in different DVD regions, so, for example, movies intended for US audiences do not play on DVD players manufactured for sale in Japan.
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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.
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"A cyber war would be worse than a tsunami — a catastrophe," the UN official said, highlighting examples such as attacks on Estonia last year.
He proposed an international accord, adding: "The framework would look like a peace treaty before a war."
It looks like international law is inching toward a policy tool to examine and prevent cyber attacks--attacks levied by one nation or group on the vital computer systems of another.
The tsunami metaphor may be strained, but maybe not. I'm not expert enough in cyberwarfare or tsunamis to develop an informed opinion on that one.
It's questionable though, whether the countries who might sign on to such a treaty would have ever had much to worry about from one another on the cyber front, anyway. It's possible that the most dangerous nations and groups would be the ones that never came to the table, anyway.
