by frog
I’m a bit behind the times sometimes and on this one issue, the international negotiation of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, I feel quite bad about it because we’re now running out of time to have an influence. Not that we’re supposed to. According to Public Knowledge:
ACTA is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated by the US, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand. The stated goal of the agreement is the international enforcement of strong intellectual property rights through increased cooperation and coordination among international governmental agencies. ACTA does not yet exist, though its ongoing discussions are confirmed by all of the participating governments.
We don’t know much what the treaty does because nearly everything about it is being negotiated in secret but many organisations have concerns that it may be used to prevent with fair use of copyrighted materials, require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to monitor all consumers’ Internet communications, or undermine access to low-cost generic medicines.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation said a few months ago:
Although the proposed treaty’s title might suggest that the agreement deals only with counterfeit physical goods (such as medicines), what little information has been made available publicly by negotiating governments about the content of the treaty makes it clear that it will have a far broader scope, and in particular, will deal with tools targeting “Internet distribution and information technology.” To date, disturbingly little information has been released about the actual content of the agreement. However, despite that, it is clearly on a fast track; treaty proponents want it tabled at the G8 summit in July, and completed by the end of 2008.
As Wired notes the biggest issue is that we just do not know what is being negotiated on our behalf so we can’t make informed comment on it.
Information about New Zealand’s involvement in ACTA negotiations is here at MED and here at MFAT. But you should also check out Mike Riversdale’s thoughts. He links to Brenda at coffee.geek.nz who says:
This [ACTA] wishlist includes making ISPs liable for any copyright infringement that passes through their network.Think about that… If you ISP lets copyrighted material through to your computer, without knowing for sure you’re allowed to get that content, then your ISP is the one who will face prosecution.
How are ISPs to respond to that? By only letting you talk to sony.com etc? By blocking all encrypted communication where they can’t see what you’re sending? It’s either shows a huge misunderstanding of how the internet works, or intentional malice to line the pockets of copyright collecting companies.
I’d like to think under the foreign affairs policy that Keith and Kennedy Graham launched yesterday trade negotiations would not take place in this sort of murky, ill-informed manner where the public can’t be sure that law is not being drafted in the interests of Hollywood moguls and big pharmaceutical companies.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Justice & Democracy by frog on Thu, September 18th, 2008
Tags: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, intellectual property, Internet Service Providers, trade negotiations
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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Democracy is being by-passed at every opportunity. It’s shameful.
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hey my name’s not bronwyn. Also I really have shocking grammar in that blog post.
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Sorry Br3nda. Fixed now.
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thanks .. you should also check your links.. coffee.geek.net ?
frogmaster: fixed
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- “Democracy is being by-passed at every opportunity. It’s shameful.”
On the contrary, the problem is too much emphasis on democracy and not enough on liberty.
If the Greens want a state with all the power to limit people’s freedom of speech with the EFA and limit their property rights with the RMA and ETS, then they have to accept *every other* intrusion and offence it commits with that level of power pandering to all the *other* special interest groups. You can’t have it both ways.
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Can’t be done. Or if it was done it would choke up the net so much it wouldn’t be a net anymore. Lots of info out there now isn’t copyright and freely traded and to have such a system in place means that even non- copyright info would need to obtain qualification there of… and it just ain’t gonna happen. Okay they might put a big dent in medicine, music and movies but in doing so they’ll significantly endanger a system that doesn’t want or need to be an advertising system. Not only that but they’ll force the copyright infringers to dig deeper and work smarter ans all that ever does is raise the stakes for everybody… but I’m sure they’ll try.
Funny though because if I was in business and had a product that reaped huge profits and it was in danger from copy… I’d lower my prices so it wasn’t worth copying… but then again I’d never sell anything at an outrageous profit.
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