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.

“There is no use beating around the bush, this meeting has collapsed, members have simply not been able to bridge their differences,” the World Trade Organization’s Director-General Pascal Lamy told journalists.

And the reason being given for the collapse of this seven year long set of trade negotiaions is India and the USA’s failure to reach an agreement on an SSM or special safeguard mechanism that allows countries to raise tariffs to protect their farmers from a surge in imports. But according to the Age it may be more complicated than that.

India and other developing countries wanted the mechanism to kick in at a lower import surge level than has been proposed in order to protect their millions of poor farmers from starvation.

Others wanted it to take effect at a higher rate so as not to hurt exporters.

Sources said after Tuesday’s breakdown that the United States was stalling for time to avoid a rift over another sticking point, cotton subsidies.

“The US cannot afford to give way on cotton, so it does not even want to go into the issue on cotton,” an Asian diplomat told AFP.

“It knows that India would not give ground on SSMs, in which case India would be blamed in case of any collapse.”

Radio New Zealand reported this morning that another part of the problem was the wealthier industrialised countries continual push to open up the services sector to private investment.

While most people can see the logic in putting a fair transparent set of rules around the international trade of goods, the services sector is far more tricky.  Countries like New Zealand, that have pushed had and fast on services as though they are nothing more than trinkets to be bought and sold, rather than integral components of communities’ public infrastructure (for instance, water, power, education, health care and waste management) have failed the WTO.

Their (our) desire to push the WTO along at breakneck speed – if you can describe anything that happens in the WTO as happening at breakneck speed – has undermined its credibility in the international arena and made it impossible for countries to respond with anything but very protectionist negotiating strategies.

This collapse should be as good a sign as any that the current ‘business first, community and democracy distant second’ model for the WTO is flawed and needs a serious overhaul.  This is important because the alternative to the WTO could well be a range of even less democratic bilateral and multilateral deals such as the New Zealand-China preferential trade agreement.