stories filed under: "acta"
Son Of ACTA (But Worse): Meet TPP, The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
from the any-which-way dept
Back in December we noted that the industry lobbyists fighting for increased protectionism via copyright and patent laws never stop trying, and as soon as one thing finishes, they pop up somewhere else. Specifically, we were noting calls from the industry for the USTR to negotiate a hardline in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which involves a bunch of Pacific Rim countries: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, U.S, and Vietnam -- though Japan and Canada may join as well. Apparently, the US government has already indicated that it will not allow any form of weakening of intellectual property law for any reason whatsoever in this agreement. In fact, the USTR has directly said that it will only allow for "harmonizing" intellectual property regulations "strictly upwards," meaning greater protectionism. Given the mounds of evidence suggesting that over protection via such laws is damaging to the economy, this is immensely troubling, and once again shows how the USTR is making policy by ignoring data. This is scary.The folks over at Public Knowledge have put together some initial information on the TPP, noting that it's basically "ACTA the Sequel." It's actually worse than that. As KEI has discussed TPP will be a much stricter form of agreement:
Unlike ACTA, the TPP will be subject to a dispute resolution process, which means that the U.S. and other countries will be subject to "fines" if they are not in compliance with the agreement.Not surprisingly, just like ACTA, it appears that the USTR has decided that "transparency" as required by the Obama administration really means no transparency. Once again, KEI notes the ridiculousness of this:
The Obama Administration has developed a policy on transparency for the TPP negotiations which apparently does not involve any commitments to sharing the text with the general public, even after it has been given to all member countries in the negotiation and to hundreds of corporate insiders on the USTR advisory board system.It appears the lesson that the USTR learned from all the complaints about a total lack of transparency on ACTA was that it could get away with basically refusing to include the public (the biggest stakeholder here) entirely.
Leaked Cable Shows That ACTA Secrecy Is Way Beyond Normal
from the didn't-we-say-that? dept
As more and more attention was paid to the ridiculous level of secrecy concerning the ACTA negotiators last year, a bunch of ACTA supporters tried to claim that the level of secrecy (such as calling it a state secret involving national security) was perfectly normal for such agreements. A year ago, we went through a rather detailed explanation of how similar negotiations were much more open. The response we heard was that we were wrong and that this was "entirely normal." Turns out, even the diplomats involved knew this was bunk. One of the latest cable leaks from Wikileaks shows an Italian diplomat complaining to a US official about the level of secrecy involved in ACTA, noting that it's much higher than normal and that it makes it more difficult to get stuff done:The level of confidentiality in these ACTA negotiations has been set at a higher level than is customary for non-security agreements. According to Mazza, it is impossible for member states to conduct necessary consultations with IPR stakeholders and legislatures under this level of confidentiality.Can't wait to see defenders of ACTA secrecy try to backtrack their claims that the secrecy level was perfectly normal.
Separately, this particular cable shows some of the problems with the USTR's annual Special 301 report in which it makes up a list of who's been naughty and who's been nice when it comes to intellectual property issues -- based not on evidence, but almost entirely on entertainment industry and pharma industry say so. The Italian official complained to the US that Italy had been working hard to crack down on infringement in Italy, but the USTR slammed them anyway and made no mention of all of the efforts they'd already put towards pushing through changes that Hollywood (via the State Department) was demanding. The Italian official was worried that this would actually lead to a setback, as Italian government officials wondered why they should bother if the USTR was just going to slam them no matter what they did.
Of course, none of this is a surprise. The same points about both the Special 301 process and ACTA secrecy were made by many folks, including us at Techdirt, and every time we did, supporters mocked us for "crying wolf" and making stuff up. Yet, now, it turns out that the points many folks were raising were also being stated by government officials.
Filed Under: acta, italy, secrecy, sweden, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks
EU's Main ACTA Supporter Caught Lying About ACTA
from the and-this-shocks-anyone? dept
As a few folks have submitted, EU Commissioner for Trade, Karel De Gucht -- the main EU politician backing ACTA -- has been caught lying about ACTA. As you may recall, the EU Parliament was quite skeptical of ACTA for quite some time. However, De Gucht convinced the EU Parliament to support ACTA by claiming nothing in ACTA would impact penal enforcement of intellectual property rules, suggesting that it fully complied with existing rules. The only problem? Well, this was a lie. But it was a lie of omission. De Gucht has now admitted that some countries may have to change their local laws to comply with ACTA, but tried to defend the earlier statements by saying since there are no uniform EU rules on penal enforcement for IP, it was technically correct that no changes were required to the EU-wide rules. That seems... disingenuous, at best.Filed Under: acta, eu, karel de gucht
EU Parliament Rubber Stamps ACTA Approval
from the too-bad dept
Despite serious concerns about the way ACTA was negotiated, as well as a declaration against ACTA, it appears that the EU Parliament has reversed course and more or less said that ACTA can move forward. This isn't really surprising, but at least suggests that the EU Parliament doesn't seem to understand what it's voting on half of the time, as it will flat out disagree with itself for no clear reason.Filed Under: acta, eu, eu parliament
How ACTA Will Increase Copyright Infringement
from the it's-all-about-respect dept
Every so often, we get copyright system supporters here in the comments who, when they run out of arguments, go with something along the lines of "but it's the law, and it's your duty to respect the law." It's a rather authoritarian point of view and there are all sorts of reasons why that makes little sense. We don't need to go into the full philosophical arguments, but one key one is that you should never respect something just because someone says you should -- only because it has earned the respect. Glyn Moody has a fascinating post highlighting a new paper about ACTA that suggests the process by which ACTA was agreed upon has all sorts of problems. Moody calls out one paragraph in particular that I think is quite important:there is the question of public perceptions as to the value and fairness of the agreement. A perception that it is fair as between stakeholders is important to IP law, which it is not readily self-enforcing. By this I mean that IP law requires people to self-consciously refrain from behaviours that are common, easy, and enjoyable: infringement is so easy to do and observing IP rights, particularly copyright, involves, particularly these days, some self-denial. IP law therefore needs support from the public in order to be effective, and in order to receive any such support IP law needs to address the needs of all stakeholders. 135 Treaties that strengthen enforcement without addressing the needs of users look unfair and will bring IP law further into disrepute.This is a key point that gets ignored in all of this. When you negotiate agreements like ACTA in secret, leaving out key stakeholders, it should come as no surprise when those same people feel no compulsion to respect the agreement. They were left out of the discussion and so, in their minds, such an agreement should not hold any weight.
What this means, of course, is that the very awful process by which ACTA was put together may actually serve to create the exact opposite scenario that the drafters hoped to create. Rather than strengthening the power of copyright law around the globe, ACTA has only served to increase the lack of respect for copyright law, as the process by which it was put together has been shown to not be deserving of any respect, in that it failed to take into account the interests of most of the people it would impact.
Filed Under: acta, infringement, law, respect
As US Insists ACTA Is Not A Treaty, EU Trade Commissioner Admits It's A Treaty
from the ooooops dept
We've already posted about David Kappos' non-response to legality questions about ACTA, but at the bottom of KEI's coverage of this story there's another interesting point. ACTA supporters in the US have been bending over backwards to insist that ACTA is not a treaty. Any time anyone mentions it as a treaty in the comments here, one of the ACTA supporters among our readership will quickly admonish them for being clueless about the law and will insist that this is nothing more than an "executive agreement," which does not need Senate approval. It's one of ACTA supporters' favorite talking points. Of course, there are some serious constitutional questions about that.However, much more telling is that many ACTA supporters will outright admit it's a treaty. We already noted that the Business Software Alliance (BSA) did just that a few weeks ago (and also falsely claimed it had already been signed by 37 countries). However, much more telling is that the EU's Commissioner for Trade, Karel De Gucht, has also admitted that the document is really a treaty. Apparently in a communication to the EU Parliament, De Gucht specifically and formally noted three times that ACTA is, in fact, a treaty. I can't wait for the responses in our comments about how it's not a treaty now.
Filed Under: acta, executive agreement, karel de gucht, treaty
ACTA's Non-Final 'Final' Text Still Has Issues
from the of-course-it-does dept
Earlier this week, the USTR announced that a new final version of ACTA was out, to replace the old "final" version. Of course, this version is really no more final than the last version in that it still needs to go through a legal scrub where it can be changed further. Not surprisingly, many are still finding substantial problems in the text, with continued concerns over whether or not the US President has the constitutional authority to sign such a document. Of course, as we've seen so far, most of the players in the US government simply don't care. They'll finalize the document and President Obama will sign it, and then I'm sure someone will bring a lawsuit... Meanwhile, there are even more concerns over in Europe, where the EU Commission doesn't seem to care much what the European Parliament or the European Court of Justice has to say about these things.Filed Under: acta, final text, ustr
USPTO Refuses To Respond To Senators' Questions On Legality Of ACTA
from the trust-us... dept
The effort the administration is going through to avoid discussing ACTA is really quite stunning. Two US Senators, Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown, asked USPTO Director David Kappos to respond to specific questions about the legality of certain issues in ACTA. Kappos has now "responded" by not actually responding. He sent a letter back that did not actually address any of the issues raised, but merely said "our USPTO issue experts will continue to work with USTR as they finalize the results achieved in Tokyo." That's not a response. That's a dodge. You can read the entire letter after the jump.Filed Under: acta, bernie sanders, david kappos, legality, sherrod brown
ACTA Negotiations Are 'Done'... But Negotiators Still Getting Together For A 'Legal Scrub'
from the that-sounds-dirty dept
The ACTA negotiators were pretty insistent that the last round of negotiations would be the last round -- and came out of that round with claims of a "near final" document, though many of us noted that there appeared to be substantial areas of disagreement. Since then, many people have noted significant legal issues with the current document. So what's an ACTA negotiator to do? Well, not set up another round of negotiatons, but just get folks together in something that kinda sorta sounds like another round of negotiations in lovely Sydney, Australia and just refer to it as a "legal scrub," rather than an actual negotiations (found via Glyn Moody). The document also covers the various issues that still need to be worked out -- and it certainly seems like (a) there's a lot and (b) some of them are very substantial in terms of their potential impact. But, it's not like the negotiators have any plans whatsoever to allow the public and actual stakeholders to take part in any of this discussion. Why, that might involve having to actually pay attention to what those folks have to say.Filed Under: acta, legal scrub, negotiations
