ACTA– Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

It’s called ACTA-Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement, and it seems to go back to late 2007.

WASHINGTON DC – In a major step in the fight against intellectual property rights (IPR) counterfeiting and piracy, U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab today announced the United States and some of its key trading partners will seek to negotiate an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

 “Global counterfeiting and piracy steal billions of dollars from workers, artists and entrepreneurs each year and jeopardize the health and safety of citizens across the world,” said Ambassador Schwab.  “The United States looks forward to partnering with many of our key trading partners to combat this global problem.  Today launches our joint efforts to confront counterfeiters and pirates across the global marketplace.”

Wikileaks claims to have a draft of it here. They claim  Rep Berman (D-CA), is the driving force behind the law here in the USA, along with his friends in the Music and Movie Industries:

Berman is known for his staunch protection of  copyright interests and his alliances with the entertainment industry; he is sometimes referred to as the “representative from Hollywood.”

This agreement, although the meetings seem to be conducted in secret, seems at face value to be a pretty good way to stop global counterfeiting, although it probably won’t  stop Kim Jong il from making fake Marlboro cigarettes and flooding the market with them. But it would put a chink in the counterfeit medicine industry.  So why are so many people all atwitter about it?

According to detractors, your government will be able to seize and copy files off of your computer in pursuit of bootlegged music and movies…..and seize pretty much any other personal files they want as well.

Whoa.  If that’s true, then all those Gen Yers with all that bootlegged music on their parents’ computers are not going to be happy with this.  And  they thought the assault on all their favorite Napster files was brutal?

Clean up those downloads,  Entitlement Generation!  All of Barack’s Music Industry friends want you to pay for their work, ya know! People don’t bust their butts creating music to give it away for free, even if you think you are “entitled” to it.

While other countries have been fretting over this agreement for quite awhile now, I haven’t seen much from the US media. But then, they are far too busy with important things like Michelle’s latest outfit and the new White House dog.

Here’s the UK take on it.  And here’s a take from an Aussie legal person.  (IP =Intellectual Property).

ACTA is a proposal for an ‘anti-counterfeiting’ agreement, being negotiated by a small number of mostly developed countries, outside any of the established institutions (WIPO, World Customs Organisation, WTO). While ostensibly dealing with counterfeiting (you know, of the evil exploding mobile phones and airplane parts kind), because it deals with IP enforcement it has the potential to balloon in scope and its implications for ordinary people (you know, those of us who are not evil-organised-crime-counterfeiters). Mission creep: ever the bane of IP treaty negotiations.

And here’s somebody who is thrilled, I’ll bet.

Anyways, here’s a video on the subject. I have no idea who really produced it, or whether or not it’s pure tin foil, but it certainly declares that this international agreement is headed toward fruition fairly soon. And why on earth is this agreement being negotiated so secretly?

So what do you think? ……besides the fact that there will be an echo heard over at youtube if these people aren’t alarmists?  You remember the Napster problem, right? The music industry was going after old people whose grandkids loaded songs on the basement computer–and fining them $10,000 per offense. I mean, wouldn’t this  law also render the music loaded on youtube– and the remixes– illegal? Beats me.