Concerns About ACTA In EU, Canada

Elektroschock writes "An EU document on the Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty was leaked. The main purpose of the trade agreement is to impose the European enforcement measures for IPR infringements on the US and emerging economies, widen the enforcement measures to include criminal sanctions for patent infringements, and introduce internet content filtering measures. Civil society groups such as the FFII criticize the ACTA process because negotiation documents are not made publicly available by the governments. The EU document ('fact sheet') from the EU Trade Commissioner explicitly mentions: 'Internet distribution and information technology — e.g. mechanisms available in EU E-commerce Directive of 2000, such as a definition of the responsibility of internet service providers regarding IP infringing content.'" And an anonymous reader adds Michael Geist's push for more transparency around ACTA negotiations in Canada.

Comments

Why in the world

[Jane Q. Public]

would we want anything like this here in the U.S. ??

I don't know anybody who does. Maybe a CEO or two... certainly not the majority of the population. There is nothing here that benefits anybody but the already rich.

Re:USA Controls The World

[hypergreatthing]

correction, US government, which is backed by big buisness interests. Citizens need not apply.

The USA is the patsy

[argent]

This agreement is being pushed through in secret: there's no general support for this kind of treaty in the USA, in fact it sounds like a good deal of it is against the US constitution. If Australia or Brazil was the most powerful country in the world, the people who want these kind of controls would be spending their efforts to coopt and corrupt their governments instead.

Embellishment of the submitter...

[chrb]

Submitter: "The main purpose of the trade agreement is to impose the European enforcement measures for IPR infringements on the US"

TFA doesn't say anything about the EU trying to enforce measures on the US - in fact, what seems to be happening is that the RIAA, MPAA etc. and the US government are pushing for the removal of ISP liability protections, and the use of criminal law for enforcement within the EU. After all, didn't the Copyright Czar law already "add new classes of felony criminal copyright infringement" in the US, with one stated goal being to "lobby foreign governments to adopt stronger IP laws"?

Re:"internet content filtering" from Europe

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Remember, the US constitution has that nasty clause that allows foreign treaties to override chunks of itself. This toasts the 1st ammendment.

Citation please. It has a clause that allows foreign treaties to override chunks of state constitutions.

Re:In the US??

[m.ducharme]

Follow the link to Michael Geist's site, there's discussion of this on his blog. It's the US and Japan who are submitting drafts of the treaty to the other countries. The EU isn't forcing this on anyone, they just got there first.