Politicians Worldwide Asking Questions About ACTA

An anonymous reader writes "Legislators around the world are demanding more information on the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. US Senator Ron Wyden demanded answers in a letter to the USTR (PDF) this week, ACTA arose in the UK House of Commons yesterday, and French Deputy Nicolas Dupont-Aignan raised ACTA questions in the National Assembly late last year. All of this comes on top of earlier efforts from Swedish Member of the European Parliament Jens Holm, as well as New Zealand MP Clare Curran, who has repeatedly raised concerns about ACTA, and NDP MP Charlie Angus, who posed questions about ACTA in the Canadian House of Commons late last year."

Comments

Multilateral treaties are hard to pass

[javacowboy]

From what I've seen, multilateral treaties are difficult to pass. That's not to say that they're impossible to pass, but the fact that you have N number of countries with N number of political calculations to make (even if they're not democracies) makes it difficult to come to a solid agreement. That's why the FTAA seems to have failed. There was just too much disagreement.

Exceptions are whatever copyright treaty got passed, WTO, etc)

(BTW, slightly off topic, I saw a Blu-Ray movie with the FBI copyright warning in French, which I had never seen before on any DVD. That was a little creepy and funny at the same time.)

The U.S. has been much more successful by pushing its agenda through bilateral (U.S.-Canada free trade agreement) or trilateral agreements (NAFTA).

My guess is that instead of the ACTA passing, there will instead be a series of bilateral and trilateral agreements with various countries, such as how the U.S. pushed Singapore to adopt DMCA-like laws in a "free trade agreement".