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Adding Up the Explanations For ACTA's "Shameful Secret"
Several sources are reporting on a Google event this week that attempted to bring some transparency to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that has so far been treated like a "shameful secret." Unfortunately, not many concrete details were uncovered, so Ars tried to lay out why there has been so much secrecy, especially from an administration that has been preaching transparency. "The reason for that was obvious: there's little of substance that's known about the treaty, and those lawyers in the room and on the panel who had seen one small part of it were under a nondisclosure agreement. In most contexts, the lack of any hard information might lead to a discussion of mind-numbing generality and irrelevance, but this transparency talk was quite fascinating—in large part because one of the most influential copyright lobbyists in Washington was on the panel attempting to make his case. [...] [MPAA/RIAA Champion Steven] Metalitz took on three other panelists and a moderator, all of whom were less than sympathetic to his positions, and he made the lengthiest case for both ACTA and its secrecy that we have ever heard. It was also surprisingly unconvincing."
I think we can all agree that this is too important to negotiate the details in public.
Why the hell a trade treaty is secret. From anyone... let alone the people of the countrys involved in the agreement.
If you can't tell people what's in it. It's most likely not a good thing and we'd like to hang you for it.
These creeps are not dead and they will try other approaches to take away freedoms that we should all have and cherish. They have redefined piracy in order to make normal and usual human activity a crime. Unless copying is blatantly commercial in nature it should be permitted. The notion that because it is easier to copy because we use computers is no excuse for the current plague of laws. This is almost as absurd as telling drinkers that they could not use a device to lift a drink to their lips because it makes getting drunk easier.
Any relation to Metallica??
The most disturbing point in this article, for me, is that the US may be the sticking point on allowing the discussions to be more transparent (link contained in TFA) http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4693/125/ I find this to be disgusting as we have yet another example that transparency TRULY being brought to Washington to be a farce.
Q.E.D.
...it's clear that many governments don't actually want their own people to see the proposals being made and to shape their outcome.
It goes to show that it really pays to be a lobbyist:
Keeping negotiations secret is how "you get big fees to be a lobbyist," since only the "insiders" have access to the process.
Unless copying is blatantly commercial in nature it should be permitted.
Well then you can say goodbye to alot of creative endeavors. Why write a book when it will only sell a single copy before being copied all over the internet? I can't make a living off the time spent writing when sales drop. Can't be a very successful band without some form of digital media, whether you're signed or produce it yourself. That won't turn a profit once its all across the web.
This is almost as absurd as telling drinkers that they could not use a device to lift a drink to their lips because it makes getting drunk easier.
No, this is like telling drinkers that they cannot use a device that duplicates the beverage to give to their friends.
Of course, this draft is from last year.
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From the summary...
[MPAA/RIAA Champion Steven] Metalitz took on three other panelists and a moderator, all of whom were less than sympathetic to his positions, and he made the lengthiest case for both ACTA and its secrecy that we have ever heard. It was also surprisingly unconvincing.
I'd find it more surprising if he could make a convincing argument for all the secrecy.
Take a look at which political party the MAFIAA has bought.
"Steve's embarrassed by the content of the negotiation or he would be more supportive of transparency," said Love, not one to hold back in his rhetoric. Keeping negotiations secret is how "you get big fees to be a lobbyist," since only the "insiders" have access to the process.
That came from one of the panel members calling for more transparency to the ACTA negotiations.
However, I must say that this next part struck me as extremely interesting:
But he also made the fair point that he's not the one doing the negotiating. The US Trade Representative, which handles ACTA, is ultimately responsible. Though it has repeatedly pledged transparency, none has been forthcoming
The he referred to is the MPAA/RIAA lobbyist: Steven Metalitz. Now, it's important to remember that he is just a lobbyist, so shifting blame away from those he represents is his job. That being said, I figure we should all still cheerfully hate on the IP MAFIAA's. However, he did bring up the fact that the USTR is the one handling the negotiations. Currently, that position is held by Ron Kirk, a fella from Texas. Looking at his Wikipedia article, he doesn't appear to have anything particularly outstanding, good or bad, in his political record. That being said, perhaps he is playing in a league (international politics) that he is not quite up to snuff on yet. I would wager that people could contact his office en masse (if we could find that info, I haven't found a lot with a few simple Google's) and show him just how important an issue this transparency is. In other words, he may still be new enough at these games that he hasn't completely grown callous to the American Public. Then again, this is all just guess work on my part.
/shrug
One other thing to keep in mind is that he doesn't seem to have been in the national spotlight all that much, at least not that I can find. Maybe if we put him under the heat lamp of mass public disclosure regarding these meetings he will comply with public demands to avoid a serious burn.
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Such a large part of the US and Western Europe economy is today based on sales of intagible goods that it should be obvious that some sort of international agreement would be nice to limit the economic loss that is occurring based on piracy and other copyright violations.
The problem is that since around 1980 or so people have grown up with the idea that if you physically can transfer information digitally it ought to be free. Whether it is by trading floppies or using BitTorrent, anyone that has go to school since 1980 or so has had access to free digital stuff that someone else thought you should be paying for. At it height, the BBS movement pretty much doomed Apple ][ games with common knowledge that any game produced would sell two copies - one on the west coast and one on the east. And that was around 1984.
One huge problem for governments is that if I buy a DVD in a store they get tax revenue on it. If I buy it in Europe, they get tax revenue from it several times over through VAT. However, if it download it nobody get anything. Now you can argue all you want about pirates not ever paying so these aren't really "lost sales", but the government is certainly looking at this as "lost tax revenue". And it is certainly millions, if not billions of dollars in the US today.
iTunes is maybe 1% of the music download market. If the government was collecting their 10% cut on the remaining 99% of the music download market there might not be such a concern about paying for executive bonuses and shifting union health plan costs.
So really, can you blame them?
Of course, from where I sit nobody is ever going to actually be able to enforce any restrictions. Piracy is here to stay and nobody that has gone to school since 1980 or so is exactly in the dark about how to download stuff for free. And they aren't going to be paying anytime in the future. It is free for the taking today and likely to be free forever. Tax consequences or not.
But given the staggering amounts of money the governments of the world think are being left on the table, can you really blame them for not trying to collect "their fair share"? Just be glad nobody has actually proposed a policeman stationed at every Internet connection just to make sure that the taxes are being paid.
There are some points that were brought up in the meeting that I thought were pretty important. Someone correct me if I'm mistaken on any points, IANAL or too politically savvy. Many of the people who had seen pieces of the draft kept coming back to several points:
- Some speculated that this has more to do with future trade agreements with countries NOT involved in ACTA talks than those in it.The idea was that this would be used to strong arm developing countries into agreeing to the terms to enter into future trade agreements with any ACTA countries in the future.
- Patents are also in ACTA, and could potentially impact international trade of pharmaceuticals. Many public health organizations such as Doctors Without Borders are worried about the impact on getting generic drugs to 3rd world countries.
- While this supposedly won't change any US laws, it will impact future court decisions on infringement cases, which will in effect change the law by setting precedence.
Let's start making stuff up about it, saying that it will require that every human being on the planet register on a global network and that it gives copyright protection organizations the right to install kill switches in everyone's brain.
They will be so afraid of the pitchforks and torches generated from this that they'll be forced to do what they should have done in the first place: tell us what it actually contains.
There are actually good reasons to keep drafts of a trade treaty secret, or at least to keep Congress from meddling too much in the negotiation of a trade treaty (and one way to accomplish that is secrecy). Often a trade treaty might involve lowering tariffs or other barriers to trade, which result in a net economic benefit to the countries involved as a whole. However, they also hurt specific businesses or industries, which have a strong incentive to mobilize and lobby against lowering tariffs (see, e.g., Chinese tires). By keeping a treaty secret until most details have been hammered out, it gives less time for special interests to derail what can potentially be overall a beneficial product.
That said, as Jonathan Band of Policy Bandwidth (one of the panelists) pointed out during the event, ACTA is fundamentally not a trade agreement, and it's dishonest to pretend that it is, even if it has "trade" in the name. ACTA seems to be combination agreement on customs and law enforcement (not trade) and on intellectual property (also not trade). This difference is important, because IP agreements have a much more transparent history than trade agreements. This is something that Jamie Love kept trying to point out to Steve Metalitz; Steve was arguing that ACTA is no less transparent than trade agreement X, but the proper comparison would be any of WIPO's recent work, and the fact that NGOs, business groups, and academics all have access to draft WIPO agreements and resolutions, and their input is taken seriously. Draft texts are even put up on the Internet. That's transparency. It's also precisely the reason why ACTA can't be negotiated in a forum like WIPO.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
You joke, but the MPAA has actually called for the negotiations to be more transparent, if only to avoid the negative attention garnered by the current total lack of transparency.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson