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ACTA To Be Signed This Weekend
We've been following the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement for over three years, from its secretive beginnings, to the controversy and debate that followed, and to the document it eventually evolved into. Now, Japan has announced that the agreement will finally be signed on Saturday during a ceremony that follows an anti-piracy symposium on Friday.
"The negotiation has been carried out among Australia, Canada, the European Union and its Member States, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States, and reached a general agreement at the negotiation meeting held in Japan in October 2010, followed by the completion of technical and translation work in April 2011. ... The signing ceremony will be attended by the representatives of all the participants in the ACTA negotiations, and those that have completed relevant domestic processes will sign the agreement. The agreement is open for signature until May 1, 2013."
Don't be shocked if this follows the pattern laid out in the case of the WIPO anticircumvention treaty. It did not require anything nearly as strong as the DMCA, but the content industry kept waiving it in congressional faces, demanding that we pass something far too draconian to be justified by the treaty we had actually signed. In principle, this is set up to be in line with extant US law, thus not requiring a full Senate confirmation, but I wouldn't be shocked if (a) the content industries rammed down much stronger interpretations down other countries' throats, and (b) they then came back to the US and demanded that we "harmonize" with these stronger interpretations.