[A2k] Pegoraro: ACTA absurdity continues, may only get worse

[Manon Ress]

This is a good piece.  Go to the link to get all the good links.
Manon

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/02/acta_absurdity_conti=
nues.html

ACTA absurdity continues, may only get worse

The saga of the misleadingly named "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement" has only gotten more ridiculous since I decried it in
November.

For those of you whose eyes (understandably) glaze over at any mention
of multilateral trade agreements, ACTA is an attempt by the United
States and dozens of other countries to write new rules to combat
counterfeiting of trademarked goods, as its name suggests, and to stop
copyright violations as well, a goal left out of its moniker. (If
you've got a spare 90 minutes, you can watch a video of a panel
discussion I led about ACTA at Google's Washington offices last month.)

But what might those exact rules be? The people negotiating this deal
say they'll tell us when they've finished that work. In the meantime,
they will only offer vague declarations about the problems they aim to
solve.

Consider, for example, the woefully bland statement put out by the
office of the U.S. trade representative after the conclusion of the
latest round of ACTA talks last month. Then compare it with the
briefer but far more useful summary put together from outside reports
by ACTA opponent Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of
Ottawa.

That level of secrecy has begun to draw criticism from groups that
were early proponents of ACTA. For example, in November the Motion
Picture Association of America wrote a letter to U.S. Trade
Representative Ron Kirk requesting greater transparency and public
participation. And at the end of January, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
voiced similar thoughts in a press release -- sentiments that went
unsaid in a June 2009 endorsement of ACTA.

But the administration itself -- yes, the one that keeps emphasizing
the virtues of transparency and open government -- doesn't seem to be
getting the memo. In an interview with the trade publication World
Trademark Review (note: you may get hit with a site-registration
request after reloading that link), USTR adviser Stan McCoy blamed
ACTA anxiety over the "misperception that this agreement will focus
mostly or exclusively on copyright infringement in the digital
environment."

BZZT! You can't whine about a "misperception" about what you're doing
when you don't tell people what you're doing.

One concept to come up in too many reports about the substance of ACTA
to be chalked up to a "misperception" is a concept called either
"graduated response" or "three strikes." This is the idea that this
agreement would endorse, encourage or require Internet providers to
disconnect the accounts of users found to be sharing copyrighted
materials.

How might this sort of privatized law enforcement work? One example
emerged this week in a CNet story about a Qwest Internet user who was
wrongly threatened with disconnection -- a threat that included the
suggestion that she would be blackballed by competing Internet
providers -- until Qwest responded to CNet's inquiries by
investigating her situation and discovered that her home network had
been compromised.

Qwest's conduct, unfortunately, doesn't even seem that bad compared
with some of the appallingly dumb things said in favor of three-
strikes policies during a panel discussion at last week's State of the
Net Conference.

Now remember that the discussion about ACTA is just getting warmed up.
I can only imagine what will happen when the more... motivated Tea
Party types start paying attention to stories with headline
descriptions like "SECRET COPYRIGHT TREATY." Care to take a guess at
how the debate will turn at that point?

By Rob Pegoraro  |  February 3, 2010; 12:56 PM ET

***************************************************************************
Manon Ress
manon.ress@keionline.org
Knowledge Ecology International
1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA
Tel.:  +1.202.332.2670, Fax: +1.202.332.2673

Il vaut mieux remuer une question, sans la d=E9cider, que la d=E9cider,
sans la remuer. (Pens=E9es, essais, maximes et correspondance de J.
Joubert  p.249)
Translation: It is better to debate a question without settling it
than to settle a question without debating it