[Ip-health] 100 groups demand to see secret anticounterfeiting treaty

[Sarah Rimmington]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080916-100-groups-demand-to-see-secr=
et-anticounterfeiting-treaty.html

100 groups demand to see secret anticounterfeiting treaty
Arts Technica
By Nate Anderson
September 16, 2008

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is on a fast-track
process as rich nations hope to wrap it up by the end of the year.
Unfortunately for everyone who cares about the outcome, it's midway
through September, and no draft text has yet emerged. The secrecy and
the delay have inspired many conspiracy theories, none helped by leaked
sets of corporate "wish lists" and public comments making outrageous
demands. A worldwide group of public interest organizations has now
banded together to call on ACTA negotiators to open the process up to
scrutiny and public comment.

The letter, signed by more than 100 groups, has tough words for ACTA
negotiators. "The lack of transparency in negotiations of an agreement
that will affect the fundamental rights of citizens of the world is
fundamentally undemocratic," it says. "It is made worse by the public
perception that lobbyists from the music, film, software, video games,
luxury goods and pharmaceutical industries have had ready access to the
ACTA text and pre-text discussion documents through long-standing
communication channels."

Seven specific concerns are cited, all based on leaked documents or
public comments from various trade groups, many of which seem bent on
turning an anti-counterfeiting agreement into something more
wide-ranging. It's unclear what the negotiators themselves think of most
such requests, but that's part of the problem. According to the letter,
ACTA might:

    * Require Internet Service Providers to monitor all consumers'
Internet communications, terminate their customers' Internet connections
based on rights-holders' repeated allegation of copyright infringement,
and divulge the identity of alleged copyright infringers possibly
without judicial process
    * Interfere with fair use of copyrighted materials
    * Criminalize peer-to-peer file sharing
    * Interfere with legitimate parallel trade in goods, including the
resale of brand-name pharmaceutical products
    * Impose liability on manufacturers of active pharmaceutical
ingredients (APIs), if those APIs are used to make counterfeits
    * Improperly criminalize acts not done for commercial purpose and
with no public health consequences
    * Improperly divert public resources into enforcement of private rights

Signatories of the letter include everyone from the EFF to the
Australian National University to the Canadian Internet Policy & Public
Interest Clinic to Korea's Christian Media Network to the Dutch
Consumentenbond to Thailand's Drug Study Group (DSG) to the Ecologist
Collective from Guadalajara, M=E9xico to the Egyptian Initiative for
Personal Rights. It's a dizzying list with worldwide backing, but the
more important question is whether it will have any effect.

To date, ACTA negotiators have proved themselves supremely resistant to
involving stakeholders in the process, and many of these groups are from
countries not even involved in the negotiations. Different national
negotiators have followed different strategies, though, and credit has
to be given to the office of the US Trade Representative, which
requested (and then published) a lengthy series of public commentary on
the treaty.

Without much to go on apart from some leaked documents, though, the
comments became a set of "we like/we hate" lists. Because of the
secrecy, it remains unclear which of the suggestions USTR is pushing in
its negotiating sessions. However, up in Canada, news over the summer
suggested that the recording business, movie studios, and video game
makers were welcome to advise ACTA negotiators in private. Meanwhile,
privacy groups, NGOs, and other stakeholders are forced to wait in the
hallway

--
Sarah Rimmington
Attorney
Essential Action, Access to Medicines Project
Washington, DC
Tel: (202) 387-8030
Cell: (202) 422-2687
www.essentialaction.org/access/