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ACTA Round Ten Concludes: Deal May Be One Month Away, Updated Text To Remain Secret

Round ten of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations in Washington concluded on Friday with countries confirming progress on all fronts and hopes to reach agreement on all remaining substantive issues at the next round in negotiations in Japan in late September.  While the joint statement is not yet online, Reuters reports that the U.S. believes the remaining issues – including the U.S. – E.U. divide over geographical indications – could be resolved at the next meeting.  The statement repeats earlier assurances about the impact on fundamental rights, cross-border transit of generic medicines, and iPod searching border guards.

It also appears that there was again no agreement on releasing the draft text, with the U.S. presumably the ongoing obstacle.  Instead, countries pledge to release the final text before deciding to sign it.  Yet releasing the text once negotiations are concluded is too late.  Countries always have the option of not signing an agreement (or later not implementing), but once the treaty is concluded it will be too late to make substantive changes.  The decision to block release of the draft text is a serious blow to ACTA transparency just as the agreement appears to be nearing conclusion.

Update: The official joint statement has now been posted. It confirms that the draft text following this round will not be released.

18 Comments

  1. Perhaps the solution is to Scrap Copyright Completely! — check out this article
    “No Copyright Law – The Real Reason for Germany’s Industrial Expansion?”
    http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,710976,00.html
    This Spiegel Online International article by Frank Thadeusz (posted 18 Aug 2010) makes a compelling case (or at least forces us to consider) that the complete LACK OF COPYRIGHT LAW – was the single most contributing force behind that countries success!
    “Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to an absence of copyright law? A German historian argues that the massive proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the country’s industrial might.”

  2. Copyright Law Crippled the World of Knowledge!!!
    Think that’s shocking?
    “Even more startling is the factor Höffner believes caused this development — in his view, it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom.”
    Claims Frank Thadeusz in his Spiegel Online International article (posted 18 Aug 2010)
    http://www.spiegel.de/
    international/zeitgeist/0,1518,710976,00.html

  3. I wonder what the EU Parliament has to say about this, considering:

    http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/AdoptedText/ta10/EREC1908.htm

    ACTA talks should be completely transparent, or they should back out! This will be a test of the EU parliament’s stance on ACTA I think. Let’s see how much they have sold out. At this point they should be threatening to back out here.

  4. Scrap Copyright Completely
    That’s exactly what Moore said. If you EITHER don’t want them to make all lock-breaking illegal,
    OR if you don’t want them to make spying on all traffic mandatory and encryption illegal,
    THEN the architecture of the Internet dictates that it must follow logically that you want the radical solution, which is that copyright won’t be enforceable online.
    This is the same as saying that you either agree with free speech or you don’t, but you can’t say that ONLY SOME speech should be free.
    We have to weigh the potential for evil that would ensue if we allow some people in some companies or governments the power to spy on everything, versus the evil that comes from being able to copy, conspire, and slander with this new modern ease.
    I say access to information cannot, in itself, be evil, but the restriction of access to information can most certainly be evil.
    Consequently we should be promoting anonymous access by default, not just when you’ve got something to hide.
    Something like TOR or other anonymizing VPN should be government funded and promoted as our patriotic duty.

  5. Actually Captialism itself needs to be scrapped completely!
    Because if we’re living in a system opposite (i.e. socialism) to capitalism, ACTA would have never existed.

  6. Here is the good thing
    The president of the US will sign this, he will rush it through. It is a horrible agreement-treaty. He has no right under US law to do this. The citizens of the US are not really waking up to what is going on, they are getting annoyed. This is yet one more thing to get annoyed at.

  7. pat donovan says:

    grunt process
    this (actra) is about the same level as legislating pi.

    web 3.0 will be AI watchers; the whitelist sanitized web.

    and they need all the UFO tech they can dig up to enforce it.
    packrat

  8. pat donovan says:

    grunt silliness
    ACTRA is on a level with legislating PI

    web 3.0 wil be AI wacthers; preemptive arrests, etc in a whitelisted security zone.
    they’ll need all the UFO tech they can dig up to enforce it.
    packrat

  9. So what do we do?
    besides signing up to TOR or IPRED, what can be done here? I’ve mailed my MP a strongly worded letter, but I doubt that will get anything done as I feel I am generally not represented.

  10. cndcitizen says:

    Well thank goodness that Canada won’t sign because
    The PM will not be around much longer and the toadie that is representing Canada will soon be out of a job….thank goodness for elections.

    Not only that but their neo-craziness agenda is just getting to be too much.

  11. Sorry, Michael.
    Despite your best efforts to concern troll the proceedings, it looks like sensibility will prevail.

    I look forward to September.

  12. Captain Hook says:

    It’ll be great!
    Aye, right you are Alex. The sooner this treaty is passed, and the sooner Bill C-32 is passed, the sooner there will be new pirates from which to select me crew. These two pieces of work will create more pirates then I ever could on me late night village kidnapping expeditions. Arrrrrr. I love it when the government does me dirty work for me.

  13. Maturity?
    Come on, the current draft is not close to conclusion, they should not try to rush trough an immature draft. It takes time but we cannot afford failure in such an important matter. If they conclude ACTA in September, Parliaments should not accept it. The text is not even close to ready.

  14. @Andre
    Who said it was ready, and what has that got to do with transparency during the negotiations? If it was already complete, then obviously it would be too late to worry about transparency during the negotiations.


  15. It’ll get leaked. It always gets leaked. Can’t believe the US still thinks that this non-transparency thing really does anything for anybody.

  16. @Alex
    Democracy always wins, you might want to remember that. Fortunately our politicians are not as corrupt as those in the US. I don’t know why some in the creative community insist they have more control over our politics than the people. I find that common notion to be comical, and disturbing at the same time.

    The public will decide the fate of this in Canada. That is almost 100% assured, and I can tell you that MG has the full support of the public specifically on this issue. Good luck trying to sell the rights of Canadians away, and making them think it’s a good idea. Not going to happen. In fact many at the negotiating table are not happy about this agreement.

    Look at what happened in Australia this past weekend, and Britain this year, and Obama now. There will be political consequences in the polls, there already has been. It seems like people don’t quite like it when their politicians don’t listen to them. It’s a growing sentiment world wide right now. Not good for any politician to play into that especially with ACTA.

  17. ACTA will do more to highlight and make the public aware of the overreach and greed of the media cartels, than it will ever benefit from through it’s failed legislation.

  18. >”Well thank goodness that Canada won’t sign because
    The PM will not be around much longer and the toadie that is representing Canada will soon be out of a job….thank goodness for elections.”

    I wish that were true but it isn’t. Once the EU and US negotiators agree to the final draft hen the US and EU will go into a full court press including threatening trade sanctions if Canada doesn’t pass it. One of the most dangerous parts of this is that it does bind Canada before parliament even gets to look at it. The power to stop this is in the US and the EU.

    If this really is a month away then it means two things. First you can expect the next draft of the copyright law to be put on hold until it is done and you can say good but to Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches, Chicago style deep dish pizza, Parmigian cheese etc.