Australia should be added to the growing list of countries that are either rejecting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or expressing serious doubts about it. The Australian Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, which conducted an extensive review of ACTA, has just released its report and it is cautioning against ratification for now, noting that “there appears a very real possibility that ACTA will not be ratified by sufficient countries in order to come into existence.” The committee found many shortcomings with the treaty.  For example, on secrecy and the lack of transparency:

The most troubling aspect throughout the development of ACTA has been the opaque nature of the process. Whilst DFAT has stated that a certain level of confidentiality is required for trade negotiations, and while there is ground to enable a certain degree of secrecy where complex issues warrant negotiations in confidence, there is no valid rationale for the level of secrecy that DFAT has maintained for what is essentially a copyright treaty.

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