ACTA: don’t get scared yet, but keep your eyes peeled

Most of you probably don’t read the tech and IP blogs out there. So it seems appropriate for me to point y’all toward something currently making IP wonks go nuts worldwide–and which will, if passed, become a really big, bad deal.

Cory Doctorow over at boingboing was probably the first one on the scene, raising the alarm admirably with an article entitled “Secret copyright treaty leaks. It’s bad. Very bad.” This article gives a decent run-down on the leaked document from the ACTA negotiations, a series of secret meetings in which the world’s top Intellectual Property exporters are whipping up a document to mandate strict IP laws worldwide.  You can check out the document itself here–it’s pretty short.

To look at, the 3-page paper doesn’t seem like something Earth-shattering.  To the policy nuts who pay attention to this sort of thing, it’s one of the biggest and most cynical power plays imaginable.  Here’s a breakdown of a few key points:

• ACTA is being negotiated, in secret, by high-ranking unelected trade representatives from only the world’s highest IP exporters.  It’s built to be beneficial to those countries, and screw everyone else (the developing world).  Hey, Argentina.  Need AIDS medication for dying citizens?  Sorry, you can’t produce low-cost generics because Pfizer owns the patent!  Et cetera.
• ACTA will require ISPs to be criminally liable for all content on their servers.  Think we’re entering a new golden age of user-generated content, like Wikipedia, Youtube and Facebook becoming part of everyday life?  Not with ACTA, we’re not.  If anyone–anyone!–so much as contacts the ISP hosting your files and claims that you may be somehow violating their copyright, that ISP is now obligated to take down your shit.  No judge, no jury, only executioner.
• The bill is being modeled on the American Digital Milennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a bill which most of the more enlightened thinkers in copyright will tell you was a horrible, horrible idea going forward (including William Patry, who literally wrote the $1500 book).

This is just a brief overview.  Sure, there are upsides for content producers (like musicians, duh) having their copyrights, and I’m not disagreeing with that.  But this innocuous document seeks to impose a draconian system of enforcement upon the new era of communications, and as we move into a more and more networked world, we really can’t have that.  Check the links, as they give a much better view of what’s going on than I’ve done here.  If you want me to go more in-depth with the theory behind why this idea is a terrible one that will backstab the world, let me know and I’ll do another post on it.

Scary shit, but it’s not passed yet.  What should really worry you, though, is that if not for the leak a week ago, we wouldn’t have known a thing about this until it was law–no congressional debates, just the chamber of commerce and corporate wallets.

-Owen

P.S.–check out the comically boring press release.