|
Academics, Politicians: Pending Global Treaty Threatens
Free Internet, Fundamental Rights
ACTA: Flagship of the growing internet censorship
armada
|
|
|
 Over
90 academics, practitioners and public interest organizations
from six continents have collectively warned that a secretive
global treaty, currently being negotiated by governments of
the world's largest economies would see tight controls placed
on the internet and would threaten other fundamental rights
and freedoms.
The Anti-Counterfeiting
Trade Agreement (ACTA) has received fleeting public
attention, yet it has been quietly evolving for a number of
years.
On it's face ACTA is described as a countermeasure directed
at the rise of counterfeit goods, medicines and pirated copyright
protected material, including "piracy over the Internet".
If officially ratified, however, ACTA would mark the formation
of a major new global legal infrastructure with relation to
standards on intellectual property rights enforcement.
It would also see the formation of an international governing
body to oversee implementation of the agreement. That body would
operate beyond the jurisdiction of national governments and
even beyond that of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the United
Nations.
ACTA would effectively challenge already defined national court
precedents regarding consumer rights and "fair use"
laws and could fundamentally alter or remove limitations altogether
on the application of intellectual property laws.
The US, along with all the countries of the European Union
as well as Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a handful
of other countries, have been involved in the ACTA negotiations
since 2006.
Leaked drafts of the agreement in 2008, 2009 and most recently
in April 2010 have raised concern over the legal scope of the
proposed treaty. The secrecy surrounding the negotiations has
also prompted further worry over the draconian provisions within
the agreement. The
Electronic Frontier Foundation, along with other
notable watchdog organisations, have called for more transparency
on ACTA.
A group of international experts was convened last month by
the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property
at The American University Washington College of Law to debate
the proposed treaty. The group later released
a communique that makes worrying reading.
"ACTA is the predictably deficient product of a deeply
flawed process." The statement reads. "What started
as a relatively simple proposal to coordinate customs enforcement
has transformed into a sweeping and complex new international
intellectual property and internet regulation with grave consequences
for the global economy and governments' ability to promote and
protect the public interest."
The communique bullet points the following four key conclusions:
- Negotiators claim ACTA will not interfere with citizens'
fundamental rights and liberties; it will.
- They claim ACTA is consistent with the WTO Agreement on
Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS);
it is not.
- They claim ACTA will not increase border searches or interfere
with cross-border transit of legitimate generic medicines;
it will.
- And they claim that ACTA does not require "graduated
response" disconnections of people from the internet;
however, the agreement strongly encourages such policies.
Those who endorsed the statement include professors from leading
universities across the globe and several European members of
parliament who have formed a working group on ACTA.
The group identified at least seven critical areas of global
public policy in which ACTA is hostile to the public interest.
They define these as:
"fundamental rights and freedoms; internet governance;
access to medicines; scope and nature of intellectual property
law; international trade; international law and institutions;
and democratic process."
With specific reference to internet governance, the group says
ACTA would:
- Encourage internet service providers to police the activities
of internet users by holding internet providers responsible
for the actions of subscribers, conditioning safe harbors
on adopting policing policies, and by requiring parties to
encourage cooperation between service providers and rights
holders;
- Encourage this surveillance, and the potential for punitive
disconnections by private actors, without adequate court oversight
or due process;
- Globalize 'anti-circumvention' provisions which threaten
innovation, competition, free (freedom-respecting) software,
open access business models, interoperability, the enjoyment
of user rights, and user choice;
Internet law professor Michael Geist has
previously spoken out against ACTA, noting that
"The provisions would pave the way for a globalized three-strikes
and you’re out system," referring to a proposal within
the treaty to have internet service providers cut off service
- without access to a trial or counsel - to anyone accused at
least three times of illegally sharing copyrighted material.
Geist has
also noted that "offenders" could even
be imprisoned for sharing copyrighted material.
The three strikes policy mirrors that contained within the
recently passed Digital
Economy Bill in the UK, with similar provisions
also outlined in Australian legislation, indicating that ACTA
negotiations may also be driving national government policy
on internet regulation proposals.
"The US government appears to be pushing for Three Strikes
to be part of the new global IP enforcement regime which ACTA
is intended to create..." Gwen Hinze at the Electronic
Frontier Foundation has
previously noted. "...despite the fact that
it has been categorically rejected by the European Parliament
and by national policymakers in several ACTA negotiating countries,
and has never been proposed by US legislators,".
The agreement would also force internet service providers to
crack down on sites that offer file sharing and peer to peer
software, even though those sites may be entirely legitimate.
ACTA could even see popular Web sites like YouTube and Flickr
shut down because of a provision in the treaty that would force
them to monitor everything uploaded to the site for copyright
violations.
The upshot is that all current and future innovations that
allow knowledge and information to be distributed on a mass
scale are directly threatened by ACTA simply because it presumes
such technology will be used by a minority to distribute material
that is deemed copyrighted.
ACTA represents another huge warship in an armada directing
it's guns at the free internet. We have previously highlighted
countless
similar legislative programs that have either been
enacted or are working their way into law in the U.S., Australia,
New Zealand, Britain, and many other European countries.
In addition, ACTA is so much more than an internet censorship
bill, it covers physical goods and even medicines, while systematically
re-writing previously established laws on trade and intellectual
property.
Further
Reading: Text of Urgent ACTA Communique
Further
reading: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - Wikipedia Entry
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alex
Jones LIVE, A Fourth Hour Of Streaming TV Now Added To The Infowars
Radio Show
Click here to get your subscription today!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
|
|
