Public ACTA - it concerns all of us

We've been very interested in the discussion about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (aka ACTA, a multi-lateral treaty put forward primarily by the US and Japan), which is being negotiated in complete secrecy by representatives of various sovereign countries (who have had to sign a non-disclosure agreement to participate).

We know a bit about recent drafts of the ACTA treaty because a copy has been leaked. So, besides being totally unpalatable as a result of flying in the face of the democratic process on which both NZ and the US are based, the ACTA treaty isn't about counterfeiting goods, although you might be forgiven for thinking so given its name. ACTA is, in fact, a wish list for new restrictions on copyrighted creative content, e.g. movies, music, books. It is the work of incredibly influential US-based lobbyists from the "content industry", namely record companies, publishers, and movie studios. Even though the "content industry" trumpets itself as the champions of the artists it represents, they are actually trying to protect their own interests to the detriment of citizens of signing countries. Not only would ACTA's draconian measures substantially curtail the concept of "fair use" in all countries signing up to ACTA, it probably won't fund artists to create more. In fact, artists are already creating more than ever before... they just happen to be circumventing the "content industry" to distribute it - instead they're doing it themselves, directly, via the 'net. Of course the motivations behind ACTA are probably more complicated (and unsettling) than that. Many of us believe that ACTA is intended to be a precondition for negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US, which quite a few of us believe is a dumb idea in itself.

ACTA is designed to create new "rights" for so-called rights-holders - namely shareholders of large corporations who see themselves as "content creators", despite the fact that they are primarily distributors of the work of actual artists, although they might have an arrangement with the artists giving them ownership of that artist's natural rights via government granted monopolies like copyright.

It is important to recognise that while we at Egressive are very aware of the idea of copyright, and depend on it to enforce the free and open source licenses under which all the software we create and almost all that we use are made available. We are also aware of the original purpose of copyright: to maximise the production - for the benefit of society - of creative works, by granting the artists the ability to benefit from their works for a fixed period of time - a temporary government-enforced monopoly. We believe that ACTA is fundamentally unnecessary, as, we believe, are the US-based corporations who appear to be driving the ACTA treaty, whose business models have, by and large, been made obsolete by the advent of the Internet. 

Recent ACTA drafts contain provisions for Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), make the circumvention (or providing tools for doing so) of Technical Protection Measures (TPMs) illegal (it attempts to propagate the hugely draconian Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA legislation which is in effect in the US), connectivity termination for any Internet users who are merely accused (not given a fair trial in a court of law) of infringing the copyright of others. Many of these provision fly in the face of democratically developed legislation that already exists in NZ - it will require law changes to "harmonise with our trading partners," thus circumventing the democratic process.

Starting today, the latest round of ACTA negotiations began behind closed doors in Wellington (the actual location is only known because it was leaked several weeks ago) and will continue for a few days (not sure how long).

A number of kiwis and distinguished guests from overseas, members of various organisations around NZ, including the NZOSS, InternetNZ, the Creative Freedom Foundation, and various others, took part in PublicACTA this past Saturday, 10 April, in Wellington - the event was sponsored by InternetNZ and very capably MC'd by Mr Nat Torkington. The purpose of PublicACTA was to create the "Wellington Declaration" (PDF) - a collective position statement by the PublicACTA participants on the purpose, scope, and process of ACTA, to be publicised widely and provided to the ACTA negotiators meeting in Wellington starting today. In addition, PublicACTA participants have set up a petition, to which anyone can sign his or her name in support of that statement. The petition will be presented to the ACTA negotiators tomorrow (Tuesday 12 April), and at the time of this writing, there are 3893, and people watching it on Twitter see them coming in at the rate of 8 per minute.

If you'd like more background on ACTA in general, and want to follow the results of what we can find out about this round of secret negotiations (and the next round in Switzerland), check http://acta.net.nz regularly.