ACTA Agreement Gets People Acting Up...

MPAA head Dan Glickman sent a letter yesterday to both Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and to US Trade Representative Ron Kirk in which he called for a serious US push to pass the secretive Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. That's certainly expected—ACTA contains a host of goodies for Hollywood and the recording industry—but what came as a surprise was Glickman's irritation at various ACTA "protests" which create "apprehension over the Agreement's substance."

He's referring to online outlets that have hoisted the anti-ACTA flag over the last year, accusing the treaty of being a pretext for ramming "three strikes" laws through without Congressional oversight or empowering Customs agents to check the contents of your iPod. Based on our reporting, neither of these items appears to be in the draft text, but the secretive nature of the negotiations and the bland, impenetrable public statements about ACTA have fueled plenty of suspicion.

The process has created a debate over the very notion of "transparency" as applied to international negotiations, but it's not a discussion Glickman wants to be having at the moment. His letter argues that "outcries on the lack of transparency in the ACTA negotiations are a distraction. They distract from the substance and ambition of the ACTA…"—which sounds like a roundabout way of asking negotiators to ignore the cries of a clamoring public and simply get on with the business of cobbling together a Hollywood-friendly trade agreement.

This is certainly how groups like Public Knowledge are painting the letter; staff attorney Sherwin Siy called Glickman's words "a pathetic excuse for logic. It borders on the Chewbacca Defense for its use of non-sequitur. The 'substance and ambition' of the ACTA? And what, pray tell, is so important in the substance of ACTA that it trumps the fundamentals of open government?"

Or, in other words, "You bring the pitchforks, I've got the torches; we march on the castle of the evil tyrant come nightfall!" And, frankly, we should be marching on the castles of those who try to trump the fundamentals of open government and turn public power to private ends.

But that's not quite what the letter says. The next (unquoted) paragraph says that the MPAA "appreciates" the US Trade Representative's efforts to open ACTA up to (a tiny bit of) scrutiny. (Siy certainly knows about this, as he was one of the 42 people invited to see and comment on the US-drafted Internet section of ACTA).

"We support this objective and encourage the US government to direct the [transparency] process so that we can engage in a meaningful dialogue on substance rather than procedural matters," says the letter.

Glickman & Co. are actually asking USTR to open the process further in order to have a debate on the issues raised by the text rather than a having arguments about transparency, or arguments about terrifying items that aren't actually in the text. Remove the process objections so we can talk about substance; isn't this exactly what the reform groups want?

Only real transparency will do
It sounds like a good idea to us, but of course much depends on what is actually done. The "open" process so far has consisted largely of draft texts shown to a few public interest lawyers under strict nondisclosure agreements—pretty pitiful stuff for a fast-tracked trade agreement that won't need Senate approval, but will try to export the DMCA to the rest of the world. This is being done in our name, and we want to see and weigh in on our trade agreement… before the negotiators are done and it becomes a fait accompli.

As for those negotiators, here's what they have to say. "A variety of groups have shown their interest in getting more information on the substance of the negotiations and have requested that the draft text be disclosed," said USTR this month (PDF). "However, it is accepted practice during trade negotiations among sovereign states to not share negotiating texts with the public at large, particularly at earlier stages of the negotiation. This allows delegations to exchange views in confidence facilitating the negotiation and compromise that are necessary in order to reach agreement on complex issues. At this point in time, ACTA delegations are still discussing various proposals for the different elements that may ultimately be included in the agreement. A comprehensive set of proposals for the text of the agreement does not yet exist."

Glickman may care about little more than throwing a sop to critics in order to get the agreement concluded, but the USTR should in fact follow the MPAA lead on this and get serious about transparency, and quickly. ACTA is expected to be concluded in 2010, and asking for public input a couple weeks before signing is simply not good enough; as the outcry over ACTA has shown, people care about these issues in a way they did not a generation ago. They aren't going to be satisfied if they're presented with a stinker and asked to simply hold their noses.

Once real transparency arrives and the US drops its ridiculous claims about "national security," Americans—and the millions of other who will be affected by ACTA—can have a real debate about bringing DMCA-style anti-circumvention laws to the rest of the world and about whether noncommercial P2P activity can ever deserve criminal penalties.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...a-openness.ars

I find it interesting that the big movie studios, record labels and Feds have pretty much 'passed' behind closed doors without any transparency :eek:

Regards,

Lee