The U.S. Trade Representative’s office held a public meeting on the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement today, a process we have encouraged. The meeting was yet another example of the transparency they’ve demonstrated throughout this process. USTR has from the beginning informed everyone — and I mean everyone, since they post on their web site — the US goals for ACTA, the general principles all ACTA nations are bringing to the negotiations, and the dates and locations of each meeting as well as the general topics of discussion.

As a former international relations major whose specialty was diplomacy, let me just say that to reveal any more — especially when there isn’t likely any one document to share, given negotiations mean language is always in flux — ensures there will never be any agreement. Parties need to feel free to posit positions that their government might not want to publicly endorse, in order to move the discussion forward. That opportunity ceases once deliberations are public. It is absurd to want to shut down discussions that would allow nations to cooperate more closely in enforcing existing copyright laws and treaty obligations. But apparently some parties would prefer to see these laws continue to remain largely unenforced, because the failure of ACTA would guarantee that outcome. As Assistant US Trade Representative for Intellectual Property Stan McCoy said, the current process “respects the expectations of confidentiality of our trading partners.”

The testimony of the Copyright Alliance given verbally at today’s meeting and also submitted in writing emphasizes how important ACTA would be to the 11 million workers in copyright-related industries. It also knocks down a recurring myth that has circulated online about ACTA, a myth McCoy also dismissed. He noted border crossing discussions focused on providing ex officio powers to Customs officials to seize clear counterfeit shipments of massive size at ports and other entry locations. To quote today’s Congress Daily PM story by Andrew Noyes:

“This debate has nothing to do with checking iPods at the border,” echoed the Copyright Alliance’s Patrick Ross during a question-and-answer session. “This has to do with vast criminal operations around the globe taking the cultural output of U.S. workers and duplicating it for sale at the expense of our workers.”

Yet an EFF representative returned to that theme, decrying the possibility of seized and searched iPods, and later on someone from Students for Free Culture also was fixated on border crossings, although at least he had the good sense not to explicitly mention iPods.

I’ve learned a valuable lesson in my 20 years in Washington. If someone is wedded to an inaccurate meme, no amount of logic will force a divorce.

There were other concerns, largely from Internet-related industries who raised various specters of reduced safe-harbors, new Internet regulations, etc. Yet they failed to listen to what McCoy repeatedly emphasized, namely that ACTA cannot change US law, only Congress can. If any of these companies have the protections they speak of now, they will still have them after ACTA is adopted. It raises the question of why else they might want to obstruct a treaty designed to increase cooperation in enforcing existing IP laws.

What is so promising about ACTA? Existing treaties, in particular WIPO’s TRIPs treaty, focus on legal frameworks for IP enforcement. ACTA will go beyond that, developing rules of the road for international cooperation and enforcement at standards above those of WIPO. Those participating in the negotiations include Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States. That group may be small relative to the number of nations on the planet, but it represents five continents and it includes both developed and developing countries. USTR is hopeful other nations will join ACTA after it is ratified.

McCoy said USTR remains determined to have an agreement with its trading partners by year-end, but will not accept a poor agreement merely to meet a deadline. It was possible the negotiations would extend into next year. That seemed possible, given how much he said had been discussed (border enforcement in Geneva in June, civil remedies in the US in July) and what was scheduled (criminal enforcement in Tokyo in October). While we at the Copyright Alliance also will reserve final judgment until the completed ACTA is made public, we are very supportive of the efforts of all of the participating ACTA nations and hope to see an agreement that truly toughens global IP enforcement.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 3:59 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright law, copyright opponents, counterfeit, creators, international. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.