ACTA negotiations

[chuck]

Not sure if this is strictly a world issue - but it's one that could affect all of us, so I'll plonk it here.

The 8th round of the ACTA negotiations are about to start in NZ.

Rather than babble all about it - just go to Wikipedia and read the info there. It's kind of like DMCA/DeBill/S92 but really, really ugly and big and shit. Think Jaws 3D - but without the dodgy special effects.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a proposed plurilateral trade agreement for establishing international standards on intellectual-property-rights enforcement throughout the participating countries.[1] Its proponents describe it as a response "to the increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works."[2] The scope of ACTA is broad, including counterfeit goods, generic medicines, as well as "piracy over the Internet".[3]

A document leaked to the public in 2008 includes a provision to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide information about suspected copyright infringers without a warrant.[4] A March 2010 leak included the proposed text for this provision.[5]

The negotiations for the ACTA treaty are conducted behind closed doors and are not part of any international organization.[2] In October 2007, the USA, the European Commission, Switzerland, and Japan first announced that they would negotiate ACTA. Since then the following countries joined the negotiations: Australia, Canada, Jordan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, and United Arab Emirates.

In response to the negotiations starting up here in NZ this week, an open public meeting was had over the last 2 days, and the result of those meetings and discussions is the "Wellington Declaration"

Take some time to read it - it's not too huge - and please sign - it's open to anyone who uses the internet and all the associated tubes.

But it's not just about using torrents to get the latest episodes of "How I met your Mother" - it's about intellectual property in all it's forms. Software, medicine, biotech, written words, music, code....