The Internet as we know it -- YouTube, Flickr, Blogger, etc. -- may be facing extinction thanks to the United States and about 40 other countries, according to a secret document leaked by Wired.
The document relates to an international agreement called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on the enforcement of intellectual property rights, which is being led by the United States and in this case would be handled with something along the lines of the three-strikes policy mentioned here two months ago.
Cloaked in secrecy, the leaked document outlines "the state-of-play of the internet enforcement chapter that should be discussed at the next ACTA negotiating round in Seoul, Korea," and was discussed this last week with representatives of Australia, Canada, the European Union, represented by the European Commission, the EU Presidency (Sweden), and EU Member States, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States of America. The contained text was not for public release, nor were the names of the persons who attended this and other meetings, the titles of the documents, and essentially any other significant information about the ACTA negotiations.
According to The Huffington Post, the only ways to gain access to these ACTA documents are if you represent a big firm or law firm or are a member of the U.S. tech sector, and even so are sworn to silence through non-disclosure agreements.
Free culture crusader Cory Doctorow outlines what all this leaked three-page document means (via Boing Boing ):
* * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
* * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
* * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
* * Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)
From WIRED:
The Obama administration has been obsessively secretive about the draft ACTA treaty — even, at one point, claiming national security could be jeopardized if the proposed treaty’s working documents were disclosed to the public. Now, it seems, we know what the administration is hiding.
Obama hasn’t asked Congress to implement a three-strike policy, which could anger consumers and watchdog groups. But if the administration gets three strikes written into ACTA, and the United States signs and ratifies the treaty, Congress would be obliged to change the DMCA to comply with it, while the administration throws its hands in the air and says, “It wasn’t our idea! It’s that damn treaty!”
That practice is common enough to have a name: policy laundering.
From the looks of it any common agreement would favor mega media corporations most hurt by "copyright infringement" and the changing industry, almost like a free bail-out to businesses that have fallen somewhat obsolete. This disrupts and invades upon the free platform of the web, our privacy, civil rights, the first sale doctrine, and our democratic rights. Things look gnarly here and if passed such a ACTA would cripple culture as we know it, which makes one skeptical that anything could actually come of this. Nevertheless it is a very scary proposal.
According to Sweden, participants in the ACTA will meet again in Mexico in January 2010.
--Colin Stutz
Updating...
