Christopher Leger

International trade agreements rarely make front page news, and even then only when the agreements are signed, binding the signatory countries to them. Because of this, the standard practice for negotiating these trade agreements is extraordinarily opaque due to press disinterest and the lack of the same open-government laws that many nations have regulating how legislation is negotiated.

The ACTA negotiations are much, much more secretive than this standard, and yet will effect virtually every person who uses the internet on the entire planet. It is imperative that the entirety of this information becomes public before the agreement is finalized and becomes law.

Over the last several months, the ACTA veil of secrecy has been lifted a tiny bit, with a few documents leaking out. These documents show that ACTA does very little to police counterfeit good trafficking, but does expand and enhance copyright policing, drastically alter the burden of proof in copyright cases, and limits or eliminates judicial oversight. It is clear that the very few trade groups or corporations invited to sit on an advisory committee (MPAA, RIAA, Verizon, Monsanto, etc., etc.) have made ACTA a wish-list of proposals that would be nearly impossible to push through the standard legislative process in most countries, especially the United States.

These leaked ACTA documents show that the agreement includes the following provisions:

• Force all Internet Service Providers to provide information about suspected copyright infringers without a warrant. This information can be used to disconnect a user from the internet without judicial due process.

• Eliminate the “Safe Harbor” that ISPs currently have under the DMCA, and hold them responsible for each and every subscriber’s actions, forcing the ISP to comply without the judicial due process that is proscribed by the DMCA.

• Required, random searches without probable cause at all international borders of laptops, MP3 players, and mobile phones for music and movies.

This trade agreement gives police and judicial powers to trade groups, creates an international culture of surveillance, and has already enshrined into law the laughable idea that copyright enforcement has a serious national security component. The requests for disclosure from the EFF, Doctors without Borders, The Consumers Union, and many others have all been met with stonewalling due to these same ludicrous national security interests.

Please go to the EFF action page and share your thoughts on this trade agreement with your Senators before it is too late.  Senators Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown are spearheading a move to force the United States Trade Representative to make the ACTA text public, and additional support from your Senator will do nothing but help. Time is of the essence, because the final version of the text is due to be written in January 2010, and by then it will be too late.