The Secrecy of ACTA

Not Available

Something is going on with ACTA. As Wikipedia knows, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a proposed plurilateral trade agreement that would impose strict enforcement of intellectual property rights related to Internet activity and trade in information-based goods. The agreement is currently negotiated by the governments of the United States, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada, and Mexico, and the European Commission:

"The negotiation of the ACTA treaty are not conducted as part of any international organisation. The European Commission, the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and other government agencies have acknowledged participating in ACTA negotiations, but they have refused to release drafts of the treaty or to discuss specific terms under discussion in the negotiations. Public interest advocates in Canada filed an access to information request but received only a document stating the title of the agreement, with everything else blacked out."

And, for example, the Public Register of the Official Documents of the EU Council notes some Document 15588/08 simply titled "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)" the text of which, however, is not available to the public:

The parties to those secretive negotiations actually are doing a disservice to the international system of laws for IP protection. Whatever motivations the key players of this sort of wheeling and dealing may have: It surely will harm the public esteem of the entire system of IP protection. Even if the reasons were such that some powers involved therein merely want to shield the proceedings from a purely diplomatic perspective against destructive interferences from other countries, attempting e.g. to avoid the fate of the SPLT negotiations under the umbrella of WIPO, another aspect will prevail: The general public will recognise the secrecy of those talks as a vote of no confidence against them and not as as a measure of diplomatic routine. The perception will be of secretive deals to curtail legitimate utilisation of the Internet by the general public to do a favour to certain vested interests. Whatever the outcome of ACTA will be: When on some day texts are published, the general public will boo it down and denounce it as an illegitimate result of perfidiously gained fruits of back room diplomacy.

There is no aspect in IP politics that really deserves such a kind of secrecy. Twenty years ago one would have been tempted to shout demanding Glasnost but today openness and publicity apparently don't count much anymore. It appears as if transparency today is no relevant issue in IP politics. What a pity!