[Infowarrior] - Senator Demands IP Treaty Details

[Richard Forno]

Senator Demands IP Treaty Details
	• By David Kravets
	• January 7, 2010  |
	• 5:39 pm  |
	• Categories: Digital Millennium Copyright Act, intellectual property
	•
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/senator-demands-details/
That a U.S. senator must ask a federal agency to share information  
regarding a proposed and “classified” international anti- 
counterfeiting accord the government has already disclosed is  
alarming. Especially when the info has been given to Hollywood, the  
recording industry, software makers and even some digital-rights groups.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) is demanding that U.S. Trade Representative  
Ron Kirk confirm leaks surrounding the unfinished Anti-Counterfeiting  
Trade Agreement, being negotiated largely between the European Union  
and United States. Among other things, Wyden wants to know if the deal  
creates international guidelines that mean consumers lose internet  
access if they are believed to be digital copyright scofflaws.

He also wants to know whether internet service providers could lose  
“safe harbor” protection for failing to police their customers’  
digital content for copyright infringement violations. Such a move  
would heap copyright liability onto the ISP, and fundamentally alter  
U.S. copyright law.

What “legal incentives,” Wyden asked Kirk in a Wednesday letter, would  
“encourage Online Service Providers (OSPs) to cooperate with copyright  
owners to deter the unauthorized storage or transmission of  
copyrighted materials.”

The questions came weeks after leaked documents from the European  
Union suggested the United States was taking those positions on the  
accord’s draft internet section.

Nefeterius Akeli McPherson, a Kirk spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that  
the office is “looking forward to responding” to the letter that was  
disclosed Thursday by human-rights lobby Knowledge Ecology  
International.

Wyden wrote that the “objectives behind the negotiations still remain  
inadequately clear to the American public.”

The administration has shared the secret treaty’s internet-section  
contents with more than three dozen individuals in the private sector,  
from the left and the right of the copyright debate. Those individuals  
include Business Software Alliance attorney Emery Simon, Google  
copyright czar Bill Patry and president of Public Knowledge Gigi Sohn.  
Lawyers for the movie studios and record labels, which stand to gain  
the most from the accord, were also given access.

All signed confidentiality agreements with Kirk’s office.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act claim from Knowledge  
Ecology International, Kirk’s office declined to divulge the accord’s  
working draft — maintaining that the negotiating texts were “properly  
classified” national security secrets. Kirk said last month that the  
international community would walk away from the negotiating table if  
the public could see the working drafts.

The ACTA negotiating nations include Australia, Canada, European Union  
states, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore,  
Switzerland and the United States. They are to meet Jan. 25 in Mexico  
City.

The agreement does not require congressional approval.