[Infowarrior] - Video: ACTA treaty debated in DC: must-see video

[Richard Forno]

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/15/secret-copyright-tre-2.html

The drive to ram through the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade  
Agreement is ramping up, with the next meeting set for the end of this  
month in Mexico. ACTA is an unprecedented copyright treaty  
(unprecedented in that it reaches farther than previous copyright  
treaties, and that it is being negotiated behind closed doors, without  
any public input or oversight) that will force copyright policing  
duties on Internet companies (vastly increasing the cost of hosting  
"user-generated content"); create new penalties for infringement  
(including Draconian penalties such as disconnection from the Internet  
on accusations of infringement); and require countries to search hard- 
drives, personal media players, and other personal data at their  
borders.

Last month, Google's DC office hosted a public debate on ACTA, with  
Steven J. Metalitz, a lawyer and lobbyist representing the  
International Intellectual Property Alliance; Jamie Love, an activist  
with Knowledge Ecology International; Jonathan Band, a lawyer  
representing a coalition of library groups and a variety of tech and  
Internet companies and Ryan Clough from Silicon Valley Congresswoman  
Zoe Lofgren's office; moderated by Washington Post consumer technology  
columnist Rob Pegoraro.

The video runs to 90 minutes. I don't get a lot of 90-minute chunks of  
time in my life, but I made time for this. It was one of the most  
spirited -- even heated -- debates I've heard on the subject, and it  
got into substantive questions of law, jurisdiction, economics and  
ethics. It was especially interesting to hear Metalitz, the main  
mouthpiece for the private corporate interests behind this proposal,  
attempt to defend both the proposal and the secrecy behind it.

Two recurring points that Metalitz raised were that the secrecy in the  
treaty was a requirement of foreign negotiating partners, and the US's  
hands were tied; and that the treaty wouldn't require any of the  
"advanced" nations to change their law (he repeated the oft-heard  
unfounded slur that Canada is a rogue nation when it comes to  
copyright law).

Both of these points are simply wrong. The country demanding that ACTA  
be kept secret is the good old US of A, whose strategy for this is  
being driven by former entertainment industry lawyers who have found  
new homes as senior officials in the Obama government (the Democrats  
are terrible on copyright, sadly -- we can thank Bill Clinton for the  
Digital Millennium Copyright Act). These lawyers are Metalitz's old  
pals, his colleagues in the decades he's spent winning special  
privileges and public subsidy for his rich clients.

Even more ridiculous is the claim that ACTA won't require any changes  
to law (if that was true, why bother with it?). As the EU's  
Commissioner-designate for the Internal Market stated, ACTA will trump  
the democratic law made by elected governments, requiring changes that  
are created in smoke-filled rooms that only corporate bigwigs get  
access to.

ACTA is a profoundly undemocratic undertaking, as is amply  
demonstrated in the debate in this video. K-street lobbyists,  
corporate execs, and other movers and shakers know everything that's  
going on in the ACTA negotiations, but the public is frozen out of the  
debate. And as Jamie Love points out, public access to other copyright  
negotiations -- such as those at WIPO -- have fundamentally changed  
their directions, because the public doesn't want expensive gags and  
handcuffs put on the Internet in order to bolster the entertainment  
industry's profits.

Watch this video. It may be the most productive 90 minutes you spend  
today.