[Infowarrior] - ACTA: International Harmonization at What Cost?

[Richard Forno]

ACTA: International Harmonization at What Cost? Legal Analysis by Gwen  
Hinze
The next round of negotiations on ACTA start today in Guadalajara,  
Mexico. This week’s negotiations will apparently focus on civil  
enforcement, border measures, and enforcement procedures in the  
digital environment, and briefly, transparency.

One of the main goals of ACTA is creating new harmonized international  
IP enforcement standards above those in the 1994 TRIPs agreement.  
Thirty-seven countries with 37 different national laws are negotiating  
ACTA, so reaching agreement on new substantive IP enforcement  
standards will inevitably involve compromises. Some countries will be  
required to change their national law to bring them closer to other  
countries' approaches to IP regulation. Since two of the major powers  
negotiating ACTA are the US and the European Union (and its 27 Member  
States), there is much scope for different approaches and  
disagreements to arise. This is particularly true for Internet  
intermediary liability — where laws in the US and the various EU  
Member States take quite different approaches.

Which country prevails in this battle of legal wills will have  
tremendous consequences for citizens' access to knowledge and the  
future of the Internet as a powerful tool for communication, cross- 
border collaboration and a platform for innovation.

The EU has indicated that it is unwilling to agree to anything that  
requires changes to European Community law. EU negotiators would  
probably not be able to do so under their (still secret) negotiation  
mandate. On January 14, EU Commissioner-delegate for the Digital  
Agenda, Neelie Kroes stated that "The objective of ACTA negotiations  
is to provide the same safeguards as the EU did in the telecoms  
package... So we stick to our line and that's it."

For its part, the USTR has repeatedly said that ACTA will only "color  
within the lines of existing US law". Indeed, this is the  
justification for negotiating ACTA as a sole Executive Agreement,  
therefore bypassing the checks and balances of the usual Congressional  
oversight process applied to other recent free trade agreements, such  
as the US-South Korea FTA.

Given this, it is interesting to reflect on the leaked European  
Commission’s analysis of the US's Internet Chapter. Although draft  
text of the Internet chapter has not yet surfaced, the EU analysis  
discloses what the chapter covers: increased Internet intermediary  
liability, three strikes Internet disconnection obligations for ISPs,  
and civil and criminal technological protection measure laws modeled  
on the US DMCA.

(More after the Jump ..)

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/acta-international-harmonization-what-cost