New Zealand hosts ACTA talks

NEW ZEALAND HOSTED the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations today.

The eighth round of talks were held in Wellington today with a host of countries drafting proposals get the ACTA sanctioned by the end of the year.

At the session, the potential signatories agreed to make details of the divisive treaty public for the first time.

In a joint statement, the gathered countries said they intended to make a draft text of the meeting available to the public on April 21:

"Participants have reached unanimous agreement that the time is right for making available to the public the consolidated text coming out of these discussions."

This "will reflect the substantial progress made at this round."

During the round of discussion, the trade representatives struck a blow against the UK's Digital Economy Act. The commission stated it had no truck with three strikes and you're out schemes, which runs counter to the Act and copyright enforcement policies sought by the enterainment industry cartels we call the MAFIAA:

"While the participants recognise the importance of responding effectively to the challenge of Internet piracy, they confirmed that no participant is proposing to require governments to mandate a ‘graduated response' or ‘three strikes' approach to copyright infringement on the Internet."

The commission also said that an ACTA law would lay off policing borders, leaving them to national authorities to patrol:

"There is no proposal to oblige ACTA participants to require border authorities to search travellers' baggage or their personal electronic devices for infringing materials."

What's most galling is that content providers have never supplied any definitive evidence that copyright infringement is crippling its business. This week, the US's Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a huge report about the economic effects of filesharing that leads to technical copyright infringment.

The GAO findings revealed that conflicting methods of estimations made it too difficult to quantify economic impact. In some cases, filesharing was even seen as potentially beneficial for copyright holders.

Accurate assessment is impossible to quantify. Each industry supplies its own methodology for calculating the impact of copyright infringement and the GAO concluded each was flawed. Hence, the same self-serving entertainment industry arguments and inconsistent equations have found their way into ACTA that informed the UK Parliament debate on the Digital Economy Bill. µ