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.
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