ACTA is an anti-counterfieting treaty that NZ is about to sign up to. The worl'ds biggest culprits in counterfieting, Russia and China, are not part of this trade agreement. It has shifted into a copyright treaty, with the relevant chapter on copyright being written by the US. And it's all being done in secret.
Why is it so bad? Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing points out the following problems...
- That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
- That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
- That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
- Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM).
For a local perspective, read more about it here. on Mark Harris's blog.
Computerworld NZ also has some good articles on it. Check here.
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