European Commission "advance warning" summary on ACTA Internet Chapter (Wikileaks)

[DrewWilson]

The paper presents what appears to be a short summary of the "Internet chapter" of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The summary is supposed to inform member states about the part of ACTA that will deal with internet enforcement and will be discussed at the Seoul meeting of ACTA.

Notably, the "Internet chapter" is being drafted by USTR, a US lead ACTA negotiator group, and its creation process even within the ACTA working group itself, remains obscure. While the US has given a "detailed oral description" of the drafted internet chapter, the draft documents themselves are subject to "confidentiality clauses" between "goverment agencies" and a "number of private stakeholders". The presented summary is to give "advance-warning" and "preliminary indication of the content" of the upcoming US proposal.

The content of the summary reflect details that have appeared in the media recently, including rights management and especially related enforcement, as well as the US-centric development of enforcement on the Internet.

The Seoul meeting has just ended, having taken place from 4th to 6th of November 2009. The US proposal seems to have been debated there more widely.

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How symbolic that this sort of thing happened in the US.