Intellectual Property Law

ACTA Backs Away From 3 Strikes

By David Kravets

A proposed global intellectual-property treaty no longer nudges the international community to develop “three strikes” protocols to suspend internet connections of customers caught downloading copyrighted works, according to a draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement released Tuesday.

The official draft of the proposed intellectual property accord was released after months of leaks and assertions by the Obama administration that it was a classified national security secret.

Still, critics of the proposal said Tuesday that a controversial theme in the draft (.pdf) remains: that the United States was “attempting to export a regulatory regime that favors big media companies at the expense of consumers and innovators,” according to Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C., digital rights group.

The group and others were, in part, referring to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Under the DMCA, internet service providers are responsible for the infringing material hosted on their networks if they fail to remove the content at the rights holder’s request.

That is a sea change to Canadian copyright statutes, for example. “That is inconsistent with Canadian law, which has no such requirement,” said Michael Geist, an ACTA expert at the University of Ottawa.

A biggest surprise in the official draft, which is being hammered out by the United States, Canada, the European Union, Japan and dozens of others, is the removal of a controversial U.S.-backed footnote that appeared in an unofficial, yet previously leaked version. The footnote provided for “the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscriptions and accounts on the service provider’s system or network of repeat infringers.”

Last month, the European Parliament voted not to approve ACTA if it contained these so-called “three strikes” or graduated response” termination requirements.

Those policies are the holy grail of internet-IP enforcement, staunchly backed by the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America.

Negotiating entities include Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland the United States and the European Union.

The ACTA negotiators concluded meetings last week in New Zealand and are expected to meet in Switzerland in June. The accord is expected to be completed by year’s end.

Congressional authorization is not required.

See Also:

• ACTA Draft: No Internet for Copyright Scofflaws
• Europe Worries U.S. Bowing to ‘Industry’ in ACTA Talks
• Obama Administration Declares Proposed IP Treaty a ‘National Security Secret
• Copyright Treaty Is Policy Laundering at Its Finest
• Here’s That Leaked Copyright Treaty Document
• Report: U.S. Fears Public Scrutiny Would Scuttle IP Treaty Talks
• MPAA Says Copyright-Treaty Critics Hate Hollywood

Full post as published by Threat Level on April 21, 2010 (boomark / email).