After two years of campaigning the European Commission (EC) has finally released a draft of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The treaty seeks to establish international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement, which would also make it easier to tackle those suspected of unlawfully downloading copyright files through their broadband internet service providers (ISP).

Participants in the negotiations included Australia, Canada, the European Union - represented by the European Commission, the EU Presidency (Spain) and EU Member States - Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and of course the United States of America (USA).

Consumer rights and privacy groups have long feared that ACTA could bypass the democratic system and impose new measures that might lead to more graduated response, criminal sanctions, 'Notice and Take Down' requests and force broadband ISPs, indirectly, into generalised monitoring of Internet traffic and services. This has been fuelled by the apparent secrecy of the whole process.

Thankfully that secrecy came to an end last week when the participating countries, under pressure from the European Parliament (here) to make the text of their negations public, agreed to put everything out into the open.


Today we see the result of that decision with the EC publishing documents from the 8th round of negotiations held in Wellington on 12-16 April last week. The EC believes this draft shows that specific concerns, raised in particular by the civil society, are unfounded.

It claims that no party in the ACTA negotiation is proposing that governments should introduce a compulsory "3 strikes" or "gradual response" rule to fight copyright infringements and internet piracy. The EC adds that ACTA will by no means lead to a limitation of civil liberties or to "harassment" of consumers.



So what exactly is in the vast document? It's hard to give a proper assessment based on our limited skimming over of the text but the draft does appear to be softer than expected. For example, rules that could allow border guards to search your iPod for copyright infringing files are still sort-of there, but no longer written as a requirement. ISPs will also not be required to conduct "general monitoring" of their broadband customers.

However there are a few stings in the tail that chime quite closely with the highly controversial and recently passed UK Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEA). ISPs that block access to piracy content and whom agree to deal with related material would be immune from lawsuits. Read another way, an ISP that doesn't take action is likely to be held liable; not much of a choice then. Of course, under the DEA, UK ISPs have effectively already been turned into copyright police.