Broadband Internet Service Providers (ISP) in the UK can rest a little easier today after the latest Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) draft, which hopes to establish international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement, removed aspects that would have effectively turned them into copyright police (e.g. forced monitoring of customers and being made responsible for third party content).

In addition the much feared "three strikes" proposal, which sought to target "suspected" unlawful file sharers and possibly even ban them from the internet (if they failed to stop such activity after several warnings), has also been omitted.

Participants in the negotiations include 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).

It should be noted that none of these changes will impact existing UK laws, such as the controversial Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEA), which effectively also threatens disconnection via an unbalanced "guilty until proven innocent" style of law enforcement.

Elsewhere the Open Rights Group (ORG) is calling on everybody to contact their local MEP and encourage them to support Written Declaration 12/2010, which calls for public access to all ACTA documents and emphasises that fundamental rights and data protection should not be weakened - Fill in this form to take part.

As for ACTA itself, the latest leak looks a lot closer to being final than we've seen before, with many previously bracketed sections now moving towards approval. However it is still open to change and there's plenty of time left for ACTA to get worse.

25th August 2010 ACTA Leak
http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/acta_aug25_dc.pdf