The European Commission (EC) has announced that a final version of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which seeks to establish international standards on intellectual property rights (copyright) enforcement (i.e. such as on the internet or through broadband ISPs), will shortly be published has today been published.

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


Regular readers will recall that last month's "near final" draft text, the first to be officially seen by the public, contained some worrying new wording that risked turning Internet Service Providers (ISP) into an unofficial copyright police force (October's ACTA news). We will be keeping a close eye to see whether or not that situation has changed.

UPDATE 12:49pm

The final text is now available and can be downloaded here: Final 15th November 2010 ACTA Text (PDF). The text appears to be broadly similar to what we covered during our October 2010 report, although some additional and quite ambiguous / contradictory references to preserving fundamental principles, such as freedom of expression, fair process and privacy, have been added.