Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement: Fact or Fiction?

Source: Threat Level from Wired.com

There’s been speculation for months concerning the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. If ratified, many suggest it would criminalize peer-to-peer file sharing, subject iPods to border searches and allow internet service providers to monitor their customers’ communications.

Yet all we know for certain is it’s a treaty (.pdf) about beefing up intellectual property protections being negotiated in secret by the European Union, the United Sates, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand.

Dozens of special-interests groups on Monday urged the trade representatives from those nations to disclose the language of the evolving agreement in a bid to end speculation on its contents and to assist in crafting its language.

“Because the text of the treaty and relevant discussion documents remain secret, the public has no way of assessing whether and to what extent these and related concerns are merited,” the groups said in a letter (.pdf) to trade representatives from the participating nations.

Full Story…

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