ACTA Draft: No Internet for Copyright Scofflaws

[Cees Binkhorst]

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Brein eats their hart out ;)

Groet / Cees

ACTA Draft: No Internet for Copyright Scofflaws
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/terminate-copyright-scofflaws/
     * By David Kravets Email Author
     * March 24, 2010  |
     * 4:33 pm  |
     * Categories: Digital Millennium Copyright Act, intellectual property
     *

The United States is nudging the international community to develop
protocols to suspend the internet connections of customers caught
downloading copyrighted works, according to a leaked draft of the
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

The United States is leading the 2-year-old, once-secret negotiations
over the so-called ACTA accord. The Jan. 18 draft, about 56 pages and
labeled “confidential,”  just surfaced, and follows a string of earlier,
less comprehensive leaks.

The leak shows that the treaty, if adopted under the U.S. language,
would for the first time hold internet service providers responsible
when customers download infringing material, unless those ISPs take
action by “adopting and reasonably implementing a policy to address the
unauthorized storage or transmission of materials protected by copyright
or related rights.”

The specific ISP policy suggested in a footnote “is providing for the
termination in appropriate circumstances of subscriptions and accounts
on the service provider’s system or network of repeat infringers.”

This so-called “three strikes” or “graduated response” policy is the
holy grail of internet-copyright enforcement, staunchly backed by the
Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry
Association of America.

“This makes it clear that the U.S. has put on the table a mandatory ISP
safe-harbor policy,” Michael Geist, an ACTA expert at the University of
Ottawa, said in a telephone interview.

The leak, courtesy of the French digital rights group La Quadrature du
Net, marks the first time the entirety of the ever-changing draft
proposal has come to light, and it confirms suspicions that the Obama
administration is laundering a U.S. policy change through the treaty
negotiations. Under the current U.S. law, the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act, internet service providers are responsible only for the
infringing material hosted on their networks, and only if they if fail
to remove the content at the rightsholder’s request.

The ACTA draft comes two weeks after European Parliament agreed to
oppose the measure if it contained a three-strikes policy.

Other negotiating entities include Australia, Canada,  Japan, South
Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland. The ACTA
negotiators are expected to meet next month in New Zealand for a new
round of talks.

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