ACTA trade pact may undermine all sorts of online activities
Wednesday, 21 April 2010, 15:34 IST   |    2 Comments
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ACTA trade pact may undermine all sorts of online activities
Washington: Technology companies across all the sectors believe that the trade agreement, being negotiated by the U.S. and nearly a dozen trading partners to decrease copyright violations and other intellectual property theft, may undermine all sorts of online activities, reports Economic Times. David Sohn, Senior Policy Counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology, an interest group that advocates for civil liberties online said, "If online platforms themselves are held liable in a way that is overly broad, the platforms themselves will start screening and censoring or scaling back how open to user participation they are. They will have to exercise really tight control." The negotiation for this agreement was started in 2007 by Bush administration to harmonize intellectual property protections across different nations. The far-reaching agreement would encompass everything from counterfeit pharmaceuticals to fake Prada bags to online piracy of music and movies. Once ratified, trade agreements take full effect and a country can face complaints for noncompliance. Since the starting period, the talks have been mired in controversy. Michael Geist, Law Professor at the University of Ottawa, who specializes in Internet and electronic commerce issues, said, "The agreement could reshape intellectual property laws in so many countries, and the proper forum for such negotiations is the World Intellectual Property Organization. WIPO negotiations are more open to public scrutiny and include countries where much of the counterfeiting takes place." Many technology companies fear that ACTA could undermine existing legal precedent and intellectual property laws in the U.S, including the landmark 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Most of the technology companies are hesitant to comment on the record about ACTA until they see an official draft, but privately they say that immunity is critical not just for Internet service providers such as AT&T and Verizon Communications, but also for any online company that hosts user-generated content. That includes social networking sites such as Facebook, video-sharing sites such as Google, YouTube and even the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

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