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Item of Interest

WIPO Claims ACTA just to get around WIPO

WIPO Claims ACTA just to get around WIPO because WIPO isn’t beholden only to copyright owners. Hence ACTA whichi is wholly in control of copyright owners to the detriment of good policy and fairness.

. http://bit.ly/d8OhWF

The ACTA treaty being negotiated in secret will force countries that sign it to institute even stricter  copyright provisions, criminalizing what are civil disputes. There is no oversight, and the only meeting that get take are with heads of the five major copyright owners.

What’s ironic here is the the World Intellectual Property Organization is complaining because they should be the body where these types of international agreements are thrashed out. WIPO tried to put in place some very draconian, anti-competitive provisions that were beaten down by countries other than the USA and dropped the worst provisions.

This didn’t fit with the demands of “big copyright” to protect their dying business models so the even more onerous ACTA process came into being.

I’d argue that he’s being a bit too hard on himself. It’s not that the WIPO process doesn’t work (though, I do have some problems with the WIPO process as well), but that the copyright holders were upset that they no longer had near unilateral control over the process. It wasn’t that they felt WIPOcouldn’t address the issues, but that it would be much harder to get them addressed in the way industry folks wanted.

All this despite the fact that the US Congressional Budget Office has stated that weak copyright is better for society.