[x-pubpol] USA: Issa Opens Secretive Intellectual Property "Treaty" to the Public

[Joly MacFie]

http://issa.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=964:issa-opens-secretiv
e-intellectual-property-treaty-to-the-public&catid=63:2011-press-releases

or

http://is.gd/KBLmCL


Issa Opens Secretive Intellectual Property "Treaty" to the Public
3/6/2012

Worse Than SOPA & PIPA, ACTA Excluded Both American People and Congress

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) today opened the
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement (ACTA) to the American people and all stakeholders who were
excluded during the
development of the intellectual property (IP) enforcement agreement. ACTA
was negotiated
in secret by the Bush and Obama Administrations and attempts to regulate
the Internet with
potentially serious consequences for consumer privacy, ecommerce and
digital innovation.
Worse, ACTA appears to be an unconstitutional power grab begun by the
Executive Branch to
bypass Congress' Constitutional authority over international commerce and
intellectual
property rights protections.

"ACTA represents as great a threat to an open Internet as SOPA and PIPA and
was drafted
with even less transparency and input from digital citizens," Issa said.
"This agreement
was negotiated in secret and many of its vague provisions would clearly
increase economic
uncertainty, while imposing onerous new regulations on job creators,
Internet service
providers, innovators and individual Americans. As we have learned from the
OPEN Act,
opening ACTA to taxpayers and stakeholders in Madison will help gather
crucial input,
while delivering the transparency they deserve."

\
ACTA negotiations began in 2007, with the Obama Administration signing the
agreement on
October 1, 2011 along with Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand,
Singapore and
Morocco. Now, the Administration is moving forward with implementation -
despite both the
White House's January 14, 2012 criticism of IP legislation that would harm
the internet
and erode individual rights and Vice President Joe Biden's vocal opposition
to this kind
of unconstitutional Executive Branch overreach under a previous
Administration.

Core problems with ACTA include:

   No Transparency: ACTA is a multilateral intellectual property agreement
that was
negotiated in secret, excluding American taxpayers and key stakeholders who
would be
impacted by it. Despite the fact that ACTA has huge implications for the
public, until now
few steps have been taken to give the public input into this process.

   Circumvents Congress & the Constitution: While ACTA carries several
provisions that
directly affect U.S. trade and intellectual property law, the Bush and Obama
Administrations appear to have violated Congress' constitutional authority
over
policymaking in these areas. Adding insult to constitutional injury, the
Administration
refuses to even classify ACTA as a treaty, which would then require
ratification by the
U.S. Senate. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) raised these troubling issues in an
October 12, 2011
letter to President Obama.

   Vague & Far-Reaching: Like its domestic counterparts SOPA and PIPA, much
of ACTA is
vague, with consequences for individuals and stakeholders that could reach
far beyond the
agreement's original intent. ACTA also contains no safeguards against
wrongful cases of
intellectual property rights infringement.

###
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
 http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
 VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
--------------------------------------------------------------
-
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.isoc-ny.org/pipermail/x-pubpol-isoc-ny.org/attachments/20120306/918439d4/attachment-0001.htm>