Nine organisations representing the technology industry, libraries, digital rights and privacy interests have sent a letter to United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk urging that issues related to the internet be dropped from negotiations for an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). They also demanded that in the secretive ACTA negotiation, negotiating documents be made available to those representing the public interest, and that advisory committees be created to include civil society and internet-related industry interests.
The demands are based on information that rights holders alone have had access to the negotiating texts, and the fact that leaked versions of the draft treaty text showed ACTA “could harm a significant portion of the economy as well as consumer interests.” USTR officials, who have claimed the talks are transparent, are at an undisclosed location in Morocco on 16-17 July for the latest round of closed-door negotiations of the plurilateral treaty.
The 14 July letter is available here [pdf].
[…] http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/07/17/%E2%80%98drop-internet-issues-from-acta-add-public-intere… […]
[…] dos consumidores, bibliotecários, bem como de ciberactivistas e defensores da privacidade, enviou uma carta a Ron Kirk, representante do Comércio Externo do governo federal dos Estados Unidos. […]
Thank God we still live in a world where you can get internet privacy, even if it comes at a price. Since we the people have been deemed unworthy to maintain our own internet privacy, what has the world come to?