Monika Ermert

Monika Ermert

Negotiators: ACTA Text To Be Public This Week

By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch

ACTA will be public. During the eighth round of negotiations for an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in Wellington, New Zealand that ended Friday, the negotiating countries decided to give in to persistent calls for greater transparency.

Public ACTA Declaration Open For Signature

When government negotiators start the next round of closed meetings on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) this week in Wellington New Zealand, they will be served a declaration by "Public ACTA", an initiative by New Zealand's country code registry InternetNZ.

Leaked ACTA Text Shows Possible Contradictions With National Laws

“No changes in domestic” law promised the partners currently negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. A leaked 56-page recent consolidated version of the much-discussed agreement shows that this might not be completely true. The draft version with a lot of bracketed text in it shows that some countries are more open about the potential need to change their domestic laws than others.

EU To Request Publication Of ACTA Documents To Stop “Rumours”; Civil Society Meeting Planned

Europe will request the publication of the current drafts for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) at the next ACTA negotiating meeting in New Zealand in April, EU trade official Luc Devigne said today.

Speaking at the third EU stakeholder meeting on the hotly debated ACTA today in Brussels, Devigne also said there is also a meeting with civil society planned to take place alongside the New Zealand round.

Year Ahead: Reforming Global IP Systems – Trends In A2K In 2010

Ensuring public access to knowledge while supporting intellectual property rights cuts across broad areas such as internet availability, public health, education and culture, climate change, and basic technical standards. And while the non-profit movement that has worked to encourage access is facing serious challenges this year, they are set to fight it out in the various fora related to essential drugs, books and academic journals, and software again in 2010.

Year Ahead Copyright 2010: Between An Enforcement “Gold Standard” And Stronger Limitations

The secretly negotiated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is now in centre stage in the global debates around copyright, as is a prospective new international treaty on access to online books for the visually impaired which comes as part of a broader push to clarify limitations and exceptions to copyright. But some are asking, why all the debate and new efforts in national and international copyright legislation when copyright is increasing being exchanged for contractual relationships?

Internet Governance 2010: Future Of The IGF, Competition Among Institutions

The future design of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the role of the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in internet governance and the ability of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to resolve issues from new generic top-level domains to further internationalisation - these are the top policy issues in internet governance in 2010 and they are all linked to the question about how many governments and how much “multi-stakeholderism“ effective internet governance needs.