Draft Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement Released

Last week, the European Union released a draft of the the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

According to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), in 2006, Japan and the United States launched efforts to pass the USTA, which they described as an "idea of a new plurilateral treaty to help in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy." Preliminary talks were conducted throughout 2006 and 2007 between Japan, the U.S., E.U., Canada, and Switzerland, and in October 2007, each of the countries involved announced they would negotiate ACTA, which they have been doing behind closed doors since that time.

The USTR described the objective of the negotiations as an attempt to create "a new, state-of-the art agreement to combat counterfeiting and piracy" that is "intended to assist in the efforts of governments around the world to more effectively combat the proliferation of counterfeit and pirated goods, which undermines legitimate trade and the sustainable development of the world economy, and in some cases contributes to organized crime and exposes American families to dangerous fake products."

Privacy and freedom of speech advocates, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge, and others, have criticized ACTA. The secrecy of the negotiations initially led to significant criticism of the process itself. Subsequent leaks of various drafts of ACTA have led to criticism over its terms, including the potential for limiting privacy and the weakening of the presumption of innocence, particularly with respect to a proposed provision that could force Internet Service Providers to provide information about suspected copyright infringers without a warrant.

Following the leak of another draft last month, last week negotiators of ACTA released an official version of the current draft for public review. The Agreement will reportedly be finalized later this year.

The draft of ACTA released in April 2010 is available here.

Public Knowledge's analysis of ACTA is available here.

EFF's analysis of ACTA is available here; its preliminary analysis of the April draft is available here.

UPDATE: Following the EU's release of the April 2010 draft, the USTR also released a copy and issued statement concerning ACTA, both of which are available here.