[LINK] new copyright treaty secret

Kim Holburn kim.holburn at gmail.com
Sun Mar 15 20:58:42 AEDT 2009


But it is known who has access:

Who are the cleared advisors that have access to secret ACTA documents?
http://www.keionline.org/blogs/2009/03/13/who-are-cleared-advisors/

> By James Love, on March 13th, 2009
>
> The negotiating text of ACTA and many other documents, including  
> even the lists of participants in the negotiations, are secret. The  
> White House claims the secrecy is required as a matter of national  
> security. But that does not mean the documents are off limits to  
> everyone outside of the government. Hundreds of advisors, many of  
> them corporate lobbyists, are considered “cleared advisors.” They  
> have access to the ACTA documents.
>
> Who are these cleared advisors? They are the members of these 27  
> USTR advisory boards:
>
> http://www.ustr.gov/Who_We_Are/List_of_USTR_Advisory_Committees.html
>
> All members of the advisory boards can request access to classified  
> ACTA documents. Below are the members of just four of the advisory  
> boards, ITAC 15, 8, 10 and 3.
>
> .....

On 2009/Mar/15, at 5:51 AM, Jan Whitaker wrote:

> March 12, 2009 5:45 PM PDT
> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10195547-38.html
>
> Copyright treaty is classified for 'national security'
>
> by <http://www.cnet.com/profile/declan00/>Declan McCullagh
>
> Last September, the Bush administration
> <http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10047945-38.html>defended the
> unusual secrecy over an anti-counterfeiting treaty being negotiated
> by the U.S. government, which some liberal groups worry could
> criminalize some peer-to-peer file sharing that infringes copyrights.
>
> Now President Obama's White House has tightened the cloak of
> government secrecy still further, saying in a letter this week that a
> discussion draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and
> related materials are "classified in the interest of national
> security pursuant to Executive Order 12958."
>
> The 1995 <http://www.fas.org/sgp/clinton/eo12958.html>Executive Order
> 12958 allows material to be classified only if disclosure would do
> "damage to the national security and the original classification
> authority is able to identify or describe the damage."
>
> Jamie Love, director of the nonprofit group
> <http://www.keionline.org/>Knowledge Ecology International, filed the
> Freedom of Information Act request that resulted in this week's
> denial from the White House. The
> <http://www.keionline.org/misc-docs/3/ustr_foia_denial.pdf>denial
> letter (PDF) was sent to Love on Tuesday by
> <http://www.ustr.gov/Who_We_Are/Bios/Carmen_Suro-Bredie.html>Carmen
> Suro-Bredie, chief FOIA officer in the White House's Office of the
> U.S. Trade Representative.
>
> Love had written in his original request on January 31--submitted
> soon after Obama's inauguration--that the documents "are being widely
> circulated to corporate lobbyists in Europe, Japan, and the U.S.
> There is no reason for them to be secret from the American public."
>
> The White House appears to be continuing the secretive policy of the
> Bush administration, which
> <http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/EFF_PK_v_USTR/foia-ustr-acta-response2-doc1_0.pdf 
> >wrote
> to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (PDF) on January 16 that out of
> 806 pages related to the treaty, all but 10 were "classified in the
> interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958."
>
> In one of his first acts as president, Obama
> <http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10147514-38.html>signed a memo
> saying FOIA "should be administered with a clear presumption: In the
> face of doubt, openness prevails. The government should not keep
> information confidential merely because public officials might be
> embarrassed by disclosure."
>
> Love's group believes that the U.S. and Japan want the treaty to say
> that willful trademark and copyright infringement on a commercial
> scale must be subject to criminal sanctions, including infringement
> that has "no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain."
>
> A June 2008
> <http://www.iccwbo.org/uploadedFiles/BASCAP/Pages/Business%20Paper%20-%20ACTA%20negotiators.pdf 
> >memo
> (PDF) from the International Chamber of Commerce, signed by
> pro-copyright groups, says: "intellectual property theft is no less a
> crime than physical property theft. An effective ACTA should
> therefore establish clear and transparent standards for the
> calculation and imposition of effective criminal penalties for IP
> theft that...apply to both online and off-line IP transactions."
> Similarly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has called for "criminal
> penalties for IP crimes, including online infringements."
>
> Last fall, two senators--Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter
> (R-Penn.)--known for their support of stringent intellectual property
> laws, expressed concern that the ACTA could be too far-reaching.
>
>
>
> Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
> blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
> business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
>
> Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or
> sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
> ~Madeline L'Engle, writer
>
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-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph: +39 06 855 4294  M: +39 3494957443
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