ACTA and the Wellington Declaration

April 12, 2010 8:53 AM

The 8th meeting of the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement member countries is now underway. PublicACTA has issued the Wellington Declaration in response, which is available for signing online. Also, Michael Geist discusses ACTA and what it might mean for the future of intellectual property, in the following interview with Radio New Zealand and TVO's Search Engine (mp3)
posted by acro (8 comments total)

Russell Brown over at Publicaddress has written a decent post on the Wellington Declaration. The comments section is worth reading too.
posted by Sonny Jim at 9:14 AM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'll wait for the mashup.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 9:16 AM on April 12, 2010

Just so we're all clear: Copying something nondestructively is theft. However, selling a product and then removing features that you paid for over piracy concerns years later is not theft. Also Installing a rootkit on your PC is not hacking
posted by delmoi at 10:14 AM on April 12, 2010 [7 favorites]

As one commenter says:

What a pity international governments don’t seem to be able to make an agreement to ration finite resources like tuna, atmospheric carbon or fossil fuels, but instead devote their time to making an international agreement enforcing controls over something that costs no resources to copy.


It's obvious: Already scarce goods (such as oil) are already rare and valuable. Infinite resources need to be made rare to be profitable.
posted by DreamerFi at 11:11 AM on April 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

The US government is so committed to opening the text that they:

"hope that enough progress is made ... in clearing brackets from the text so that participants can be in a position to reach a consensus on sharing a meaningful text with the public.”

So you can see that they're working hard on revisions that may make it possible to open a discussion on a avenues of approach for a tentative public draft at some point in the future. The definite future, mind you, not some alternate reality one. It's not at all that the discussions are secret. It's just that the probable when, dear chicks, is not yet the positive now.
posted by bonehead at 11:12 AM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

probable relative when
dammit
posted by bonehead at 11:14 AM on April 12, 2010

Read it and signed it. Scary business about Pharmac, especially.
posted by Paragon at 1:47 PM on April 12, 2010

Late followup -- Michael Geist keynote at PublicACTA: The Truth About ACTA (mp3)
posted by acro at 11:01 AM on April 13, 2010