The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is part
of the discussions held at the G8 meeting this year in Tokyo, Japan, as the
summit’s member nations iron out differences in copyright law that make
international piracy enforcement more difficult.
The majority of reporting on the topic acknowledges ACTA to be a minor note
in the overall G8 agenda, and the official G8 summit web site seems to include
intellectual property rights as a minor note in its discussions on the World
Economy. Other higher-profile topics set for discussion include global warming,
the progress of African development, and nuclear nonproliferation talks
targeted for North Korea and Iran.
ACTA, first
unveiled after being leaked to the public via Wikileaks, has sometimes been
lauded by its supporters as “The Pirate Bay-killer,” due to its measures to
criminalize the facilitation of copyright infringement on the internet – text
arguably written specifically to beat pirate BitTorrent trackers. The accord
will place add internet copyright enforcement to international law and force
national ISPs to respond to international information requests, and subjects iPods
and other electronic devices to ex parte searches at international
borders.
The G8 summit runs from Monday, July 7 to Wednesday, July 9. Thus far little
news has emerged on ACTA’s progress in the summit, although most expect the
treaty’s details to be ironed out before the summit’s end.
