Posts Tagged ‘ACTA’

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Calling out misreporting about ACTA

April 14th, 2010

As I have pointed out before on several occasions, there is a lot of inaccurate reporting about ACTA. In some cases, the misreporting is done by people who are intimately familiar with the actual text of the publically available draft treaty documents. In other cases, the misreporting results from relying on those widely disseminated inaccurate secondary sources. 

A case in point is recent article published by the Ottawa Citizen  and other Canwest newspapers such as the Montreal Gazette , Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, Windsor Star, and the Vancouver Sun dealing with ACTA. The article written by Vito Pilieci made a number of inaccurate statements about ACTA including the following statements: 

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Posted in ACTA, Counterfeiting, Piracy, WIPO Treaties

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More hype than facts about ACTA from its critics

April 13th, 2010

The internet is lighting up again with opposition to the ACTA as negotiations on the trade agreement resume in New Zealand. Notwithstanding that much about the treaty is now known from well publicized leaks, its critics continue to try and slag it with misinformation and biased criticism.

Consider the following summary by Prof. Geist in yesterday’s Toronto Star article which was re-published in his blog this morning. Prof. Geist says:

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Posted in ACTA, Counterfeiting, Graduated Response, Piracy, TPMs, Three Strikes, WIPO Treaties

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A reply to ACTA critics

February 2nd, 2010

Last week was another busy week for developments in ACTA. There were meetings in Mexico by representatives from Canada and its key trading partners to further flesh out how to address the worldwide problems with counterfeiting and piracy. Meanwhile, anti-copyright critics were busy filling the blogosphere and press attacking the proposed treaty.

Of course, the actual text of the treaty is not know by the public. So commentators have relied on their interpretations of leaked documents to try and derail it.

When the criticisms are examined, it will be readily apparent that certain ACTA critics misapprehend what has been disclosed and make assertions or reach conclusions that cannot be justified based on the leaked documents. 

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Posted in ACTA, Copyright, Counterfeiting, ISP Liability, Piracy, TPMs, Three Strikes

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The costs and benefits of graduated response in copyright enforcement

February 1st, 2010

There recently has been a debate over the economic costs and benefits behind graduated response systems aimed at reducing online file sharing. Professor Geist, for example, recently posted a blog estimating the costs of a graduated response system. I believe the topic of the costs and benefits of graduated response mechanisms is an important one. Let us take a closer look at this topic and the assertion that graduated response cannot be justified because of its costs.

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Posted in Copyright, Digital Britain, ISP Liability, Piracy, Three Strikes

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Getting the straight goods on ACTA, check your sources

November 28th, 2009

There has been a lot written about what ACTA might finally look like. A good deal of it is intended to tarnish ACTA based on misleading interpretions of what is currently known. I discussed this in a recent post, Fear Mongering and Misinformation Used to Slag ACTA.

Another recent blog posting, Talking About Nerd Stuff: RE: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, reviewed some of the anti-ACTA hype and came to the correct conclusion that simply relying on secondary and tertiary summaries of ACTA would give people a mistaken view about what is really known about the treaty. According to the blog:

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Posted in ACTA, Copyright, Graduated Response, Three Strikes

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OECD counterfeiting report misinterpreted to support myth of Canada as a low piracy country

November 24th, 2009

On November 20th, the OECD published a report titled Magnitude of counterfeiting and piracy of tangible products – November 2009 update. The report is an update to a previous major study on counterfeiting undertaken by the OECD in 2008. The report confirms what has been known for a long time: that counterfeiting and piracy of tangible goods is a major impediment to global trade that is getting worse. The report estimates that global trade in counterfeit and pirated tangible goods more than doubled in this decade to approximately 250 billion US dollars in 2007, up from just over USD 100 billion in 2001.

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Posted in ACTA, Copyright, Counterfeiting, Piracy

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MPAA ACTA Letter to Chairman Leahy

November 20th, 2009

MPAA letter re ACTA

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Posted in ACTA, Copyright

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MAGNITUDE OF COUNTERFEITING AND PIRACY OF TANGIBLE PRODUCTS

November 19th, 2009

The OECD just published an update on the magniture of counterfeiting and piracy of tangible products. The report, Magnitude of Counterfeiting and Piracy of Tangible Products-An Update, is a useful reminder of the problem and reinforces the need for a global agreement like ACTA to address the problem.

An 2008 OECD study concluded that international trade in counterfeit and pirated goods could have accounted for up to USD 200 billion in 2005. The updated estimates, based on the growth and changing composition of trade between 2005 and 2007, suggests that counterfeit and pirated goods in international trade grew steadily over the period 2000 – 2007 and could amount to up to USD 250 billion in 2007.

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Posted in ACTA, Counterfeiting, Piracy

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Fear Mongering and Misinformation Used to Slag ACTA

November 18th, 2009

Last week saw a lot of digital ink spilled over speculation about what the Internet Chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is going to contain.  Some opponents of ACTA including Prof. Geist helped to leak the contents of a two page confidential memorandum that contained a written account of an oral report on what was still being negotiated.[i] 

Based on this two page preliminary document, ACTA opponents began a frenzied propaganda campaign against ACTA.  Prof. Geist led the feverish attack writing articles, blogs, tweets, giving a speech in Washington, and press and radio interviews.[ii] 

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Posted in ACTA, Copyright, Counterfeiting, Graduated Response, Piracy, TPMs, Three Strikes

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Rhetoric exaggerates ACTA leaked negotiations text

November 9th, 2009

Last week bloggers including Michael Geist went hysterical over the “leaked” ACTA memorandum telling the public that it mandated “three strikes” with Internet disconnection based on merely three unproven allegations of online file sharing, among other things.

Turns out that the summary of the text was inaccurate. Further, other bloggers have pointed out that to a large extent the proposed provisions discussed in the leaked memo reflects  existing, international norms for copyright protection in the EU, US and our other trading partners.

For example, Kim Walker, a partner with Pinsent Masons, who specializes in intellectual property law wrote a blog “Don’t panic over the secret copyright treaty” http://www.out-law.com/page-10507. She noted that:

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Posted in ACTA, Copyright

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