---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sean Flynn <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 11:17 AM Subject: Expert Communique on ACTA To: [email protected]
*Please forward widely, post to blogs, etc.* * * *If you have ideas on how to best send this to the White House, hill, USTR, other countries do let me know or take it upon yourself to lead the process. Feel free to appropriate this and send it yourself to leaders, negotiators, press, etc. It has no owner.* * * Please find the enclosed link to the Urgent Communique by global intellectual property experts on public interest concerns with the Anticounterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated in Switzerland next week. This statement reflects the conclusions reached at a meeting of over 90 academics, practitioners and public interest organizations from five continents gathered at American University Washington College of Law, June 16-18, 2010. Over 640 organizations and individuals endorsed the document in a 24 hour period ending at 9am today. http://www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/go/acta-communique The statement explains: “We find that the terms of the publicly released draft of ACTA threaten numerous public interests, including every concern specifically disclaimed by negotiators. * Negotiators claim ACTA will not interfere with citizens' fundamental rights and liberties; it will. * They claim ACTA is consistent with the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS); it is not. * They claim ACTA will not increase border searches or interfere with cross-border transit of legitimate generic medicines; it will. * And they claim that ACTA does not require "graduated response" disconnections of people from the internet; however, the agreement strongly encourages such policies. “ACTA is the predictably deficient product of a deeply flawed process. What started as a relatively simple proposal to coordinate customs enforcement has transformed into a sweeping and complex new international intellectual property and internet regulation with grave consequences for the global economy and governments' ability to promote and protect the public interest. “Any agreement of this scope and consequence must be based on a broad and meaningful consultative process, in public, on the record and with open on-going access to proposed negotiating text and must reflect a full range of public interest concerns. As detailed below, this text fails to meet these standards. “Recognizing that the terms of the agreement are under further closed-door negotiation over a text we do not have access to, a fair reading of the April 2010 draft leads to our conclusion that ACTA is hostile to the public interest in at least seven critical areas of global public policy: fundamental rights and freedoms; internet governance; access to medicines; scope and nature of intellectual property law; international trade; international law and institutions; and democratic process.” A section by section analysis of specific issues in the ACTA text follows these introductory statements. Over 640 organizations and individuals have signed the text. The full list of endorsers are now being added to the bottom of the text. A partial list exists there now. A contact list for press interviews is available at: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Au_Z_zC1yrj6dHlYd0lmaHFJQmVuYlpBX2I3Q2xqcXc&hl=en#gid=0 Sean Flynn Associate Director Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property American University Washington College of Law 202 274 4157 www.pijip.org -- Ali Sternburg [email protected] || [email protected] || 978.758.7205 Harvard College '09 || American University Washington College of Law '12
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