We’ve already discussed the (finally) officially released draft of ACTA — which only came out after a ridiculous amount of public pressure, multiple leaks and a total beatdown by the European Parliament. While the official version shows that the leaked versions were quite accurate (this version only has the few changes made at the recent New Zealand negotiations, which came after the leaks), some are noticing what’s missing. Jamie Love is pointing out that the leaked versions clearly showed which countries were pushing for which provisions. But the different country positions have been conveniently deleted from the “official version”:
“It’s late, very late, and missing a key element of transparency — the country positions. Governments had to be forced by civil society groups to make the ACTA text public. Let’s hope that the precedent for the future is to publish the texts, and to publish them much sooner. Now that the text is out, it will be easier to have public debates about its contents. It is unfortunate that the country positions were eliminated from the published version, but positions as recent as January 2010 are available from the earlier leaked texts…. Clearly the text goes way beyond counterfeiting and copyright piracy, into several categories of intellectual property rights, including patents, semi conductor chip designs, pharmaceutical test data and other topics. Governments should engage with consumer groups, civil rights organizations, educators, libraries, generic drug manufacturers, technology companies and others to re-balance the text, or abandon the negotiation if this is not possible in the current political environment.”
Once again, it looks like this “transparency” isn’t quite as transparent as ACTA supporters would like you to believe.
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