Photo by AntonioMou

On October 23, 2007, the Canadian Federal Government announced that Canada will participate in preliminary discussions with the United States, Mexico, the European Union, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and other countries toward an anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA). The main objective of ACTA would be to develop international standards to better combat the trade in counterfeit trademarked and pirated copyright goods. Provisions would focus on international cooperation, enforcement practices and legal frameworks, including enforcement systems. A recent report in the Vancouver Sun said that the agreement is being structured much like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) except it will create rules and regulations regarding private copying and copyright laws. ACTA could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal and greatly increase the difficulty of travelling with such devices. What this agreement proposes is that any content that may have been copied from a DVD or digital video recorder would be open for scrutiny by officials, even if the content was copied legally. Imagine the slowdowns at airports as you attempt to prove that you simply copied the music on your iPod from your own CD collection. How many CDs will you need to bring with you to convince airport security that you did not infringe copyright? Federal trade agreements do not require parliamentary approval. "If Hollywood could order intellectual property laws for Christmas what would they look like? This is pretty close," said David Fewer, staff counsel at the University of Ottawa's Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic. "The process on ACTA so far has been cloak and dagger. This certainly raises concerns." Why the secrecy, copyright is an important issue and certainly requires open and free discussion, so why is the government not setting up a process that enables Canadian to register their concerns and ask questions? ACTA may be on the table at the July meeting of G8 nations in Tokyo, Japan. “We knew this existed, we filed an Access to Information request for this but all it provided us with was the title. All the rest of it was blacked out, “Fewer said. "Those negotiations can take place behind closed doors. At the end of the day we may be provided with something that has been negotiated which is a `fait accompli' in which civil society gets no opportunity to critique it."