Last November a document got leaked out, which outlined a new Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) being authored by the Obama administration. The internet part of this is really infuriating:

• * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
• * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
• * That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
• * Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

What’s really mind boggling is the Obama administration’s reason for doing this in secrecy. They are using the old Bush line by claiming it’s “national security”.  Now this all isn’t Obama’s doing. The work on this agreement started under Bush, but to continue to use that argument is very dishonest.

Something that really blows my mind is the second bullet point above. If you are “accused” of a copyright infringement then you get your internet cut off, including everyone in your house. A big reason why this is so bad was seen a week after this document leaked. Here’s how the innocent can get sucked into this god awful law:

An Associated Press investigation found cases in which innocent people have been branded as pedophiles after their co-workers or loved ones stumbled upon child porn placed on a PC through a virus. It can cost victims hundreds of thousands of dollars to prove their innocence.

Their situations are complicated by the fact that actual pedophiles often blame viruses – a defense rightfully viewed with skepticism by law enforcement.

So how long before viruses come out that connect your computer to some torrent site and silently starts downloading copyrighted material onto your computer, and once completed sends it off somewhere else, all without you even knowing? If that happens then you will lose your internet under this crap agreement.

Now for some good news. It looks like opposition to this crapola agreement is growing on Capital Hill. Last year Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Sherrod Brown and Arlen Specter all voiced their opposition to the new agreement. Now Ron Wyden is raising some serious questions over it, in a letter to Ron Kirk, the U.S. Trade Representative:

• possible constraints on domestic U.S. law reforms
• ensuring ACTA does not interfere with public health flexibilities in TRIPs
• the definition of counterfeit
• concerns about the inclusion of patents within ACTA
• the role of ISPs in ACTA
• whether increased monitoring of subscriber usage is envisioned by ACTA
• the privacy impact of ACTA
• details on border measures provisions
• third party liability for IP infringement
• possible commitments worldwide to comply with the DMCA

Michael Geist, who has been on top of this issue, also points out that opposition is not just contained to the U.S. Congress:

Meanwhile, ACTA arose in the UK House of Commons yesterday, as Labour MP Tom Watson asked questions on the government’s plans for ACTA.  The government response included a desire to ensure that ACTA remains within the scope of existing UK legislation and a need to press for greater transparency in the ACTA negotiations.

All of this comes on top of earlier efforts from Swedish Member of the European Parliament Jens Holm, New Zealand MP Clare Curran, who has repeatedly raised concerns about ACTA, and NDP MP Charlie Angus, who posed questions about ACTA in the Canadian House of Commons late last year.

If President Obama wants to be our first “tech President” then he needs to take a 21st century approach to handling these issues. Coming up with agreements in secrecy is not the way to do that. The last thing this country needs is more laws. Instead what we need is smarter laws, and what is being proposed here misses that mark by a mile.