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Cables reveal how US authorities cooked up ACTA

Cables from US Embassies in Japan and Europe, leaked to  the Wikileaks website, show how the US government set about creating an ‘ACTA'.  They expose ACTA as an instrument of US foreign policy. It's arguable that the European Union was merely a puppet.

 

The cables, discovered by La Quadrature du Net,  discuss how ACTA was born out of conversations between Stanford McCoy, then head of the US Trade Representative, and various representatives of the Japanese government, including the head of Japan's intellectual property office. The EU was one of a list of possible ‘preferential partners' for the agreement.

 

The Japanese informed the US Embassy correspondent that ‘the intent of

the agreement is to address the IPR problems of third nations such as China, Russia and Brazil, and not to negotiate  the different interests of like-minded countries".  In particular, it was to send a message to China.

 

The cable correspondent  reveals how the US and Japan agreed to use the message of protecting consumers and health as a means to make the proposed ACTA  politically acceptable.  They  tell us how the USTR Stan McCoy persuaded the Japanese to keep this as a separate initiative  from other existing global organisations, such as the OECD.

 

Japan and the US agreed to try to push ACTA through with a minimum of scrutiny, and were not keen to address issues that, for example, were important to the European Union, such as geographic indicators. They said that such discussions would slow the process down.

 

Officials from Japan and the US discussed how they could best manipulate the European Union - was it better to get the Commission involved, or to go direct to the Member States?  The latter might be slower, they felt.

 

And we  learn that ACTA was always understood by the US to be more than just  a trade agreement. One US official is quoted as saying that ACTA also involves (in addition to trade) "intellectual property rights, customs, law enforcement and judicial issues".

 

As those who followed the Telecoms Package will know, judicial issues are an important aspect of copyright enforcement  measures such as graduated response.  

 

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La Quadrature du Net  have further analysis of the ACTA cables.

 

 

 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK:England and Wales License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ It may be used for non-commercial purposes only, and the author's name should be attributed. The correct attribution for this article is: Monica Horten (2011) Cables reveal how US gov't cooked up ACTA http://www.iptegrity.com 4 March  2011

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About Iptegrity

Iptegrity.com is the website of Dr Monica Horten, independent policy advisor: online safety, technology and human rights. Advocating to protect the rights of the majority of law abiding citizens online. Independent expert on the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on online safety and empowerment of content creators and users.  Published author, and post-doctoral scholar, with a PhD from the University of Westminster, and a DipM from the Chartered Institute of Marketing.  Former telecoms journalist,  experienced panelist and Chair, cited in the media eg  BBC, iNews, Times, Guardian and Politico.

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