ACTING AGAINST ACTA
30 May 2008
As more details about the proposed ACTA pact continue to dribble out, the
responses printed on this list, in IP Watch, and elsewhere rather miss the
main point, in my view.
For at least the past five years, copyright and patent owners and their
representatives in the halls of power, whether in Washington or London or
other rich IP-exporting countries, have used the term and concept of
“piracy” to capture the international agenda in our field.
In copyright, for example, where do we read about how copyright blocks
access to books or leads to ever greater commodification and sameness in
our culture? Instead, we are regularly carpet-bombed by the latest
revelation, accompanied by statistically unreliable surveys, as to how
piracy is, one week, killing the music industry, and the next week, the
film industry. Lock ‘em up, cut off their Internet access forever, piracy
funds terrorist cells: the articles never cease in this steady drip after
drip.
It is certainly working. When I was recently in Goa and told a Canadian
that I was doing some research on copyright, the first words out of his
mouth were: “yes, piracy is bad in India.”
Unchallenged about the fundamentals of this story, the architects of ACTA
are now moving in for the “legal kill” and, according to one US trade
official, “the United States will strive to complete the agreement before
the end of 2008.” (As a colleague and I joked sadly last week, ACTA is not
TRIPS PLUS, nor TRIPS PLUS PLUS, but rather TRIPS SQUARED.)
Yet again, the responses from many NGOs and legal observers simply
question the ACTA-making process, but never the substantive issues at
stake.
Does ACTA define the term “piracy” properly, asks one. (If it does,
presumably that’s okay then.)The ACTA negotiations are not transparent
enough, suggests another. WIPO and the WTO are already doing a fine job
fighting piracy, why do we need more piracy police? a third questions.
But what about the fundamentals of the issue? Never a word of challenge on
the basics is uttered, never a counter analysis is given.
Buying into this shameful piracy rhetoric or responding defensively or
talking solely about the process will get us nowhere, except for a few
more flights to Geneva. And it is exactly how those who have captured the
copyright and patent agenda want us to respond.
Instead, what we need more voices which directly challenge and
contextualise ACTA’s piracy discourse. Read, for example, the words of my
friend Roberto Verzola of the Philippines (as quoted on page 73 of the
Copy/South Dossier: www.copysouth.org)
“If it is a sin for the poor to steal from the rich, it must be a much
bigger sin for the rich to steal from the poor. Don’t rich countries
pirate poor countries’ best scientists, engineers, doctors, nurses and
programmers? When global corporations come to operate in the Philippines,
don’t they pirate the best people from local firms? If it is bad for poor
countries like ours to pirate the intellectual property of rich countries,
isn’t it a lot worse for rich countries like the US to pirate our
intellectuals?
In fact, we are benign enough to take only a copy, leaving the original
behind; rich countries are so greedy that they take away the originals,
leaving nothing behind.”
Alan Story
Senior Lecturer, Intellectual Property Law
Kent Law School
University of Kent
Canterbury Kent
United Kingdom