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ACTA, is a trade treaty being negotiated by the world's wealthiest nations, and looking likely to screw over the world's less wealthy nations. New Zealand is amongst the negotiators, but while we're present, the leaked draft reveal many things that are not good for us.

ACTA includes stopping generic medicines - so if you cant afford the patent holder's drug, then you have to go without your life saving medicine. This greatly alarms many nations dealing with AIDs epidemics, or other illnesses in their population, who are saving the lives of their people with cheaper generic drugs, and see this as more important than feeding massive profits to foreign pharmaceutical companies. Generics are the exact same medicine, but from another manufacturer.

Famously a shipment of generic medicines bound for India was seized and destroyed by dutch authorities in international waters, over a year ago. The sick in India did not receive their medicine. Hence India are very very very alarmed by ACTA, and have called for allies in stopping ACTA.

There are so many fronts on which the "freedom" of the internet is under attack in my own country, neighbouring countries, and elsewhere.

Here in New Zealand a new copyright act went into effect on 1st November. The most controversial clause has been delayed until 28th February. This clause says that an ISP must have a policy of disconnecting anyone repeatedly accused of copyright infringment. ...

That's accusation only. There's no oppourtunity to defend yourself, no recourse for reconnection, and there's no penalty for false accusations. If you want someone off the internet you need only repeatedly accuse them of copyright infringement ("repeatedly" has legal precidents to mean 3 times). Aparently file sharing is so bad you don't even get a trial (can they not see where that logic leads?). Even pedaphiles get a trial before they are considered guilty and punished. I could not continue my occupation if i was disconnected.

There's also that great treaty called "ACTA" - Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which on the surface is defending against fake prada handbags, but also fake baby prams (won't someone please think of the children!).. and fake medicines. I'm unsure if they mean cheap generic medicines that infringes patents, or if they mean dangerous medicines that aren't what they say on the labels -- but regardless, the Music and Film industry have been asked for their wishlist (to crack down on those dangerous counterfeit music tracks). The problem is the countries participating in ACTA negotiations have signed with the USA that they will not reveal the contents of the treaty until after they ratify it.

The public were asked for submissions in New Zealand, but how the frack am i to send a submission on a treaty when i cannot see the contents of it?

In the EU a group of citizens used their official information act to force the EU council to reveal the contents of this treaty... the Council said No. Who are they accountable to? Aparently not to their citizens and not to their own laws.

Within the wishlists of RIAA is making ISPs liable for copyright infringement that happens through their networks.. This we need to be very vocal about. How's an ISP to know whether a data packet contains a copyright infringement?? by only allowing you to talk to sony.com + apple.com ?

In other news, Australia looks like it's about to force all isps to enforce a blacklist of IPs. The result is all of Australia's internet access being filtered, in the on going mission to stamp out child porn. Their internet is going to get horribly slow, and it's not going to stop child porn. You just know the black list (a huge collection of child porn website urls) is going to leak out straight into the hands of the folks who want these urls. I hear a politician is trying to get a list of all R18 sites and add that to a list also. That's some huge list to check against on every packet. (not just port 80, otherwise it'd be too easy to bypass).

Mark Harris sent an email to all NZ political parties registered for the 2008 general election.

He asked for their position on the ACTA Treaty.

Most did not respond, though many clearly opened the email (there was a read recipt).

Here are the 3 that did respond:

Press Release:

More than 100 public interest organizations from around the world
today called on officials from the countries negotiating Anti-
Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) -- the United States, the
European Union, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico,
Australia and New Zealand -- to publish immediately the draft text of
the agreement.

Secrecy around the treaty negotiation has fueled concerns that its
terms will undermine vital consumer interests.

Organizations signing the letter include: Consumers Union, Electronic
Frontier Foundation, Essential Action, IP Justice, Knowledge Ecology
International, Public Knowledge, Global Trade Watch, U.S. Public
Interest Research Group, IP Left (Korea), Australian Digital Alliance,
The Canadian Library Association, Consumers Union of Japan, National
Consumer Council (UK) and Doctors without Borders’ Campaign for
Essential Medicines.

Based on leaked documents and industry comments on the proposed
treaty, the groups expressed concerns that ACTA may: