An international counterfeiting treaty may take a hard line against consumers who illegally download copyrighted works, according to a leaked draft of the negotiations.
According to a draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, the U.S. has been pushing for rules that ask service providers to cut off internet access for repeat offenders.
Wired first reported the draft Wednesday afternoon. If the draft treaty is adopted, for the first time internet providers would be held responsible when customers download infringing material unless they adopt policies to actively combat unauthorized sharing of content under copyright.
“This makes it clear that the U.S. has put on the table a mandatory ISP safe-harbor policy,” Michael Geist, an ACTA expert at the University of Ottawa, told Wired.
The United States has been negotiating the anti-counterfeiting trade treaty with the EU, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand and others since 2008. An eighth round of negotiations is scheduled to begin April 12 in New Zealand.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice has also been looking into intellectual property issues at home.
In February, the department announced the creation of a new intellectual property task force. That group was charged with coordinating with state and local officials and their foreign counterparts to work on policy issues and focus on the link between piracy and international organized crime.
The DOJ’s task force is chaired by the Deputy Attorney General and includes representatives from the Criminal Division, the Civil Division, the Antitrust Division, the Office of Legal Policy, the Office of Justice Programs, the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys and the FBI.
The Justice Department declined to provide a full list of individuals on the task force. But an individual familiar with the composition of a previous IP task force said the main players are likely Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Lanny Breuer, the Attorney General’s Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Garland, and Michael DuBose, who heads the DOJ’s computer crime and intellectual property section.
The Justice Department also ran an IP task force under the Bush administration, which built on the work of the active Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property units in around two dozen U.S. Attorney’s offices around the county. The new group will largely be a continuation of the previous efforts.
In October 2008, the president signed into law the Pro-IP Act, which authorized an additional $30 million in funding for five years to Justice and the FBI for new agents and prosecutors dedicated to intellectual property crimes.
Much of the task force’s efforts, observers say, will involve integrating the new personnel authorized by the law into the field offices and at headquarters.
Fighting piracy and counterfeit goods is an issue not only for the entertainment industry, but also for pharmaceutical companies and software firms. The Chamber of Commerce has pushed authorities to step up customs enforcement to keep infringing goods from entering the country.
Rob Calia, who heads the Chamber’s efforts on piracy and counterfeiting said: “The task force should focus on international aspects, on the link between organized crime, and can be instrumental in developing policy in a technology environment that changes quickly.” The internet, for example, he said, is the fastest growing venue for piracy.
The bulk of upholding copyrights and patents is done by private parties, but the DOJ can go after some infringers under its criminal authority. It tends to go after large-scale counterfeiters, as it did in March, when a father and son duo plead guilty to selling $1 million of counterfeit software.
The Justice Department also prosecutes individuals who make illegal DVDs. A New Jersey man pled guilty in February, for example, to recording movies while they screened in a theater.
Consumer groups including Public Knowledge have criticized the aggressive enforcement stance and argued that sharing some content is protected by fair use and other laws. The question is what are they going after, said Art Brodsky, communications director at the group. He applauded federal law enforcement pursuing charges against individuals for physical duplication of copyrighted content, but worried that individuals and internet users that might also be targeted.
Vice President Joe Biden, who has long been a supporter of aggressive IP enforcement efforts, also chaired a high-profile meeting on the issue in December that included both entertainment industry executives and administration officials.
