During a meeting this week in Washington, DC, the Office of the United States Trade Representative released the public draft of the negotiations of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). This seems to be the newest development in a long list of efforts (including the World Intellectual Property Organization or Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights of the WTO) to police the underground market of pirated audio-visual content.
The USTR website lists the ACTA’s purpose:
“Consistent with the Administration’s strategy for intellectual property enforcement, ACTA establishes a state-of-the-art international framework that provides a model for effectively combating global proliferation of commercial-scale counterfeiting and piracy in the 21st century. The agreement also includes innovative provisions to deepen international cooperation and to promote strong enforcement practices. Together these provisions will help to protect American jobs in innovative and creative industries against intellectual property theft.” 1
Members of the ACTA include Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and of course the U.S. Apparently these countries represent 50 percent of world trade. 2
Notice that China and Russia, two countries notorious for pirating communication goods, are not involved in this group and have no say in the negotiations.
The U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk released a statement on Wednesday, applauding the work of the ACTA, which held its final rounds of negotiations in Tokyo on Oct. 2:
“This text reflects tremendous progress in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy – a global crime wave that robs workers in the United States and around the world of good-paying jobs and exposes consumers to dangerous products. The leadership shown by our ACTA partners in reaching solutions on tough issues should send a strong message to pirates and counterfeiters that they have no place in the channels of legitimate trade. We must now work quickly with our partners to finalize the results achieved in the Tokyo. This work represents a significant victory for those who care about protecting and enforcing intellectual property rights.” 3
This strong message that the ACTA hopes to send to “pirates and counterfeiters” who “have no place in the channels of legitimate trade” will continue to be the empty threat it has been for so long. ACTA doesn’t seem like it will have more traction than the previous effort of TRIPS and WIPO.
In our readings from this week, Tristan Mattelart discusses how piracy operates in the cultural and communication globalization realm. He writes that “In order to understand piracy, we need to move away from the approaches which criminalized it and to consider the various possible social, economic, and political reasons for its rise.” 4
In class we discussed how piracy plays a role in development, giving people access to communication information they wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise. It also enabled people to access the technology needed to watch the pirated material, which also has a development component. Economically, piracy creates markets and income in countries that are struggling to create jobs and rise above poverty. Mattelart gives the example of Nigeria, where 300,000 people are employed in the pirate video market. Politically, pirated material plays a role in rising political dissent and opposition, as in Iran in 1979. Pirated satellite signals allow audiences to resist political media censorship.
The continued criminalization of piracy will only increase the demand for pirated goods, and the actions of international regulatory bodies, including the ACTA, will not change the reality on the ground.
1. http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/fact-sheets/2010/acta-fact-sheet-and-guide-public-draft-text
2. ibid.
3. http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2010/october/statement-ambassador-ron-kirk-regarding-public-rel
4. Tristan Mattelart Audio-visual piracy: towards a study of the underground networks of cultural globalization, Global Media and Communication 2009 5: 308 (BLACKBOARD)
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