ACTA? What's that?

Have you heard of ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement? As exclusively reported here earlier (!) even children knew about SOPA, and so legislators took at least some notice of people's concerns. But that had to pass the American congress, and ACTA has been agreed by governments. Republican Representative Darrell Issa said "It's more dangerous than SOPA. It's not coming to me for a vote."

An international treaty is agreed and signed by governments with little possibility for discussion. This allows political leaders to agree something among themselves, then say that they are forced to pass laws by international treaty - they can disclaim responsibility for their decisions. This has the delightful name "policy laundering".

Another delightful term I leaned is "rapporteur", which came up because the EU parliament had one for ACTA, and he resigned in protest:

I condemn the whole process which led to the signature of this agreement: no consultation of the civil society, lack of transparency since the beginning of negotiations, repeated delays of the signature of the text without any explanation given, reject of Parliament's recommendations as given in several resolutions of our assembly.

The root of the problem is that the benefits of ACTA go to corporations, not individuals, and the penalties can be enforced against ordinary people as much as against people committing the real crimes.

I infringed some company's copyright. I bet you did too. Come and get us, copper!

Footnote: can governments please stop doing this sort of thing so that I can blog about something less boring?