David Post at Volokh Conspiracy sounds the alarm over the many bad provisions in a new intellectual property pact, the “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement,” arrived at through a “truly outrageous bit of executive branch over-reaching on Hollywood’s behalf.” Margot Kaminski at Balkinization details how the measure if adopted would for the first time criminalize a wide swath of noncommercial personal copying behavior, mandate statutory damages that would grossly over-compensate many rights holders for infringements, and reduce de minimis thresholds under which border officers currently overlook small quantities of infringing material on travelers’ laptops and smartphones. And those are just a few highlights of a long and disturbing list of provisions. Earlier here.
P.S. Much more from Andrew Moshirnia at Citizen Media Law. And at the Mercatus Center’s Surprisingly Free, a podcast with Canadian ACTA critic Michael Geist.
One Comment
We live in bizarre times. Real property rights – property rights over real, physical assets like real estate, cars, and money – are being eroded quickly and are disrespected by both conservatives and especially liberals like never before. But suddenly when we get to intellectual property rights, politicians turn into the most extreme property rights absolutists, wanting to enact the most extreme forms of IP they can imagine, and are willing to go so far as to trample people’s other rights in the process. It’s very strange.