Secret International Copyright Treaty Delayed Until After Obama Inauguration

In September GamePolitics reported on consumer  concerns about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (see: Digital Rights Groups Go To Court Oer Secret Anti-Piracy Treaty).

The secret ACTA treaty continues to be worked out behind closed doors, and groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundaton (EFF) have filed suit to find out what's going on. Critics suspect that consumers may be screwed by ACTA and/or the United States may be dictating its particularly harsh copyright views on the rest of the planet.

Ars Techinca now reports that negotiations have wrapped up for the year and won't resume until at least March. That's significant because Barack Obama will have moved into the White House by then.

Hal Halpin, president of the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), has previously expressed concerns about ACTA: 

Because ECA supports the balance that must exist between the rights of copyright owners and the right of copyrighted material consumers, we do not think it wise to include any portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) currently being discussed by the US Trade Representative (USTR) and the Department of Commerce. 

 

We are concerned that any DMCA language in ACTA may cause enormous, unforeseen negative implications in US law.  That is why ECA, together with the Consumer Electronics Association, the US Internet Industry Association, Intel, Yahoo, Verizon and others, sent a memo asking the [U.S. Trade Representative] to carefully consider that any discussions of “Internet issues” in ACTA be carefully circumscribed, consistent with U.S. law, and not include any portions of the DMCA.

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.