ACTA

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a plurilateral trade agreement for establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. It has been negotiated between the US, Canada, Japan, the European Union, South Korea, Mexico, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand and, in its drafting stages, contained significant provisions relating to non-commercial copyright infringement via the Internet.

InternetNZ position

InternetNZ was concerned that digital and Internet-related provisions were being discussed as part of ACTA and argued that the scope of ACTA be confined to counterfeit physical goods only.

InternetNZ joined with a number of other organisations to voice its concerns. For more information visit:
www.acta.net.nz

PublicACTA

InternetNZ assisted the public in voicing its concerns about the controversial ACTA Agreement through an open conference in April 2010 in Wellington.

What was PublicACTA?
PublicACTA was an event organised by InternetNZ with the intention of providing a public platform for people to critique ACTA, just before the Wellington round of ACTA negotiations in April 2010.

The aim was to produce a Declaration to give to the negotiators, recording our critique of their proposed agreement.

It was an open event held in Wellington on Saturday 10 April, live streamed to the Internet. People were able to interact with the event through the website and through a #publicACTA twitter tag. 110 people attended in person.

Before the event
A range of preparatory materials were made available on the website, setting out the issues the programme group thought were important. A communications effort aimed to maximise in-person and online attendance.

Format of the event
The first part of the day was information transmission: invited speakers (Michael Geist, Kimberlee Weatherall) outlined what was in the draft agreement as shown by leaked texts, and a panel discussion outlined further issues.

The second part of the day was issue identification: participants were asked to select the issues that needed further development, and this was done in groups self-selected among participants.

The third part of the day was issue development and Declaration writing: the selected issues were agreed in plenary and shared among groups to develop into short statements of view. These were collated, and live edited in front of the participants with input from them and from online, into a rough draft Declaration.

What made it work?
A great facilitator (Nathan Torkington); a motivated programme group organising the event with community buy-in; informed and opinionated speakers; a clear identification of the issue as a platform for critique rather than any misleading attempt to be “even handed”; a great range of critical and informed views among those who chose to participate; and institutional backing including funding from InternetNZ.

What happened next?
The draft Declaration was tidied up by the programme group the day after the event, and published on the website. An online petition was made available for people to endorse the document. With the assistance of New Zealand Government officials, copies of the Declaration were given to all the negotiating delegations during the Wellington round.