A team from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative will head to Seoul, South Korea, early next month to resume talks with a handful of trading partners on a proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. A portion of the discussion will focus on transparency issues since negotiators have been dogged for months over the secrecy of their meetings and a dearth of viewable treaty text. See CongressDaily's story here (subscription required).
In preparation for the latest round of talks, USTR broadened its consultations to include views from domestic stakeholders with expertise on Internet and digital issues. Officials from nongovernmental organizations and industry leaders in intellectual property and technology offered their insights -- after signing nondisclosure agreements. Watchdog group Knowledge Ecology International sent a Freedom of Information Act request for a list of all individuals who signed what amounts to a gag order.
USTR responded late last week with the roster of 42 Washington insiders who saw a highly controversial draft chapter pertaining to Internet piracy. Those who viewed the document include executives from the Business Software Alliance, Google, Dell, Intel, eBay, Verizon, Consumer Electronics Association, News Corp., Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Time Warner. Representatives from think tanks like the Center for Democracy and Technology and Public Knowledge were also privy to the proposal.
Officials at KEI (who were not offered a peek at the pact) said they would not have signed NDAs in the first place. "USTR has decided that the views of the public are unimportant. The use of non-disclosure agreements to this hand picked group is an insult to any pretense of openness," the group said. "The White House needs to make the ACTA texts public, so that everyone can read them, and speak freely about them."
Public Citizen President Robert Weissman was equally miffed. He issued a statement saying: "It is self-evident that ad hoc processes to choose a few public interest representatives to comment on material to counterbalance the broad sharing of the material with a wide swath of self-interested corporations is a deeply flawed process."
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