The iiNet case is just a minor skirmish, the big battle is ACTA

David Heath
Sunday, 08 November 2009 06:25

IT Policy - Regulation

The latest round of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations have wrapped up in South Korea.  Amongst other things, if successful in their present form, the internationally agreed rules would completely sideline the iiNet case currently before the Australian courts.

Now, you've probably never heard of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and it would seem the organisers would have preferred it that way; however a draft document has leaked and the proposals it contained are very chilling.

It would appear that this draft is closely modelled upon chapter 18 of the recent US – South Korea Free Trade Agreement.  This is an agreement that is responsible for some very unexpected outcomes – for instance, Google's local blogging platform Textcube has banned the uploading of songs by subscribers, blaming the anti-file sharing provisions of the legislation accompanying the Free Trade Agreement.  The Korea Times article goes on to paraphrase a Google Korea official "Google Korea officials claim that the changes were inevitable, as the company has yet to develop a tool to differentiate between legal and illegal content." 

Further, it seems that Google has blocked Korean users from posting both videos and comments to kr.youtube.com in order to avoid regulations mandating that uploaders provide verifiable real-name registrations (in Korea's case, this would require "resident registration codes – the local equivalent of America's Social Security Number).  The problem being that, according to the Korea Times, "Complying with the real-name rules would have been an enormous risk for Google, as the government could later demand user information from the company, not a precedent it wants to show to other countries.

"However, this clearly miffed government officials, with the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the country's broadcasting and telecommunications regulator, threatening to look for legal grounds to 'sanction' Google."

So, how does the US see all this?