It is understood that Contracting Parties who are members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) acknowledge all the principles and objectives of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) and understand that nothing in this Treaty affects the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement, including, but not limited to, the provisions relating to anti-competitive practices.

"Contracting parties may fulfill their rights and obligations under this Treaty through, exceptions or limitations, specifically for the benefit of beneficiary persons,other exceptions or limitations,or a combination thereof within their national legal traditions/systems. These may include judicial, administrative or regulatory determinations for the benefit of beneficiary persons as to fair practices, dealings or uses to meet their needs."

The glitch, the group says, is in those often annoying tests that require users to type in a set of numbers and letters to prove they are human. On the White House web site, blind users can select an audio version of the test, but the audio is incomprehensible, according to federation spokesman Chris Danielsen.

And if users want to send email notifying the White House about the problem, well, that also requires a computer-human test with garbled audio, too, he said.

With an apparent stalemate between the US administration and legislators about ratification procedures and the European Union out after the Parliament voted against the agreement, it looks as if there is still an uphill battle to get to reach that number.

Besides the EU and Japan, seven governments have signed ACTA (Australia, Canada, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the United States). Switzerland has not signed nor ratified.

“Not much is happening on the Canadian front,” wrote Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa and long-time ACTA observer. “Canada signed ACTA, but has not ratified. Ratification would likely require some legislative amendments,” Geist said, and until those changes are introduced the country would not be positioned to ratify. There may be, according to Geist, linkage between ACTA and CETA (the Canada-EU Trade Agreement) under negotiation.

Britton Broun, media advisor of the Economic Group in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment of New Zealand, responded to Intellectual Property Watch by saying: “While New Zealand has signed ACTA, the government has not yet taken a decision on its ratification.”

But on 31 August, a committee of the House of Representatives, and on 6 September, the full House of Representatives pushed ACTA through, each time counting only the votes of the ruling party.

“To ratify an international treaty without the attendance of all opposition parties means a collapse of democracy in Japan,” warned Suzawa.

The statement by the USTR confuses the issue by conflating two separate stages of the process required for binding the U.S. to international agreements: entry and implementation. It may be possible for the U.S. to implement ACTA or any other trade agreement, once validly entered, without legislation if the agreement requires no change in U.S. law. But, regardless of whether the agreement requires changes in U.S. law, a point that is contested with respect to ACTA, the executive branch lacks constitutional authority to enter a binding international agreement covering issues delegated by the Constitution to Congress' authority, absent congressional approval.

I request that as a condition of the U.S. putting forward any official instrument that accepts the terms of ACTA that you formally declare that ACTA does not create any international obligations for the U.S. -- that ACTA is not binding. If you are unwilling or unable to make such a clarification, it is imperative that your administration provide the Congress, and the public, with a legal rationale for why ACTA should not be considered by Congress, and work with us to ensure that we reach a common understanding of the proper way for the U.S. to proceed with ACTA.

1. If ACTA is entered by the President without Congressional consent, what will be the nature of the agreement and its legal implications under U.S. and international law? For example, is it the Department of State's opinion that ACTA will be equivalent to a non-binding "memorandum of understanding," like some of the intellectual property agreements cited by USTR in the attached letter? Can ACTA be a valid and binding "sole executive agreement" under the U.S. Constitution, even though the regulation of intellectual property is not a sole executive function under the Constitution? Or must ACTA, to be binding, be a form of Congressional-executive agreement by virtue of ex ante or ex post congressional approval?
2. What is the nature of the international legal obligations that ACTA would create? Would the U.S. be in violation of the agreement if the Congress changed federal law in a way not consistent with the agreement, for example by ridding our law of statutory damages for online copyright infringement? What would be the implications of such a violation?
3. What are the constitutional limits on the President binding the U.S. to legislative minimum standard agreements over matters delegated to Congress under Article I Section 8 of the Constitution? Is the President free to bind the U.S. to any international agreement he chooses merely because he deems them to be consistent with U.S. law? (It is worth noting that many experts believe that ACTA is not, in fact, consistent with current U.S. law.)

• While it probably does not change US law (with some possible exceptions, especially in the realm of patents), it certainly does function to lock in US law, in a rapidly changing area of law, where specifics are far from settled. Supporters of ACTA continue to insist that not only does it not change US law, but that it cannot change US law, since it's an "executive agreement" rather than a treaty (more on that later). The reality, however, is that to be in compliance with this agreement, the US needs to retain certain parts of copyright law that many reformers believe should be changed. At the very least, it ties Congress' hands, if we want to be in compliance with our "international obligations."
  
  An example of this is on the question of inducement theory for copyright law. Within copyright law there is direct infringement (you did the infringement) and indirect or secondary infringement (you had a hand in making someone else infringe). In general we should be wary of secondary liability issues, because they can create chilling effects for new innovations. It's why the Supreme Court allowed the VCR to exist, despite the fact that it enabled infringement. Contributory infringement (in which you're more actively involved) has been illegal, but there has been some question about inducing infringement (i.e., leading or pushing others into infringing). There was an attempt by Congress nearly a decade ago, under the INDUCE Act, to make inducement a violation of copyright law, but it failed to go anywhere in Congress. Of course, the Supreme Court then stepped in with its Grokster decision that made up (pretty much out of thin air) a standard for "inducement" to be a violation of the law.
  
  Normally, if Congress decides the Supreme Court got something wrong, it can pass a law to clarify. However, under the terms of ACTA, countries need to consider inducement a violation of copyright law. There's no way to read this other than to tie Congress' hands on the question of inducement. That's a big issue because we're still sorting through the true impact of considering inducement as against the law. I know it's tough to believe Congress could ever push back on ever more draconian copyright law, but with the SOPA/PIPA backlash, there's at least a sliver of hope that some are aware that these issues impact innovation. Should Congress realize that greater liability through inducement is a mistake, under ACTA, their hands are mostly tied if they want to fix it. That's a problem.


• Beyond just locking in parts of copyright law, ACTA also expands it. First, it takes things that would normally be considered non-commercial file sharing (which is potentially against the law), and turns it into commercial scale criminal infringement. Similarly, it appears to broaden the definitions around inducement/secondary liability to make what had been a civil (between two private parties) issue into criminal aiding and abetting. Basically, there are parts of ACTA that effectively seek to take what would normally be civil infringements, dealt with between two private parties, and allow the entertainment industry to offload the policing to government law enforcement (paid for by tax payers) and leading to a higher likelihood of jail time.


• Copyright law is, by its very nature, a bundle of forces -- some that incentivize good behavior, and some that are bad. There should be no question that copyright has some good effects and some bad effects. The real question is in weighing the good and the bad and making sure that that the bad don't outweigh the good. Often, copyright law has used exceptions (fair use, public domain, de minimus use, first sale, etc.) to act as a "safety valve" in an attempt to make sure the bad doesn't outweigh the good.
  
  However, ACTA pretends that copyright is only good and there's no need to minimize the bad effects. That is, it only talks about the enforcement side, and completely ignores the necessary exceptions to copyright law that make it function. Basically, it exports the punishments from the US, but leaves out the safety valves. That's pretty scary. It may be (well, not really) okay in the US where fair use is clearly established, but most other countries don't have fair use at all (if they have anything, it's a much weaker system known as "fair dealing"). Exporting strict enforcement without exceptions is dangerous and will lead to unnecessary limitations on creativity and speech.


• There are serious health risks associated with ACTA, especially in the developing world. In this case, Europe pushed strongly to include patents under ACTA (something the US actually preferred to leave out). This has complicated matters for some countries. Under existing international agreements, countries can ignore pharmaceutical patents to deal with health emergencies. That is, if you have an outbreak and need a drug that pharmaceutical companies are unwilling to supply at a reasonable price, governments can break the patent and produce their own. That becomes much more difficult under ACTA, which could be a real threat to health around the globe.
  
  Similarly, there are very reasonable concerns that ACTA will be used to crack down, not on actual counterfeit medicines, but on "grey market" drugs -- generic, but legal, copies of medicines. Some European nations, for example, already have a history of seizing shipments of perfectly legal generic drugs in passage to somewhere else. For example, say that a pharmaceutical company in India is shipping drugs to Brazil that are legal in both countries. However, those drugs violate a patent in Europe. If, during transit, those drugs pass through Europe, customs agents may seize them. That's already been happening, but the fear is that there's greater power to do so under ACTA.


• ACTA presents certain requirements for border patrol agents in determining what is and what is not infringing. This is a big issue for a variety of reasons. First, as we've seen in the US, ICE/border patrol isn't very good at figuring out what is and what is not infringing. Traditionally, there are significant questions of fact to be explored in determining if something is infringing, but under ACTA, border patrol often will be in a position to make a snap decision. Believe it or not, Homeland Security itself was worried about ACTA, because of fears that it would actually make it more difficult to be effective on intellectual property issues -- and might require them to spend more time trying to figure out if something is infringing, rather than if there's a terrorist trying to get into the country.


• Again, while ACTA supporters insist that it won't require changes to US law, there are a few parts of ACTA that are so vague that you can definitely see how they could be interpreted to require changes to US law. One key example is where certain kinds of patent infringement cases protect against either injunctions or damages... whereas ACTA would require one or the other.


• Even the signing parties don't agree on the purpose, scope and nature of ACTA. This may be the scariest part. Part of the debate in the US is over the USTR and President Obama's claim that ACTA is not a binding treaty, but rather a sole executive agreement that doesn't need Congressional approval. Many believe that this is unconstitutional, and Senator Ron Wyden has asked the President to explain what certainly appears to be a violation of the Constitution. However, over in Europe, they're insisting that it is a binding treaty. The US, on the other hand, has already said that it can ignore anything it doesn't like in ACTA. If you think that's a recipe for an international problem, you get a gold star.


• Finally, international trade agreements are a favorite tool of the copyright maximalist. You see it all the time. If they can't pass legislation they want, they resort to getting these things put into international trade agreements, which get significantly less scrutiny. This also allows for two tricks: the first is leapfrogging, where you get each country to implement the laws required by these agreements in slightly different ways, and then push other countries to match (or better yet, exceed) the rules in the other countries to stay in compliance. Then you use those agreements to demand the same thing from other countries to "harmonize" international laws. It's already been admitted that ACTA was done outside of existing structures for IP-related international agreements (like WIPO and the WTO) because a few countries wanted to negotiate it without input from Brazil, Russia, India and China... but the plan has always been to get ACTA approved, and then pressure those other countries to join.
  
  The sneaky part is that once you have some of these "international obligations," it's almost impossible to get out of them. Copyright maximalists love to shout about how we must absolutely respect our "international obligations" on these kinds of treaties, to limit the government's ability to fix copyright law.

No comparable agreement has been concluded in this way. Thus if concluded as a sole executive agreement, it would represent a significant expansion of the scope of such agreements. As a result, it could pave the way for more extensive use of sole executive agreements in the future. That, in turn, could have implications for the nature of democratic control over international legal agreements concluded by the United States, as well as the legitimacy of these agreements both at home and abroad.

Setting a precedent for more expansive use of sole executive agreements has consequences not only for intellectual property law, but for any area in which an international agreement may be concluded—which is to say, nearly any area of law. International law now reaches into almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives. The possibility that such legal commitments could be made by the President without the input, much less approval, of Congress or the public raises serious questions about the potential of these agreements to undermine democratic lawmaking writ large

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a binding international agreement on all its parties, as defined and subject to the rules of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969).

That analysis hints at changes to international norms on "third party liability"--such as contributory infringement, vicarious liability, or inducement of infringement.

These are areas of law that, in the U.S., are defined almost entirely by court decisions, which build in nuances and balance to the application and enforcement of the law. One of the dangers of trying to codify these doctrines into an international agreement is that it can freeze the law as it is currently, preventing the courts from adapting case law to adjust for new developments in business, technology, and culture. There’s also the risk that binding the United States to an international set of standards will actually hamper Congress from enacting needed reforms to our copyright system.

Nor can we so quickly dismiss concerns about filtering and 3 strikes policies--even if the U.S. isn't pushing for legal obligations or mandates, there has been a constant, concerted effort by the largest record labels and movie studios over the past year or more to negotiate their own private 3 strikes agreements with ISPs. Filtering also remains a big topic for content industry lobbyists. Both of these measures, even if not mandated by laws, are often pressed upon ISPs and their customers as "voluntary" agreements, with threats of expensive lawsuits waiting in the margins if they don't comply. Even without mandating these procedures, laws, treaties, and executive agreements like ACTA can give them a great deal of cover by endorsing such "private agreements," adding a veneer of legitimacy to practices that otherwise would raise greater alarm at their impact on privacy, or simply their false positive rate. ACTA's focus on penalties can also incentivize potential plaintiffs to push harder, and for potential defendants to cave.

When lobbyists and the USTR insist that ACTA won't change laws very much, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Of course it changes the law, why else would it need to be negotiated in secret and why else would it attract so much industry attention and support....

Executive agreements essentially give the President a means to unilaterally control the foreign relations of the United States. Presidents have historically used accords with foreign nations to conclude international pacts without giving the Senate a meaningful opportunity to interfere. See The Destroyers for Bases Deal, Yalta, The Vietnam Peace Agreement of 1973.  The constitutionality of this tool is somewhat dubious: the Constitution does not mention executive agreements, nor do the framers discuss the concept in either the constitutional convention or the Federalist Papers. The judiciary has defended the use of congressional-executive agreements*, provided that these do not conflict with the Constitution. See Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957).   But hopefully the Court would be more likely to strike down unilateral Executive Agreements. But see U.S. v. Pink 315 U. S.  203, 229 (1942). However, the prospect of an executive agreement is rarely an issue because the mere presence of an existing agreement places an incredible amount of pressure on Congress to go along with the deal.

There have been some congressional efforts to restrain the use of executive agreements and to reestablish the primacy of Congress' Treaty Power. In 1954, the Bricker and George Amendments, which would have restricted the president's power to craft executive agreements, failed to clear the Senate, the latter by only a single vote.

While the President has the power to utilize executive agreements, he is not to keep them secret. Eighteen years after the Bricker and George amendments barely failed, and only a few years after the discovery of covert executive agreements with Laos and South Korea, Congress passed the Case Act of 1972. The Act requires the Executive to disclose within 60 days the text of "any international agreement" in which the United States is involved. But this does little to redress the problem of unilateral executive agreements because presidents routinely ignore the statute.

So to sum up: I am terrified that ACTA is going to be as monstrous as I believe it to be and that the United States will join the agreement by executive fiat. But maybe some good will come out of this--maybe the deep unpopularity of ACTA (trust me, people want their Internet) will force Congress to finally reassert its long neglected Treaty Power and curtail the use of executive agreements. While the Congress has deferred to the President in matters of war, there is no need to maintain such deference if ACTA empowers national ISPs to sever domestic Internet connections. None of this worrying would be necessary if the administration would simply (1) make the ACTA negotiations public, and (2) agree to submit ACTA to the Senate for formal ratification as a treaty. The longer this remains secret, the more users will worry. 

Let your Senators and Representative know that this pointless secrecy is unacceptable. Perhaps your demand will inspire them (either through pride or fear) to reclaim their treaty power and back out of a deal to which they never agreed.