U.S. Groups Slam Anti-Piracy Accord’s Draft Text

(Reuters/Washington Post)

U.S. digital rights advocates and a computer industry trade group on Wednesday criticized the newly released draft text of an international agreement to toughen penalties for copyright theft.

“Substantively, we remain concerned that this proposal lacks the balance that we find in U.S. copyright law, while attempting to export a regulatory regime that favors big media companies at the expense of consumers and innovators,” Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a digital rights group, said in a statement.

The European Union’s executive branch and the U.S. Trade Representative’s office on Wednesday both posted texts of the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on their websites, years after groups first requested to view the language under negotiation. Read more here.