ACTA Petition

The Wellington Declaration generated by the folks who attended the PublicACTA event this weekend in Wellington, is something I believe we LUG'rs should be getting behind.

If you support the statements made in the URL above - and really, I'd be surprised if you don't - please sign the electronic petition linked from that page.

All signatures added before Tuesday morning NZ Time will be appended to the Declaration when it is communicated to the NZ Government negotiators, who (it is hoped) will circulate it to all the ACTA delegations.

Background:

ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or ACTA) is a controversial international treaty being negotiated in a series of secret meetings.

ACTA is proposed as a plurilateral trade agreement for establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. It is being negotiated between the US, Canada, Japan, the European Union, South Korea, Mexico, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand. Unfortunately, the negotiations have extended beyond trade and physical counterfeiting to potentially cover non-commercial infringement of copyright material by ordinary citizens and issues of digital rights management.

PublicACTA was organised by InternetNZ to give the public opportunity to critique the known and likely content of ACTA proposals.

Several issues abound in ACTA; the scope of the agreement is much wider than simply an agreement around trade, and the ramifications should it come into force will be dire for New Zealanders.

The NZOSS, which many of you will know of and know that I am also involved with, have taken their stance regarding ACTA to the Government.

Please be aware of ACTA, and if you support the position being taken by InternetNZ, NZOSS and many, many other groups and NGOs both in NZ and worldwide, show your support.

Me and Mark Foster
Administrator - NZLUG, AuckLUG