MPAA Says Copyright-Treaty Critics Hate Hollywood: Via Threat Level.

If you don’t back a copyright treaty being negotiated in secret, you must want to destroy Hollywood, its blockbuster movies and all the jobs they create.

At least that’s the message from the Motion Picture Association of America.

It’s spelled out in a Thursday memo to the Senate Judiciary Committee, urging lawmakers to support the Obama administration’s efforts toward negotiating an intellectual property agreement with more than a dozen countries.

Dan Glickman, the MPAA’s chairman, informs lawmakers that millions of film-related jobs are in peril because of internet piracy. Simply put, those who don’t back the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting and Trade Agreement don’t support intellectual property rights, he wrote.

“Opponents of ACTA are either indifferent to this situation, or actively hostile toward efforts to improve copyright enforcement worldwide,” Glickman wrote.

That’s an insultingly black-and-white viewpoint. It’s also not an accurate description of the treaty’s critics.

The reason many groups distrust the accord is simple: It’s being negotiated in secret, the Obama administration has declared it a “national security” issue and the chief executive has filled his administration with at least five former intellectual property attorneys from the Recording Industry Association of America.

What’s more, all that we know about the proposal has been generated by leaks. Here is what the most recent leak of two week’s ago suggests:

A European Commission memo written by an unnamed EU official shows the United States might want ISPs around the world to punish suspected, repeat downloaders with a system of “graduated response” — code for a three-strikes policy that results in the customer eventually being disconnected from the internet with the ISP alone deciding what constitutes infringement and fair use.

Since there’s no such policy in the United States now, the demands could end up being foisted on all Americans through a decidedly undemocratic process. We described that as policy laundering at its finest.

Public Knowledge, a “copyleft” lobbying group who has seen the unfinished treaty’s text, blasted Glickman’s comment, which comes weeks after the MPAA urged the Federal Communications Commission to support internet filtering of unauthorized copyrighted material.

“We do want to make certain that the rights of internet users are not trampled by overwhelming government power asserted at the behest of a single special interest,” Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge’s president, said in a statement. She added that it is “inappropriate to ask ISPs and application designers to do what the studios themselves have found impossible to do: manage security to prevent all illegal copying.”

Along with Public Knowledge, the movie studios, internet providers, electronics companies and lawyers for the recording industry have been given access to the text of the treaty that has not finalized. We’ve asked many of them to provide details, but confidentiality agreements with the Obama administration forbid that.

While Glickman would do well by apologizing for his George W. Bush-style “With us or against us” smearing of his debate opponents, we applaud his call to unwind the secrecy surrounding the accord.

We appreciate the U.S. government’s efforts thus far to broaden its consultative process on the ACTA. Despite these exceptional efforts, the protests persist, fostering apprehension over the agreement’s substance. We understand that the ACTA parties agree on the desirability to provide meaningful opportunities for the public to provide input. We support this objective and encourage the U.S. government to direct that process so that we can engage in a meaningful dialogue on substance rather than procedural matters.

Glickman’s trying to say that secrecy breeds paranoia — and often rightly so. We’re glad to see the MPAA embrace the idea of government sunshine.

Negotiating nations concluded a sixth-round of top-secret negotiations two weeks ago. The countries include Australia, Canada, European Union states, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States.

The countries are to meet again in January.

See Also:

• Obama Administration Declares Proposed IP Treaty a ‘National Secuirty Issue’
• Details Lacking in Counterfeiting Treaty Paper
• The Heat Is On for Details of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
• Special Interests See ‘Classified’ Copyright Treaty; You Can’t
• MPAA Wants Congress to ‘Encourage’ 3 Strikes, Filtering
• MPAA Urges Obama to Embrace Internet Filtering
• MPAA Negotiates With ISPs to Disconnect or Penalize Copyright Scofflaws

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