The NewScientist has pubished a great article on ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). According to Wikileaks, ACTA is:
a multi-lateral trade agreement of strict enforcement of intellectual property rights related to Internet activity and trade in information-based goods hiding behind the issue of false trademarks. If adopted, a treaty of this form would impose a strong, top-down enforcement regime, with new cooperation requirements upon internet service providers, including perfunctionary disclosure of customer information. The proposal also bans “anti-circumvention” measures which may affect online anonymity systems and would likely outlaw multi-region CD/DVD players.
Michael Geist has written abundantly on the topic, and the CLA has written an in depth brief to the Government of Canada on the topic back in April.
Here are a couple of quotes from the NewScientist article:
ACTA aims to make it easier to penalise and prosecute people running websites or networks that aid and abet the sharing of copyrighted content, including music, movies, TV shows and books. While copyright infringement is already illegal, policing it across multiple borders has been difficult (…)
So swift and secretive have deliberations been that ACTA might easily have slipped under the radar altogether had it not been for a discussion paper that leaked from a source close to the Canadian government this May. ACTA is ostensibly designed to create a global coalition against the counterfeiting of goods - ranging from medicines to aircraft spares and designer underpants - all currently covered by a confusing array of international laws.
ACTA would make it illegal not just to share copyrighted material, but to operate websites that index the locations of such material that people can download. It would also outlaw systems like BitTorrent or Gnutella that help users find files on “peer-to-peer” (P2P) networks of computers.