Adding up the explanations for ACTA’s “shameful secret”

“Why is an intellectual property treaty being negotiated in the
name of the US public kept quiet as a matter of national security
and treated as “some shameful secret”?

“Solid information on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
(ACTA) has been hard to come by, but Google on Monday hosted a
panel discussion on ACTA at its DC offices. Much of the discussion
focused on transparency, and why there’s so little of it on ACTA,
even from an administration that has made transparency one of its
key goals.

“The reason for that was obvious: there’s little of substance
that’s known about the treaty, and those lawyers in the room and on
the panel who had seen one small part of it were under a
nondisclosure agreement.

“In most contexts, the lack of any hard information might lead
to a discussion of mindnumbing generality and irrelevance, but this
transparency talk was quite fascinating—in large part because
one of the most influential copyright lobbyists in Washington was
on the panel attempting to make his case.”

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