Canada seeks industry, not consumer input on secret treaty

ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated by wealthy nations, continues to make headlines due the secrecy surrounding its drafting. Despite the fact that the agreement may include provisions like ISP filtering that are likely to affect huge numbers of people, no draft of the treaty is available. What's worse, there appears to be a worrying trend among governments to consult early and often with copyright holders and only later let the public in on the action.

That appears to be especially true in Canada, where law professor Michael Geist found that the government had put together a group of "insiders" to advise on the treaty. Included, of course, were representatives of the recording, video game, and movie businesses; not included were privacy representatives, NGOs, or digital society groups.

Geist revealed the existence of the group in a Toronto Star column this week, based on documents he received under Canada's "Access to Information Act" (similar to the US Freedom of Information Act