New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) have released the negotiating text of ACTA [PDF]. While MED were previously more involved MFAT are now leading the NZ negotiations.

Analysis of the text to follow later today.

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CW Magazine reports that due to public pressure the text of ACTA is to be made public next week, saying: “A controversial plan to crack down on online piracy and counterfeiting will be opened up to public scrutiny for the first time next week [...] Negotiations over the past two years have been conducted in secret. Leaks of the draft text have sparked a public outcry, mainly because of how the text deals with online copyright infringement [...] they don’t plan to reveal their individual negotiating positions”

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A goal of Saturday’s PublicACTA meeting was to reach a consensus on what artists, technologists and the wider public want from ACTA – an international copyright treaty. After a lot of discussion a document was released yesterday and already over 1000 people have signed the petition to show support for artistic and public rights: “The Wellington Declaration agreed by yesterday’s PublicACTA Conference has now been released [and] can be found at: http://www.publicacta.org.nz/ [...] members of the public can find a link to a petition where they can sign their support of the declaration. “I urge everyone interested in protecting their digital rights online to sign this petition and endorse the Wellington Declaration”

You can also read the Wellington ACTA Declaration in Spanish and German.

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Our submission’s introduction reads “Today, a large proportion of interactions with copyrighted material involves personal use through personal computers and devices with internet connections. It is fair to say that, in turn, a proportion of these interactions involve infringement of copyright. Understandably, there is much debate as to how to interact with the new paradigm of creation and distribution that the internet represents. Some have responded to this new digital era by seeking to extend the scope of copyright, and the methods of its enforcement, so that existing ways of creation and distribution are protected, if not privileged. We do not share this view.”

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Over at PublicActa.org.nz Jon Penney has written an excellent article about how artistic remix rights (what under New Zealand law calls Fair Dealing defenses) are eroded by DRM. Digital Restrictions/Rights Management is like a brick wall in front of legally purchased content that attempts to block legal or illegal use of material. Penney writes, “ACTA may create substantive a new civil and criminal offence— and indirectly conferring new “access control” rights on copyright holders they do not current possess— despite its pretensions as an “enforcement only” treaty.  Indeed, even putting aside current New Zealand law, ACTA is supposedly limited to enforcing copyright and intellectual property, not technology measures or access control.”

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Later today CFF will be attending an MED/MFAT briefing on ACTA. With a recent leak of the full text of ACTA Tech Liberty raises 5 points about where the international debate is “USA wants internet-account termination; Japan is unconvinced by the need for anti-TPM laws; The treaty attempts to establish a global standard for awarding costs; NZ does not require evidence to justify seizing infringing goods; Nobody can agree on the scope”.

Over at the RedAlert blog Clare Curran asks “Like the exact location of the meeting, the text of ACTA is a secret. We don’t know for sure what’s in it, but the latest leaks suggest that a goal of ACTA will create an extra-governmental body that effectively controls copyright law around the globe, with little input from the governments or the people they represent. The leaks suggest a new organisation would be set up to manage ACTA after it was implemented, tasked with continuing to update ACTA’s rules – sort of a parallel organization to WIPO which is part of the UN.”