DRM News

As reported by The Hill, three major industry tech organizations are publicly stating their opposition to the current draft of the ACTA agreement.

The groups in question are the Consumer Electronics Association, TechAmerica and the Computer & Communications Industry Association. All three groups support enforcement of copyright, but they feel that the current agreement will act against US companies.

One major point of contention is the significant lack of fair use standards that allow limited use of copyrighted material. For example, these sorts of exemptions allow major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to store content in memory to be ‘pulled up’ through web searching.

“We would expect the administration to be as concerned as we are about the existing trend of foreign countries imposing unjustified civil and criminal liability on U.S. technology companies and their executives,” the groups wrote.

The companies left the door open to supporting a narrower version of the trade agreement, “one focused on preventing the proliferation of counterfeited trademarked goods — in particular those that endanger public health or safety.”

But tackling digital copyright, they said, allows the process to become “enmeshed in [...] highly contentious issues.”

This does present a complaint from a different side of the sphere, as most previous calls for change have come from concerned citizens groups or those calling for more transparency in ACTA negotiations. Those negotiations are expected to result in a draft agreement perhaps by the end of 2010.