New documents revealing ACTA details have been leaked, and there is some good news.  But let’s get the bad news out of the way first.

Apparently, The United States and Japan want the possibility for criminal sanctions to be brought against any commercial-scale copyright and/or trademark infringement, even if it has “no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain.”

This is certainly targeting sites that use a P2P protocol for sharing files, like The Pirate Bay, or Gnutella.

Next up, a proposal that would impose criminal penalties against unauthorized ‘camcording’ of ‘audiovisual’ works:

Each Party shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied against any person who, without authorization of the holder of copyright or related rights in a motion picture or other audiovisual work, knowingly uses an audiovisual recording device to transmit or make a copy of or transmits to the public the motion picture or other audiovisual work, or any part thereof, from a performance of the motion picture or other audiovisual work in a motion picture exhibition facility open to the public.

So, basically, you would be fined if you recorded a movie with a camcorder.  Notice it does not mention specifically a theater setting.  I can imagine a situation similar to the Stephanie Lenz debacle here.  This next one goes all the way back to the first leak of the ACTA proposal, and is perhaps one of the most Orwellian policies in ACTA:  border measures.

With a view to establishing whether an intellectual property right has been infringed under national law and in accordance with national provisions on the protection of personal data, commercial and industrial secrecy and professional and administrative confidentiality, the competent authorities have detained infringing goods, shall inform the right holder of the names and addresses of the consignor, importer, exporter, or consignee, and provide to the right holder a description of the goods, the quantity of the goods, and, if known, the country of origin and name and addresses of producers of the goods.

‘Competent authorities’ would have the right to seize any material in transit(at the airport/checkpoint/dock) that is, or that contains, Intellectual Property infringement.  And according to Law Professor Michael Geist, who is somewhat privy to the information in these leaks, they can keep that material for up to one year before releasing it, and they only need an accusation by the Rights Holder (the ones powerful enough to enforce this policy, corporations) to warrant the seizure of your property.

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The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure has filed a complaint, alleging that the intense secrecy surrounding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement goes against EU regulation 1049/2001, which deals with public acces to information (Like the EU’s version of the Freedom of Information Act).  Here’s an excerpt from the regulation:

“(7) In accordance with Articles 28(1) and 41(1) of the EU Treaty, the right of access also applies to documents relating to the common foreign and security policy and to police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters. Each institution should respect its security rules.”