What is a trade agreement? It is a contract or certain conditions under which international trade of goods and services is carried out. There are a lot of trade agreements including FTA, WTO, NAFTA and many more. There also exist some of the trade agreements which are specially designed for certain countries.
Recently U.S and its trading partners announced a new Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement called the Draft Trade Agreement. U.S and other trade partners have designed this trade agreement to counter the unlawful and illegal counterfeiting practice. It was decided to come up with such a trade agreement after receiving a lot of complaints. These complaints were mostly about copyright violations, counterfeiting, online material theft, piracy of movies and music and damaging the personal privacy.
However the trade partner look satisfied by the new law but the ones who fear from it are the technology companies like Facebook, Google, Youtube, AT&T, Verizon, Twitter and many other. Google Inc. said in a statement that “We appreciate this step toward transparency, but we’re concerned ACTA could rewrite laws that have made the Internet a platform for economic growth, creativity and free expression,” This clearly gives an idea that Google which is an internet giant fears that these laws could damage some of the services which they provide to their customers.
The draft agreement also includes provision to punish those who are involved in infringement violation and unlocking copyright material illegally. The draft agreement by ACTA seems like protecting online rights of the individuals and different organization. It has support of all the partner and even big player in the online industry somewhat agree that it is a good step. Then why do all the technology and internet giants fear this treaty? Is it because they are involved in some kind of unlawful act and privacy violation? Experts say that the pressure from the online audience will bring some flexibility in this treaty. So let’s just wait and see what role this new treaty plays.
