Last year while the country was engulfed in Obama vs. McCain madness, the Internet first began to get word of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).  On the surface, it would seem that the treaty originally intended to curb the sale of cheap copycat knockoffs of brand name merchandise in the developing world would have little to do with the Internet that has come to drive the global economy.

But digital freedom advocates started to become concerned when they got wind of provisions for Internet distribution in the treaty.  That concern gave way to alarm when government officials – from the Bush White House to Obama’s – came up with these provisions in secret.

And that alarm surrender to full-blown, porkchop sandwich, five-alarm, habenero-in-your-cornhole outrage today when during the sixth round of ACTA negotiations in South Korea the Internet chapter of the treaty was finally leaked.

Many of the provisions are frightening indeed:

That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet… if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright.

Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose.

The focus on digital freedom in recent years has been laser sharp on net neutrality.  For many advocates of our rights online, we’ve been so focused on the companies providing the Internet we know and love we’ve largely forgotten the threat of the governments that regulate them.  With ACTA, our attention should snap like a pair of browsers in Windows 7, bringing back calls for transparency in these negotiations that will govern international trade.

Whether through technology or litigation, Hollywood wants to shut down the Internet that birthed the information economy.  So long as we allow them to continue their work behind closed doors, a spoon-fed, broadcast-style Internet is going to be our future and the user will be left wondering what happened.

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