On March 10, James Love at KEI learned the result of his January 31 FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request for access to the documents behind the notoriously secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations. The answer is no. Not only that, it's a no from from the Obama administration. On his first full day in office, President Obama adopted a presumption in favor of disclosure for FOIA requests. Not only that, the Obama administration --the Obama USPTO-- said that the ACTA documents are exempt under 5 USC 552.b.1, which holds that the FOIA does not apply to information which must be "kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy". It also cited the Clinton-era Executive Order 12958, which elaborates on the national security exception. (ACTA is a treaty about copyright. Corporate lobbyists have access to the documents.)
On March 11, the European parliament called for greater transparency and specifically demanded public access to the ACTA documents. It didn't merely cite principles of open government, on which different people and parties might disagree. It cited Article 255.1 of the EC Treaty, which provides that "Any citizen of the Union, and any natural or legal person residing or having its registered office in a Member State, shall have a right of access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents...."
Comment. Secret lawmaking is repulsive. The USPTO response to James Love's request is Bush league on FOIA requests and Bush league on secret lawmaking.
Update (3/14/09). Canada too supports transparency at ACTA and early release of its documents. (Thanks to Michael Geist.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/13/2009 03:19:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
