There has been a lot written about what ACTA might finally look like. A good deal of it is intended to tarnish ACTA based on misleading interpretions of what is currently known. I discussed this in a recent post, Fear Mongering and Misinformation Used to Slag ACTA.
Another recent blog posting, Talking About Nerd Stuff: RE: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, reviewed some of the anti-ACTA hype and came to the correct conclusion that simply relying on secondary and tertiary summaries of ACTA would give people a mistaken view about what is really known about the treaty. According to the blog:
“What’s my point, through all of this?
Firstly, everyone should educate themselves. In the internet age we have a tendency to rely very heavily on secondary and tertiary sources such as blogs, online news sites, and wikipedia. The problem with this is that levels of summary can often obscure the actual fact with interpretation. The fact itself is what you need to know, not what someone else might think that it implies.
Secondly, the ACTA isn’t something to fear at this stage, and it would be imprudent to begin to fear the adoption of a law, or laws, the substance of which is based upon rumour, conjecture, and leaked documents. Should you be somewhat concerned about possible ramifications? Yes, but there’s no sense being worried, or being “very afraid”, until we have some solid, actual sense of what this treaty will entail.”
