The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) got a bit more transparent this year, as negotiators held a few meetings with civil society types and released one official draft text some months ago. But this wouldn't be ACTA without secret meetings and unreleased draft texts, would it?

This isn't a serious problem for those who want to read the draft texts after each negotiating session; leaks have become routine, which made this week's leak (PDF) of the most recent draft text so unsurprising. At this late stage in the negotiations, after so much criticism in the US and Europe, one might expect ACTA negotiators to operate as transparently as they have promised to do. Unfortunately, the US stands in the way.

We've seen reports for months that the US contingent was one of the strongest pro-secrecy voices among the negotiators from the EU, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, and other countries, but EU sources are now confirming it. According to EurActiv, EU policy sources say that "American officials blocked European attempts to publish the latest draft of the global Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on an EU website after a Washington-based round of negotiations in August." [...]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/report-acta-secrecy-is-a...