Secret ACTA deal to change IT forever

Don't let its name fool you.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement might give you ideas of knock-off Burberry bags and fake designer sunglasses, but it's actually an effort by the entertainment industry to push through new copyright laws.

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Trade officials from the U.S., the U.K., the E.U., Canada and a few other countries are participating in the deal, which up until a few recent leaks, has been shrouded in secrecy.

The agreement is still in the draft stages right now, but by this time next year, it could be impacting our laws with devastating consequences for IT professionals and the tech industry.

ACTA would basically change the way we all use the Internet and modern technology. The role of Internet Service Providers like Rogers Communications Inc. and Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. will also change, giving these companies unbelievable new powers to stop "copyright violations."

For starters, ISPs will be forced to block anything that could be pirated material. The impact this will have on the music industry is obvious, but what about for software developers?

Maybe a start-up creates an app and decides to give it out for free to create some buzz. How will Rogers or Bell be able to differentiate this freeware software from pirated commercial software?

This might be especially difficult for ISPs, because so much of this freeware nowadays is posted to file-sharing services and blogs. They've yet to invent the program that would help Rogers and Bell sort through all of this information accurately. Unless these ISPs would be willing to hire hundreds, if not thousands, of new employees to surf the Web all day looking for these differentiations, I'd say this would be an impossible task for them.

Another regulation ACTA would put into place is the "three strikes" policy. If your ISP accuses you of downloading any type of copyrighted material on three separate occasions, you are banned from the Internet from one year and forced to pay a fine.

The trade officials creating this rule are obviously targeting the average online user with this provision, but what about the impact this would have on enterprises?

As an IT manager for a large company, if your employee illegally downloads an app or a widget from a blog, your whole company is basically going to be on one strike. If the ISPs actually manage to monitor all of this effectively (which as I mentioned earlier is extremely unlikely), it wouldn't take too long for many companies to be on the receiving end of this ban.

Adding a loophole to the law which allows businesses to be exempt from the ban wouldn't work either, because so many Canadians and Americans have home offices and small businesses.

Those behind ACTA will probably realize this sooner or later and will likely ramp up the fines or something. But in any event, if the "three strikes" ban stands, users would think twice about downloading anything over the Web -- even from "legitimate" and official Web sites.

Next up for ACTA is a ban on breaking copy-protection measures by making it illegal to crack the digital rights management (DRM) tools put on DVDs, MP3s and other software. This type of ban works in theory, but the unintended consequences it could bring make it impractical.

If you, as a consumer or an IT manager, legally purchase a piece of software, you will not be able to copy it under any circumstances if it has a copy-protection scheme attached.