After weeks of extracts of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) being published on the interwebs, a French digital rights group has finally leaked a complete copy of the deal online.

La Quadrature du Net published a consolidated version of the ACTA text dated 18 January, 2010.

"This document contains information that is to be treated as Foreign government confidential," it reads.

Earlier this year junior government minister David Lammy said he couldn’t put papers about ACTA in the House of Commons Library, because other countries wanted details of the talks kept secret.

"Disclosure of any documents without the agreement of all our ACTA negotiating partners would damage the United Kingdom's international relations,” said Lammy on 20 January.

MPs across the political spectrum asked the UK government to release details of the negotiations to honourable members as soon as possible.

Similarly, the European Parliament threatened earlier this month to take the European Commission to the EU's highest court if it failed to disclose the details of the secret international copyright treaty.

The Parliament voted by an overwhelming majority to adopt a resolution demanding that Brussels limit the scope of the proposed treaty and pony up details of the agreement immediately.

The talks have been exciting conspiracy theorists for months, not least because they are expected to result in personal copyright infringement being classed as counterfeiting. Though individual countries will theoretically not be obliged to adopt the whole program.

But while politicos have been fighting for the full ACTA text to be made available, more and more details have continued, unsurprisingly, to be leaked online.

A scanned copy of the document is available here (pdf) and La Quadrature du Net has helpfully published a full transcription of ACTA, as of 18 January 2010, here. ®

Well, there's a bit of good news coming out concerning ACTA negotiations: apparently, all this public scrutiny is causing some problems for the negotiators. Jamie Love points us to an analysis by David Hammerstein, based on talking to a number of people involved in or close to the negotiations, and came up with some key points, including that "the negotiations are not going that well and many issues are still wide open. It is doubtful they could wrap up soon" and that "there is a significant problem in making US and EU legislation compatible on a number of issues." Apparently, because of the way the US defines fair use and "commercial scale," the EU negotiators are trying to leave in vague language that doesn't sit well with others. He also notes that there's some confusion about what the EU Parliament's recent vote against ACTA means for the negotiation.

Then there are three key points at the end:

They get very uncomfortable when asked about the possible use of the legitimacy of Acta in authoritarian countries.

As well they should. This is a point that we've raised repeatedly, noting not just the similarities between the methods used for censorship in authoritarian countries and ACTA, but also in the way that those countries will almost certainly use ACTA to justify their own censorship.

They have no answer to concrete questions on the "innovation chill" that could be caused in many businesses by introducing criminal sanctions and other enforcement measures.

This is what happens when you craft rules designed to benefit legacy companies within an industry, without understanding the broader impact on the market. That the negotiators "have no answer" to this question only confirms that these rules were not created with the goal of improving the overall welfare of citizens, but to protect certain companies. And that point is only highlighted even more by the final point:

No social or economic impact studies seem to be undertaken in the EU on Acta.

Of course not. That's because, as per usual with intellectual property rules, these ideas are faith-based, rather than evidence based.

the only reason it has got this far is because it is all top secret. The vast majority of the public have absolutely no idea of the impact this will have on them. Maybe everyone should ask every politician when they see any what their view of the ACTA is? It might frighten them out of voting for it if it is asked en mass.

I actually meant amongst those involved, especially with the EU and US

You only need a couple of key members in the pay of the media industry ie US and UK. They can try and push it through together, and get the other nations to go along with it. if they can get it agreed as an international treaty then they can impose it on everyone via their national governments. That I assume is the strategy.