As I mentioned last week, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has been shrouded in secrecy since its inception. Governments all over the world have refused to share information about ACTA with their citizens.

Big business, though, has as much access to information about ACTA as anyone could want. Check out this list of “cleared advisors” to the Office of the US Trade Representative. Everyone on the list has full access to the draft text of the agreement and all related documentation. Organizations appearing in the list include:

  • Time Warner
  • IBM
  • General Motors
  • Eli Lilly and other Big Pharma companies
  • biotech companies
  • the RIAA, MPAA, and a number of other lobby groups formed to protect corporate “intellectual property” interests
  • Monsanto

Notably absent from the list are public interest groups — you know, the groups that advocate for policies that serve ordinary people instead of big business. The closest thing you’ll find to a public interest group is ANSI. Almost every other organization in the list is either a corporation or a corporate lobby group.

To be fair, this is not a list of groups directly involved in ACTA negotiations. These are just the groups that have access to information about ACTA by virtue of being cleared advisors to the US foreign trade office. In other words, these are the groups that get the special treatment and privileged access that ordinary citizens have been denied, the groups that actually get to sit at the table and shape American government policy.

Now you know whose interests ACTA is being designed to serve.