Had a look and, quite frankly, I am much more concerned about the current situation being allowed to drift unchallenged than the ACTA attempt to deal with it. The anti-ACTA site you offer is highly biased - of course, but in an insulting way. It actually tells me I will agree with the arguments offered; it does not attempt to engage me in discussion or thought.

Of perhaps most concern though is the initial assumption that everything is being done in secret. I think the official term for such an accusation is 'bollocks'. All multi-lateral agreements go through round after round of discussion and drafting in and by ad-hoc committees and, in all cases, the public at large are blissfully unaware of most of it. The legislation is revealed at a fairly mature point in the process when some sort of agreement looks possible and meaningful discussion can be engaged.

Put simply, ACTA is in the open as much and as little as any other major international initiative started at the same point in time (2007). There is no conspiracy to defraud the world of its rights. Indeed, intellectual property rights are enshrined in the United Nation's Declaration of Human Rights (DHR) and it is to be expected that such an important issue be given regular and deep consideration from time to time.

This is not a minor point: even our Communist brethren in the world's Marxist-based paradises have governments that have signed up for the same set of Human Rights. The concept and ideal of property was not excluded on political grounds, it was specifically included.

While Communists may have signed the same Human rights declaration i will point out that this declaration has a few guarentee in it:

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security.
and
Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

of course communists would have supported this - the view that job creation is the duty of the state, and private enterprise is to the detriment to human rights can be seen in these statement.

I'm sure that part of the declaration had more emphasis in Soviet Russia than it did in the good ol' US of A.

This line:
Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

was also probably take to mean something different in Soviet Russia, as, iirc, the inventor of Tetris got almost nothing because the Soviet Union owned the intellectual property to this work.

The point being made is that many countries today don't enforce intellectual property rights (especially russia where pirated DVDs are all over the place - at least from what i've heard)

On the other hand when it comes to the 'openness' of democracy and this kind of international law making. It is entirely the case that compared to, say, the Opensource movement, this looks like a conspiracy behind shut doors.

For practical reasons grass roots movements like Opensource are forced to be completely public in order to get as much publicity/advertising space as possible.

They are trying to change public preceptions and persuade politicians to change laws.

By comparison the negotiations of ACTA have not been publicised - because the governments involved don't need to public support they have been elected to make these decisions and they have the power to implement them at an international level- Flashman is entirely correct to say this is just how things are done.

Whether we think this should be how things are done is perhaps another issue...