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."

Apart from the occasional letter, Congress has little interest in ACTA; the EU Parliament, by contrast, has made far more noise, demanding more briefings and more deference from the European Commission which is negotiating the deal. But the European Commission briefed European members of parliament that after this year's round of negotiations in Lucerne, the meeting remained secret—so Pirate MEP Christian Engström left. He didn't even bother to attend the most recent briefing, which was also secret.

As for the content of the most recent draft, it's much the same as previous drafts. The truly substantive change came from the US, which has backed off on some of its demands for secondary liability that could implicate ISPs when users do bad things online.

Looking through the text, it's clear that divisions remain, including some major ones; the EU still demands that its geographical marks (like "Champagne" or "Parmigiano-Reggiano") receive protection from ACTA countries, while most other negotiators want to limit the text to copyrights and counterfeits. KEI, which obtained the most recent leak, has a nice rundown of its changes.

But most of the major issues are settled, and ACTA certainly seems on track for completion by year's end.