After more than a year of sustained pressure, the countries negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) have decided that the time is right to release the draft text of their work.

The official announcement came today after the conclusion of negotiations in New Zealand. "There was a general sense from this session that negotiations have now advanced to a point where making a draft text available to the public will help the process of reaching a final agreement," says the official announcement.

"For that reason, and based on the specific momentum coming out of this meeting, participants have reached unanimous agreement that the time is right for making available to the public the consolidated text coming out of these discussions, which will reflect the substantial progress made at this round."

The draft text will be released this upcoming Wednesday, April 21.

The announcement also shows just how carefully the European Union, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, the US, and others have been watching public opinion. It goes out of its way to say that the treaty will not oblige "participants to require border authorities to search travelers' baggage or their personal electronic devices for infringing materials." This is a clear attempt to rebut the "but customs will start searching my iPod!" madness we've seen in relation to ACTA.

The announcement also says that "no participant is proposing to require governments to mandate a 'graduated response' or 'three strikes' approach to copyright infringement on the Internet." As we've reported before, the leaked draft text does demand that ISPs have some plan in place to deter infringers, and a footnote made it clear that booting them off the Internet would be a great way to handle this—but the language in the draft came straight from the existing DMCA in the US and does not mandate any specific approach.

The announcement is certainly good news for fans of transparency, but it's not all sunshine and unicorns. For one thing, the participants plan to strip out their "respective positions." In other words, we are going to get a consolidated draft text that provides no information about who has been arguing for what position.

Not that it really matters, since massive leaks have already revealed negotiating positions and a complete draft text from January. It's disappointing that the negotiating countries refused to release more information about the process along the way; their decision to do so now has limited meaning, since the complete text is already leaked.

Still, it should allow negotiators to start answering public questions about the treaty and responding to public criticism. That's a good thing, but it comes quite late in the process. After a couple years of negotiations, the existence of a "consolidated text" shows that most of the tough negotiating has already been done. Changes could still be made at this point, but it's late in the process and today's announcement reminds us that the aim is to wrap up this treaty "as soon as possible in 2010."

The next meeting takes place in Switzerland in June.