The session kicks off with U.S. Copyright Office official Steven Tepp defending ACTA, by saying right from the outset, “Quite candidly, we’re in the midst of a worldwide epidemic of copyright piracy.” What kind of epidemic? Well, he uses that old line about how organized crime groups and terrorists are being funded by copyright infringement — a claim that the industry keeps making, but which makes little sense. Even if it were true that some crime operations are selling bootleg DVDs and such, aren’t they under the same, if not more, pressure from unauthorized internet file sharing?

U.S. copyright official Steven Tepp said Tuesday he doesn’t understand many of the current objections to the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a 37-nation effort to enforce copyright and counterfeit laws across international borders.

Tepp, senior counsel for policy and international affairs at the U.S. Copyright Office, dismissed objections to ACTA voiced by representatives of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), an intellectual-property research and advocacy group, during a debate on the trade agreement at the Future of Music Coalition’s Washington, D.C., policy forum.