In the 1990's the United States came to agreement with Mexico to institute one of the first free trade agreements NAFTA. President Bill Clinton promised that not only would American jobs be saved but that manufacturing jobs would see an increase. It was just another lie in a long list of them to fool American workers that losing their jobs was good for them while making them poorer. Then came the WTO formally known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that would morph into the World Trade Organization (WTO) which would not only perpetrate globalization but would set back by several generations worker rights and create the American Rust Belt as those supposed safe manufacturing jobs were shipped over seas.
In February of 2006 it was announced that America and South Korea had inter negotiations for a free trade agreement between the two allies. At first glance it seemed to be an equitable agreement until details of the agreement were leaked showing that thousands of South Korean agriculture and fishery workers would lose their jobs. No, matter the opposition to the agreement was eventually overcome and signed into law by both countries. Free Trade Agreements have never benefited the worker as they are seen as tools for multinational corporations whose rights supersede those of every nations citizens.
The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) will supersede all those agreements making them look like agreements between children at play. If compromise can be reached corporations will achieve powers not seen since the gilded age of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Corporations will be given the power to override the laws of sovereign states rendering any all regulations place upon null and void.
Another draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)’s intellectual property chapter has been leaked, and it has even more alarming provisions than the last draft we know about.
The TPP is a free trade agreement being negotiated in secret among the US, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Peru, Chile, and Brunei. This latest text draft is from May 2014.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation says: "The TPP still contains text on DRM, ISP liability, copyright term lengths, and criminal enforcement measures, and introduces new provisions on trade secrets that have us worried."
In February of 2006 it was announced that America and South Korea had inter negotiations for a free trade agreement between the two allies. At first glance it seemed to be an equitable agreement until details of the agreement were leaked showing that thousands of South Korean agriculture and fishery workers would lose their jobs. No, matter the opposition to the agreement was eventually overcome and signed into law by both countries. Free Trade Agreements have never benefited the worker as they are seen as tools for multinational corporations whose rights supersede those of every nations citizens.
The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) will supersede all those agreements making them look like agreements between children at play. If compromise can be reached corporations will achieve powers not seen since the gilded age of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Corporations will be given the power to override the laws of sovereign states rendering any all regulations place upon null and void.
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Thu Oct 16, 2014 at 11:09 PM PDT
New Draft of TPP Leaked - And It's Not Good
The TPP is a free trade agreement being negotiated in secret among the US, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Peru, Chile, and Brunei. This latest text draft is from May 2014.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation says: "The TPP still contains text on DRM, ISP liability, copyright term lengths, and criminal enforcement measures, and introduces new provisions on trade secrets that have us worried."
Anti-Circumvention Despite an over-abundance of evidence that laws punishing circumvention of DRM do far more harm than good, the USTR continues to press other countries to embrace the U.S.’s failed anti-circumvention policy.... What is worse, it would likely impede countries from adopting laws...that provide a blanket exemption for DRM circumvention for lawful purposes.
Copyright Term Whereas in the previous leak a coalition of countries had proposed that the TPP should allow them to retain full flexibility in determining the optimal length of their copyright term, that proposal has now been excised from the agreement—the only option now on the table is a provision that specifies a minimum term of years. How many years that should be, ranging from life plus 50 to life plus 100 years, remains undecided.
Criminal Treatment of Trade Secrets A new, more detailed provision on trade secrets introduces text that would criminalize the unauthorized, willful access of a trade secret held in a computer system, or the misappropriation or disclosure of a trade secret using a computer system. This text goes far beyond existing trade secrets law, which in the United States and other common law countries is usually a matter for the civil not the criminal courts. No public interest exception, such as for journalism, is provided. In practice, this could obligate countries into enacting a draconian anti-hacking law much like the Criminal Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) that was used to prosecute Aaron Swartz.
Liability and Enforcement On ISP liability the text remains quite contested.... This article provides ISPs with a safe harbor against liability for copyright infringements by users....conditioned on ISPs participating in a DMCA-like notice and take-down regime, where allegedly infringing content is removed from the Internet without a court order....
Also still contested are the criminal enforcement provisions. The issue is whether users can be held criminally liable for copyright infringements conducted on a commercial scale, for commercial advantage or financial gain. In the November 2013 text, the text was more highly contested by all 12 TPP countries, but now most of the disagreement lies between the US and Canada. The US seeks a broader definition of a criminal copyright infringement, to even cover acts that are noncommercial, whereas Canada only wants to apply criminal remedies to cases where someone has infringed for commercial purposes. If the US gets its way, then criminal penalties will apply even against users who were not seeking financial gain from sharing or making available copyrighted works, such as fans and archivists.
Public Domain For the first time, the parties have reached agreement to include an article recording their recognition of “the importance of a rich and accessible public domain” and acknowledging “the importance of informational materials, such as publicly accessible databases of registered intellectual property rights that assist in the identification of subject matter that has fallen into the public domain.”
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