Son Of ACTA (But Worse): Meet TPP, The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
from the any-which-way dept
Back in December we noted that the industry lobbyists fighting for increased protectionism via copyright and patent laws never stop trying, and as soon as one thing finishes, they pop up somewhere else. Specifically, we were noting calls from the industry for the USTR to negotiate a hardline in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which involves a bunch of Pacific Rim countries: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, U.S, and Vietnam -- though Japan and Canada may join as well. Apparently, the US government has already indicated that it will not allow any form of weakening of intellectual property law for any reason whatsoever in this agreement. In fact, the USTR has directly said that it will only allow for "harmonizing" intellectual property regulations "strictly upwards," meaning greater protectionism. Given the mounds of evidence suggesting that over protection via such laws is damaging to the economy, this is immensely troubling, and once again shows how the USTR is making policy by ignoring data. This is scary.The folks over at Public Knowledge have put together some initial information on the TPP, noting that it's basically "ACTA the Sequel." It's actually worse than that. As KEI has discussed TPP will be a much stricter form of agreement:
Unlike ACTA, the TPP will be subject to a dispute resolution process, which means that the U.S. and other countries will be subject to "fines" if they are not in compliance with the agreement.Not surprisingly, just like ACTA, it appears that the USTR has decided that "transparency" as required by the Obama administration really means no transparency. Once again, KEI notes the ridiculousness of this:
The Obama Administration has developed a policy on transparency for the TPP negotiations which apparently does not involve any commitments to sharing the text with the general public, even after it has been given to all member countries in the negotiation and to hundreds of corporate insiders on the USTR advisory board system.It appears the lesson that the USTR learned from all the complaints about a total lack of transparency on ACTA was that it could get away with basically refusing to include the public (the biggest stakeholder here) entirely.
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Hell, I'd partake in a civil uprising in my own country if we had one.
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Acronyms
They also gave us the All Censor Together Agreement (ACTA) and Cenorship Of Internet Communications Act (COICA, better called CLOACA).
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More and more people will realize the Governments are ignoring them and their concerns and will start ignoring the Governments and their laws more and more.
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Surprised?
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If only...
Yeah, if only there was an easy place to go, maybe like a wiki website, where documents could be made available for downloading, or "leaked", to the general public in situations where governments are unreasonably hiding material.
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"Zeig Heil", everyone?
Nope, this falls square on the shoulders of the MAFIAA and their purchased politicians, who have pretty much succeeded in making this joint the "Corporate States of AmurrriKKKa", where thoughtcrimes will land you into prison, with no chance of parole.
I am embarrassed and saddened to see that our lives and freedoms have been sold out to the highest bidders... especially since they've made those bids with the $850 billion they stole from us to begin with.
I think this might just trigger the next civil war... When was the last time a politician said "no" to an angry mob of armed people??
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