Full Text Of TPP Released: And It's Really, Really Bad
from the no-wonder-they-were-hiding-it dept
Yesterday, a month after it was announced that the TPP was "finalized," the official text was finally released. Immediately after that, USTR (somewhat oddly) reposted the whole thing to Medium -- apparently in an effort to appear transparent for an agreement that was negotiated for years in secret. The overall document has been broken out into many different sections, but if you add it all up it's over 6,000 pages long. The Washington Post did what none of the governments actually did and made the document searchable. I spent much of yesterday trying to read through the various sections, and it appears to be super problematic. Along with the text, the USTR posted a bunch of nonsense propaganda about what they want people to think the TPP is really about.But the problems with the TPP run deep: Despite earlier promises from both the USTR and Australia that intellectual property would not be subject to the "corporate sovereignty" provisions (which they call "investor state dispute settlement" or ISDS), they absolutely are. And this is a massive problem. It means that any country that's a member of the TPP can effectively never move its intellectual property rules in the direction of better benefiting the public -- because some foreign company will claim that this takes away their expected profits. Section 9.1 lists "intellectual property" as the type of asset that is a part of the ISDS process.
We already know what a mess this can create. Remember Eli Lilly is currently using NAFTA's corporate sovereignty provisions to demand half a billion dollars from Canada, after Canada rejected two of its patents because Canada realized the drugs that Eli Lilly had tried to patent did not deliver the benefits the company claimed when trying to get the patent. Canada said that was a good reason to reject the patent. Eli Lilly claimed that this was taking away its assets and demanded half a billion dollars.
Now imagine what would happen if anyone tried to... say... shorten copyright terms? Or require registration for copyright? Or fix the patent system so that you can't patent obvious and broad concepts any more? Does anyone doubt that any country that did so would be beset by these kinds of attacks, which wouldn't even be handled by courts, but by a tribunal of corporate lawyers, often the very same lawyers these companies would hire for other work? Including intellectual property in the investment chapter is a poison pill designed to ensure that intellectual property can only continue to ratchet up, rather than back.
Now, there is a very limited "exception" concerning the "revocation, limitation or creation of intellectual property rights" if it's "consistent" with the TRIPS Agreement -- an earlier trade agreement regarding intellectual property. As KEI notes, this limited exception isn't going to cut it:
The exceptions for intellectual property in the TPP investment chapter are important, and often designed to accommodate existing state practice in the United States or other countries, but one should not overstate the degree to which intellectual property rights are excluded. The meaning of the WTO TRIPS agreement and the TPP IP Chapter itself will be subject to review and arbitration led by private right holders, on topics such as "adequate" or "reasonable" compensation or remuneration for non-voluntary uses of intellectual property rights, the standards for granting patents, and other issues, to determine "to the extent" an action of policy is "consistent" with the TRIPS or the TPP IP Chapter. This not only leads to forum shopping (TRIPS and TPP IP obligations can be interpreted via TPP ISDS), but also empowers private right holder investors (and not consumers) to bring cases and benefit from sanctions against governments.KEI also notes that these "exceptions" don't apply to any of the new expanded IP requirements that the TPP has introduced -- including things like much higher damages requirements and the possibilities of criminal charges for the vaguely defined "commercial scale" infringement.
What's kind of amazing here is that we've spent years warning about problems with the "intellectual property" chapter and the "investment" chapter individually, and the absolute worst part of this agreement is the way the negotiators tied them together in a ridiculous and dangerous way. This is much, much worse than many of the things we feared would be in the agreement, and it's made even worse by the fact that the USTR directly promised this would not be in the agreement.
There are a number of other problems as well: KEI warns that at least part of the e-commerce provision can be read to ban a requirement for open source software, which would seem to undermine certain open source licenses, like the GPL. Michael Geist notes that the document confirms that Canada basically has agreed to wipe out many useful copyright reforms from a few years ago, and to extend its copyrights yet again, robbing the public of the public domain. Of course, that raises the question of whether or not someone could make an ISDS claim that Canada is taking away their "investment" in Canada... Oh, who am I kidding. ISDS doesn't apply to the public... just to companies.
There are also, as expected, serious problems for affordable medicine and healthcare, privacy, surveillance and more. Despite claiming to demand "nondiscriminatory treatment of digital products" and "cross border transfer by electric means" of information -- an anti-censorship/blocking provision -- the agreement lets Malaysia off the hook on such requirements.
In addition to that, last month we wrote about how it appeared that the negotiators had carved tobacco out of the ISDS section, but upon reading the whole thing, people are pointing out that it's not actually true, as it makes that part voluntary for countries to decide themselves.
In short, the TPP appears to be a massive mess, and in some ways worse than we feared. According to some, concurrent with the release, President Obama told Congress of his intent to sign the TPP, which started the 90-day clock for Congress to "review" the agreement -- conveniently making sure that much of the debate is limited by the end-of-the-year holidays, long Congressional "recesses" that happen around this time, and other key end-of-the-year business. In short, this agreement that was negotiated in near total secrecy (unless you were a big corporate lobbyist) is a really bad deal, and the administration is going to play every trick it can come up with to get it approved. Now would be a good time to let your elected officials know that they need to vote against the TPP.
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Filed Under: copyright, corporate sovereignty, intellectual property, isds, patents, tpp, ustr
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Lest it be forgotten
Malaysia is the same pro-slavery, pro-mass murder country that was supposed to be the poison pill both for FTA and TPP, before the State Department made it clear that the USG is perfectly fine overlooking both if that's what it takes to cram TPP through. I guess when you realize the other parties are willing to do anything, 'overlook' any atrocity, you might as well push for a few extra perks and exceptions while you're at the table.
As for the rest, revolting, but not in the slightest bit surprising. They didn't keep the thing secret for years for the public's benefit after all, they knew it was going to be filled top to bottom with toxic clauses built from the ground up to benefit the few at the cost of the many, so it's hardly surprising that that turns out to be exactly the case.
Now it's just a matter of watching their PR bullshit machines spin into overdrive trying to defend the reaming the public will get if this gets passed.
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Re: Lest it be forgotten
Long have people failed to remember that eternal vigilance is the requirement.
Far too many trust their government despite clear evidence of corruption and abuse. Far too many people ask the government for a handout instead of asking for sane regulations that benefit free market and punishes corporate greed and abuse.
Far too many cheer on the very organizations and people that have caused this distress even when it has been paid with nothing but the most paltry of lip service and sanctimonious tripe.
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Re: Lest it be forgotten
Speaking of it, I propose we stop calling it an agreement because an agreement is not shoved down the throats of one of the main affected parties (the public). Given it will mess with medicine and put many people out of reach from treatments I propose calling it "slavery induced mass murder mechanism".
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Re: Lest it be forgotten
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GASPS!!! HOW DARE THEY!!! The corporations spent good money buying politicians to get copy protection terms retroactively extended beyond any reasonable measure. They put a lot of effort negotiating these agreements in secrecy and trying to keep the documents as secret as possible until the last minute so that the public has no say in the matter. For someone to even suggest undoing all that hard work, time, and money spent to undue our fantastic accomplishments of corruption is an unspeakable sin!!! Don't even think it!!!!
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Re:
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6000 pages?
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Re: 6000 pages?
*Created by EA, published by the USTR, over Comcast networks.
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That's a feature, not a bug.
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This TPP seems like a step in that direction.
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Re:
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Re:
Who thought this was a good idea? The corporations of course and we all know that corporations are people. It's going to be exceptionally wonderful ... if you are a corporation.
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Loyality
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Extra-governmental corporations
I do not want to live in the sovereign state of Big Business!
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Re: Extra-governmental corporations
Anybody want to lobby Congress to invade and conquer SONY?
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Re: Re: Extra-governmental corporations
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Re: Re: Re: Extra-governmental corporations
I am looking forward to voting for Dunkelzahn. Only 42! years to go.
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Re: Re: Extra-governmental corporations
Send the details to my PAN if you're interested.
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Re: Re: Extra-governmental corporations
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Re: Re: Extra-governmental corporations
Then again, they (meaning we) bailed out Chrysler and the banks and who knows how many others because they can just keep those presses printing money and if they get too far behind just increase the denominations of the notes they print.
The problems appear when the ephemeral notion of money backed by a promise and nothing else fails to satisfy...someone. The total collapse of the world's economy and all currencies is gonna be messy and extremely painful, though I suspect it will be more painful for the haves than the have nots because the have nots will be used to the new position.
Did I just argue that having less will be more in the long run?
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Re: Extra-governmental corporations
That can now be arranged. It's written into the Big Pharma section.
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Re:
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Re:
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Name that caste
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Re: Name that caste
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Re: Name that caste
"Us" and "whores (AKA you".
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F*** 'em
Save him some money that would otherwise go to the MAFIIA. And I'll tell him about some online movie sharing services. And encourage him to DL TOR as well. F**know 'em.
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Re: F*** 'em
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WEBSITE TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE DUE TO MAINTENANCE.
Normal service will return soon.
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But even so, it all comes back to this whole thing being nightmarishly horrendous and parasitic- possibly even evil.
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Obama's dancin' with the ones that brought him...
Obama now has to worry about becoming the first billionaire ex-president, so that he can support Michelle's and Malia's White House runs.
BTW, *Michelle* is the Obama's "backup" plan to Hillary; Obama's already said that he could get elected to a 3rd term.
You heard it here first.
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So do we blackout something? Have a protest somewhere?
Is there a battle plan?
Or do we now welcome our new insect overlords?
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SOPA 2.0
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Perhaps one of the worst aspects of these so-called "trade" agreements is that they will lead to more and more, until eventually the entire world is ruled, in every aspect, by this secret society of global corporations that answers to no one.
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Strange position
or is it BLM because the slaves are only brown?
Remember when America was a Moral Beacon for the world? I do.
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US as a Moral Beacon
I think it is the greatest grudge I still hold, because I believed them.
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Discriminatory Regulations
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Growing inequality
All the gold on earth is useless to the last one standing.
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SCOTUS's power?
Also, with IP in the corporate sovereignty, will that make copyright infinite?
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Re: SCOTUS's power?
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Re:
Nope.
Google got to play that card once. They won't ever be able to do it again unless they want to risk being nationalized and turned into a public utility.
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Re: Re:
Also love the lie, this has nothing to do with enforcing IP law, and everything to do with ratcheting it up, again, and ensuring that it can never be decreased, lest those attempting to do so run afoul of the 'international obligations', if they're not flat out sued in corporate sovereignty 'court' for 'damage to IP assets'.
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Re: Re: Re:
Not only that, but Google was a late-comer to the thing. They didn't really want to take part, but they saw which way the wind was blowing and didn't want to look like they were siding with the bad guys.
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The blackout started with Reddit and Wikipedia
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You don't get to just dismiss the evidence of what actually happened by pretending it was all some convoluted plot by some shadowy figure from behind. Just because you seem to think Google runs the internet, and is the only company or group that could possible have an opinion on something, doesn't mean the rest of us have to humor you.
Also, your own paranoid argument works against you. If Google really had the most to lose, then they would have been the first to step forward and oppose it, loudly and without hesitation. They didn't, and in fact only got on board with the protests later on, after having been one of the supporters of an alternate bill that included some of the same stuff in SOPA/PIPA.
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What's about to happen with the TPP is pretty much that...
That sounds like they're nationalizing the whole internet anyway if TPP passes.
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Ben Carson campaign admits candidate did not seek admission to West Point - 500+ comments
Religious children are meaner than their secular counterparts, study finds - 2500+ comments
The clock is ticking on a time bomb that could blow up a free internet: the TPP - 63 comments
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Re:
Trade(or in this case 'trade') agreements are boring and dry and require you to dig in to understand what's going on, short term and long. The other stuff is easy to understand, and requires minimal effort to do so.
Tell someone that something notable and simple happened five minutes ago and you'll get their attention. Tell that same person that something even bigger, but much more complex will happen months down the road, and their attention is going to be much less focused, because it's not happening now, and it's not nearly as easy to grasp.
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Re: Re:
On the orthogonal side, they also think that arresting people for saying mean things is a cornerstone of free speech... I'd stop reading the Guardian if it weren't for the fact that they do a better job tracking abuses committed by American police than anyone here in the US (Balko's WP column excepted).
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The cycle of life on earth.
The world just got royally raped and the authorities say its our fault.
Never cooda seen that one coming eh. :)
Fascism is kinda like the flu. At first, it just makes you sorta sleepy, and then before you know it, you want to die.
Simplest reality: if we let them get away with this bit of chicanery, we are all forever fucked, and there aint no going forward after that, until after it all falls apart.
The Merchant will be King once again, and the world will once more become a commodity, traded back and forth by the Billionaires until once again, it all comes apart - just the ruins of one more human civilization crumbling back into dust, among all of those before it.
And it will indeed be our fault. It always is. It will apparently, always be so.
Because we prefer the pretty lie to the ugly truth.
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TPP in a single PDF
I wrote a quick Perl script to download and assemble all the PDFs on the US Trade Representative's page at
https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text.
You can then use your PDF reader's search function.
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Re: TPP in a single PDF
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TPP-copyright rules are coming, meaning that provably fair use is coming at the same time.
In short, the securer DRM makes it for rightsholders to protect copyrights, the easier DRM makes it for consumers to prove fair use due to ReEncryption-DRM with export mechanism.
Hence, provably fair use is coming soon.
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Transforming America
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