The TPP is being negotiated in secret and is rolling ahead full-steam. It seems like it will be ratified by year-end by a number of countries.
Libertarians and Internet-freedom advocates cheered when we defeated SOPA and PIPA—the attempt by the US government to limit Internet freedom in the name of protecting the insidious, false property right known as “copyright”.1
But did we really defeat it? Soon after, similar provisions popped up in other international agreements being negotiated like the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), as discussed in the latest This Week in Law. (I’ve talked about it previously, in my post SOPA II? Obama’s Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.)
Concern over ACTA abated when some countries bowed out, but as Professor Michael Geist explains in the afore-linked episode of TWiL, it still might be passed. And even if it’s not, the TPP is being negotiated in secret and is rolling ahead full-steam. It seems like it will be ratified by year-end by a number of countries. This is being billed as an attempt to “harmonize” free trade laws, but as Geist says, it’s more like an attempt to “Americanize” by imposing US-style copyright terms and penalties (such as our insane, draconian statutory damages) on other countries.
As an example, the Berne Convention requires member states to have a minimum copyright term of life of the author plus 50 years; the US has added 20 years to this (life plus 70), and now seeks to twist the arms of other countries, via the TPP, to adopt this term.2 If you want the benefits of free trade with us, you need to put people in jail for “pirating” our Hollywood cronies’ movies, see?
Read the entire article
But did we really defeat it? Soon after, similar provisions popped up in other international agreements being negotiated like the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), as discussed in the latest This Week in Law. (I’ve talked about it previously, in my post SOPA II? Obama’s Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.)
Concern over ACTA abated when some countries bowed out, but as Professor Michael Geist explains in the afore-linked episode of TWiL, it still might be passed. And even if it’s not, the TPP is being negotiated in secret and is rolling ahead full-steam. It seems like it will be ratified by year-end by a number of countries. This is being billed as an attempt to “harmonize” free trade laws, but as Geist says, it’s more like an attempt to “Americanize” by imposing US-style copyright terms and penalties (such as our insane, draconian statutory damages) on other countries.
As an example, the Berne Convention requires member states to have a minimum copyright term of life of the author plus 50 years; the US has added 20 years to this (life plus 70), and now seeks to twist the arms of other countries, via the TPP, to adopt this term.2 If you want the benefits of free trade with us, you need to put people in jail for “pirating” our Hollywood cronies’ movies, see?
Read the entire article
