What the TPP means for you regarding the internet

[cali]

Remember SOPA. They couldn't get it through Congress, but no worries, the TPP is an even better vehicle.

<snip>

According to leaked draft texts, the TPP would also impose investor protections that incentivize offshoring jobs through special benefits for companies – the TPP stifles innovation by requiring internet service providers to police user-activity and treat small-scale individual downloads as large-scale for-profit violators. Most predictably, it would rollback regulation of finance capital predators on Wall Street by prohibiting bans on risky financial services and preventing signatory nations from exercising the ability to independently pursue monetary policy and issue capital controls – signatories must permit the free flow of derivatives, currency speculation and other manipulative financial instruments. The US-led partnership – which seeks to impose ‘Shock and Awe’ Globalization – aims to abolish the accountability of multinational corporations to the governments of countries with which they trade by making signatory governments accountable to corporations for costs imposed by national laws and regulations, including health, safety and environmental regulations.

The proposed legislation on Intellectual Property will have enormous ramifications for TPP signatories, including Internet termination for households, businesses, and organizations as an accepted penalty for copyright infringement. Signatory nations would essentially submit themselves to oppressive IP restrictions designed by Hollywood’s copyright cartels, severely limiting their ability to digitally exchange information on sites like YouTube, where streaming videos are considered copyrightable. “Broader copyright and intellectual property rights demands by the US would lock up the Internet, stifle research and increase education costs, by extending existing generous copyright from 70 years to 120 years, and even making it a criminal offense to temporarily store files on a computer without authorization. The US, as a net exporter of digital information, would be the only party to benefit from this,” said Patricia Ranald, convener of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network.

<snip>

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/03/trans-pacific-partnership-corporate-power-tool-of-the-1/

Participating countries in Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact negotiations have agreed to introduce strict rules aimed at cracking down on counterfeit and pirated products in the field of intellectual property rights, sources close to the multilateral talks said.

<snip>

Japan, the proponent of the ACTA treaty, is the only one to have fully ratified the pact. The government is currently bolstering regulations on copyright infringement through such measures as law amendments. For instance, the Copyright Law was revised to outlaw the act of duplicating DVDs and other digital media by deactivating protection codes.

Criminal punishments are also possible for secretly recording movies under a law drafted by a group of Diet members. Intellectual property rights infringement is checked not only on imports, but also exports of products, to prevent counterfeit items produced abroad from being sold in third countries.

<snip>

Still, there are many gaps in the field of intellectual property rights between the United States and emerging countries, such as the duration of copyright protection and strengthening patents for new medicine.

http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0000629321

http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1179&context=njtip

This week, trade delegates met in San Francisco to discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement’s e-commerce chapter. It’s likely that this secret chapter carries provisions that whittle away at user data protections [pdf]. But we weren’t able to say so at this meeting. Not only have they neglected to notify digital rights groups—including EFF, which is based in San Francisco—about the meeting, we could not even discover where it was taking place.

Delegates from TPP countries are right now holding these secretive “inter-sessional” meetings here and in other undisclosed cities around the world. Trade reps for specific issue areas are hammering out “unresolved” issues that are holding up the conclusion of the agreement, and doing so by becoming even more secretive and evasive than ever.

We only heard about a TPP meeting on intellectual property in Mexico City in September through the diplomatic rumor-mill, since the US Trade Rep is no longer bothering to announce the dates or locations of these closed-door side meetings. During this round in Mexico, countries that have been resistant to U.S. demands to sign onto highly restrictive copyright enforcement standards may ultimately be strong-armed into doing so.

<snip>

http://www.popularresistance.org/criticism-escalates-against-tpp-negotiations-go-further-underground/

[mindwalker_i]

1. The solution is rather obvious actually

People should stop paying Hollywood to screw them over. Stop going to movies, stop watching TV. Get news from the 'net where it can be gotten for no price. DU is great for linking to news stories. So are slashdot and reddit. Stop buying music from RIAA sources. There's plenty for free, and it isn't pre-packaged grade-D garbarge. Read books.

The actual artists don't make shit from the major distributors. Books often cost the author more to publish than they get back in sales (I have personal experience with this one), and musicians get screwed 7 ways to Sunday.

Unfortunately this won't happen. Too many people just have to have the Brittany Spears of Miley Cyrus. Or whatever. By continuing to support these cartels, people are voting with their pocketbooks to take it up the backside.

[BelgianMadCow]

2. cali_TPP_autorec - aha, source text of the leaked draft

/bot off

Thanks! Have to go check out the links for the leaked texts.

On edit:
After a couple clicks, here's the analysis by Public Citizen of the leaked draft of the investment chapter.

Although TPP has been branded as a “trade” agreement, the leaked text shows that TPP would limit
how signatory countries may regulate foreign firms operating within their boundaries, with requirements to provide them greater rights than domestic firms. The leaked text reveals a two-track legal system, with foreign firms empowered to skirt domestic courts and laws to directly sue TPP governments in foreign tribunals. There they can demand compensation for domestic financial, health,
environmental, land use laws and other laws they claim undermine their new TPP privileges.
The leak also reveals that all countries involved in TPP talks – except Australia – have agreed to submit to the jurisdiction of such foreign tribunals, which would be empowered to order payment of unlimited government Treasury funds to foreign investors over TPP claims. As revealed in Section B of the leaked text, these tribunals would not meet standards of transparency, consistency or due process common to TPP countries’ domestic legal systems or provide fair, independent or balanced venues for resolving disputes between sovereign nations and private investors. For instance, in a manner that would be unethical for judges, the tribunals would
be staffed by private sector lawyers that rotate between acting as “judges” and as advocates for the investors suing the governments.

Leaked draft itself is here.

Already on page 9, it says signatories cannot enter into agreements that require
"to purchase, use, or accord a preference to goods produced in its territory, or to purchase goods from persons in its territory".

Want to "go local"? Keep decent paying jobs by having your local government buy local? No can do.

[cali]

5. lol. I kinda feel like a nag.

[BelgianMadCow]

7. Quite the opposite, cali.

I find this issue so important and underreported on, that I've made a separate bookmark folder for it, and throw together everything I can find, from wherever I find it. And you, here on DU, are like the best source. Easy as that.

[cali]

8. thank you so much, BMC

I can't tell you how encouraging your words are.

[Puzzledtraveller]

3. Thanks for being on top of this Cali

[Uncle Joe]

4. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, cali.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

6. Am I just being paranoid or is the scheme starting to congeal?

For nearly 6 years now the government has been selling money to banks at zero cost. Then the banks sell the money back to the feds for profit.

Most predictably, it would rollback regulation of finance capital predators on Wall Street by prohibiting bans on risky financial services and preventing signatory nations from exercising the ability to independently pursue monetary policy and issue capital controls – signatories must permit the free flow of derivatives, currency speculation and other manipulative financial instruments.

So not those trillions of dollars in Quantitative Easing profit/theft can be off-shored while the American taxpayer holds the tab for the public debt.

Am I missing something? Am I just too suspicious?

[BelgianMadCow]

20. You could be called a CT kook

but that was before the End Game Memo.

I don't think you're seeing things. What I've seen from the TPP and TTIP reads like a blueprint for corporate rule, simple as that.

[obxhead]

9. K/R

[snooper2]

10. Can't find any copies of the leaked documents, the shitty countercrap website

led me to huffington posty blog and that lady referenced a blog at World Nut Daily-

So is it just the far left and far right that are in on the know?

Anybody got a link to some text of documents? If they were leaked where are they?

[cali]

11. yes, I have links

but honestly I'm getting tired of doing this for people. It's just not that frickin' hard.

Here's a walk through for people who evidently don't know how to use google- simple as that is.

1) go to google

2) in that little space, type in TPP leaked text or TPP leaked documents

Just to get you started because you seem so helpless, dear:

http://keionline.org/node/1091

[snooper2]

13. thanks

thought the three sources from the OP would have them listed...

Usually "writers" link to their sources

[BelgianMadCow]

12. Investment chapter here

http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/tppinvestment.pdf

[NealK]

14. K&R

Thanks for the info.

[stillwaiting]

15. Thanks cali for your dedication on this most important issue.

I have learned very much for your numerous threads, and I do appreciate your efforts.

I hope that your health issues are giving you a relative break today.

[cali]

16. thank you!. I really appreciate people paying attention to this issue

it's what encourages me to keep researching and posting.

And thanks so much for your well wishes. I'm hanging in there.

[cali]

17. Here's another article on this:

http://www.inquisitr.com/969345/trans-pacific-partnership-internet-censorship-plan-reportedly-under-discussion/

[Enthusiast]

18. Kicked and Recommended! nt

[whttevrr]

19. {:o(

[jsr]

21. This is a very important 'feature' of the TPP.

Which is why they don't want the hoi polloi to know.

[cali]

22. it's quite frightening- and an end run of the SOPA provisions

that they couldn't get.