What’s in the TPP? – The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
What’s in the TPP?
Well, since everyone but country negotiators and industry “advisors†have been kept in the dark, it’s hard to say.
But Public Knowledge has been tracking international IP issues for a number of years and a draft text was leaked in February 2011, so we can make an educated guess about what might be in the TPP’s IP chapter.
(The agreement also covers a vast range of other issues, including tariffs on various kinds of goods, labor standards, telecommunications, and intellectual property.)
Here’s an educated guess about what may be in it and how these provisions might affect you and people living in other TPP countries:
Protecting incidental copies. Kicking people off the internet.
The TPP would provide copyright owners power over “buffer copies.†These are the small copies that computers need to make in the process moving data around. With buffer copy protection the number of transactions for which you would need a license from the copyright owner would increase a great deal. One impact of this could be that the music you stream from services such as Pandora could get much more expensive when rights holders demand higher license fees to compensate them for the “additional†copies.
The TPP would encourage your ISP and the content industry to agree to institute measures such as three strikes—which kicks you off your internet connection after three accusations of copyright infringement—and deep-packet-inspection—which is akin to the USPS opening your mail. While we can not be sure exactly what is in the TPP, these examples are derived from a copy of the TPP’s IP chapter that leaked in February last year, the provisions that were reported to be part of earlier drafts of ACTA, and previous free trade agreements that the US has signed.
Criminalizing small scale copyright infringement. Locking out the Deaf and Blind.
Under the TPP, downloading music could be considered a crime. Your computer could be seized as a device that aids this offense and your kid could be sent to jail for downloading. Some of these rules are part of US law. The TPP makes them worse and also imposes similar rules on other countries that don’t have them. The TPP would prevent the blind from reading DRM protected ebooks and the deaf from inserting closed captioning onto DRM protected DVDs. In the US, the Copyright Office has made rules in the past that allows the blind to break this DRM. But the continuation of these rules is not a guarantee. And the other TPP countries could fail to make similar rules.
Of course, the provisions of TPP could be much worse. We will only know if the text of the agreement is actually released to the public, something the USTR has refused to do.
Meanwhile, many content industry representatives have access to the text and can work towards getting more draconian provisions into the agreement. If this process seems outrageous to you, contact the White House to let them know that such secrecy is not only unjustifiable, but unacceptable.
The TPP
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fuzzywuzzy
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fuzzywuzzy
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The TPP
Trans-Pacific Partnership is a big deal, but hardly anyone knows
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fuzzywuzzy
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The TPP
(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
Negotiators had hoped to finalise what could be the world's biggest free trade agreement by the end of 2013.
But a number of issues remain and talks on the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement will resume in 2014.
And in Australia, at least, there have been growing calls for the talks to be more transparent, with fears the agreement could have some negative implications.
Ildi Amon reports.
Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement involve 12 countries which account for up to 40 per cent of the world's GDP.
Initial participants in the TPP on one side of the Pacific would include Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Vietnam.
On the other side are Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru and the United States, with others able to join the pact later.
One Australian politician concerned about the proposed agreement is Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson.
In the last Senate session for the year, he moved a motion calling for negotiations on the agreement to be more open.
"It's largely been negotiated in secret over the last four years and it's very important to the Senate especially to the Greens, and I understand also to the Labor Party and a number of stakeholders across this country that the details of this Trade Agreement become public. Free trade is often pushed as being important for this country but there's also risks and costs of free trade. Recently we had a leaked chapter by WikiLeaks, only one of 30 chapters, which caused a lot of concern and this is a move to take the politics out of the release of this Free Trade Agreement and make it available to the public."
About one-third of Australian exports -- worth about $100-billion -- currently go to countries that would be included in the proposed agreement.
Alan Kirkland, from the consumer group, CHOICE, says it could leave Australian consumers worse off.
"This agreement could see prices on a range of goods go up for Australians - that's the biggest effect. So if we ban parallel imports to things like software, we will pay more for software. If we prevent Australians getting around geoblocking to get access to things like music and video and software on overseas sites, then we will see Australians pay more. That's our biggest concern with this treaty. We should not see our national interest, overridden by the interests of big American multinational companies."
Other groups are concerned the proposed free trade deal could give US drug companies longer patent protection, reducing access to cheaper generic drugs.
And Alan Kirkland from CHOICE says he's also concerned about a proposed dispute settlement provision, revealed in a draft leaked by WikiLeaks.
"What that will effectively do is tie the hands of the Australian government and Australian governments for many years to come, and we could actually see our government sued by foreign corporations. That's a very unusual thing and we don't think that should be in any treaty that Australia signs on to."
Ministers from the TPP countries met in Singapore in December in the hope of tying up final details, but failed to resolve outstanding issues.
Australia's Trade Minister Andrew Robb has said he wants the TPP to give Australia better market access for its agricultural products, and commercial benefits for service providers and investors.
He also wants improved rules for companies working together -- across countries -- to create, produce and deliver products.
Mr Robb has rejected claims the deal would negatively effect Australia's health system, or impact Australia's intellectual property and copyright laws.
And he says the government has consulted with stakeholders through more than 500 briefings.
But the Convenor of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network Patricia Ranald says the Australian public has been left out of the debate.
"Trade agreements shouldn't tie the hands of government, prevent them from regulating in the public interest. And they shouldn't be making agreements which require Australia to change its domestic law about things like medicine or copyright, which is done in secrecy when these things should normally be decided through an open, democratic, parliamentary process. Domestic law should not be decided in secret negotiations in a trade agreement."
The now former policy director at the Institute of Public Affairs, Tim Wilson, says secrecy during trade negotiations is normal.
"A lot of people are shadow boxing and discussing what could be in the agreement rather than what's actually in the final agreement. We won't know about that until negotiations are concluded so I think people should be very weary before getting too excited, because what they're reading are ambit claims from countries about what they would like in their national interest rather than what actually will be agreed between countries."
Mr Wilson says Australians will have the chance to assess the proposed deal when it comes before Parliament for ratification.
"It doesn't matter what governments sign on to it's what parliament ratifies in the end and then goes on to ingratiate into law and that's where the real test of disclosure has to occur and will occur. Everything else is just ultimately about those who have an interest in seeing what's happening in negotiations earlier so they can derail the process."
But Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson says Parliament would only get 20 days to review the details of the huge deal.
And he says the scale and complexity of the potential deal means it should be properly scrutinised with the Australian public having a say in what is under negotiation.
"What is really unusual about the TPP deal is it goes way beyond what we would call the traditional trade in goods and services and breaking open market access. It straddles enormous areas of public interest and public importance, like for example internet usage, intellectual property, food labelling, quarantine standards. You really have to wonder what Australia has left to trade away in these deals, because the nature of these negotiations is you don't get something unless you give up something."
How would the TPP agreement affect Australians? | SBS News
This is all beginning to fit into what the present government has brought in after it lied to the populace at election time.
Negotiators had hoped to finalise what could be the world's biggest free trade agreement by the end of 2013.
But a number of issues remain and talks on the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement will resume in 2014.
And in Australia, at least, there have been growing calls for the talks to be more transparent, with fears the agreement could have some negative implications.
Ildi Amon reports.
Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement involve 12 countries which account for up to 40 per cent of the world's GDP.
Initial participants in the TPP on one side of the Pacific would include Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Vietnam.
On the other side are Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru and the United States, with others able to join the pact later.
One Australian politician concerned about the proposed agreement is Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson.
In the last Senate session for the year, he moved a motion calling for negotiations on the agreement to be more open.
"It's largely been negotiated in secret over the last four years and it's very important to the Senate especially to the Greens, and I understand also to the Labor Party and a number of stakeholders across this country that the details of this Trade Agreement become public. Free trade is often pushed as being important for this country but there's also risks and costs of free trade. Recently we had a leaked chapter by WikiLeaks, only one of 30 chapters, which caused a lot of concern and this is a move to take the politics out of the release of this Free Trade Agreement and make it available to the public."
About one-third of Australian exports -- worth about $100-billion -- currently go to countries that would be included in the proposed agreement.
Alan Kirkland, from the consumer group, CHOICE, says it could leave Australian consumers worse off.
"This agreement could see prices on a range of goods go up for Australians - that's the biggest effect. So if we ban parallel imports to things like software, we will pay more for software. If we prevent Australians getting around geoblocking to get access to things like music and video and software on overseas sites, then we will see Australians pay more. That's our biggest concern with this treaty. We should not see our national interest, overridden by the interests of big American multinational companies."
Other groups are concerned the proposed free trade deal could give US drug companies longer patent protection, reducing access to cheaper generic drugs.
And Alan Kirkland from CHOICE says he's also concerned about a proposed dispute settlement provision, revealed in a draft leaked by WikiLeaks.
"What that will effectively do is tie the hands of the Australian government and Australian governments for many years to come, and we could actually see our government sued by foreign corporations. That's a very unusual thing and we don't think that should be in any treaty that Australia signs on to."
Ministers from the TPP countries met in Singapore in December in the hope of tying up final details, but failed to resolve outstanding issues.
Australia's Trade Minister Andrew Robb has said he wants the TPP to give Australia better market access for its agricultural products, and commercial benefits for service providers and investors.
He also wants improved rules for companies working together -- across countries -- to create, produce and deliver products.
Mr Robb has rejected claims the deal would negatively effect Australia's health system, or impact Australia's intellectual property and copyright laws.
And he says the government has consulted with stakeholders through more than 500 briefings.
But the Convenor of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network Patricia Ranald says the Australian public has been left out of the debate.
"Trade agreements shouldn't tie the hands of government, prevent them from regulating in the public interest. And they shouldn't be making agreements which require Australia to change its domestic law about things like medicine or copyright, which is done in secrecy when these things should normally be decided through an open, democratic, parliamentary process. Domestic law should not be decided in secret negotiations in a trade agreement."
The now former policy director at the Institute of Public Affairs, Tim Wilson, says secrecy during trade negotiations is normal.
"A lot of people are shadow boxing and discussing what could be in the agreement rather than what's actually in the final agreement. We won't know about that until negotiations are concluded so I think people should be very weary before getting too excited, because what they're reading are ambit claims from countries about what they would like in their national interest rather than what actually will be agreed between countries."
Mr Wilson says Australians will have the chance to assess the proposed deal when it comes before Parliament for ratification.
"It doesn't matter what governments sign on to it's what parliament ratifies in the end and then goes on to ingratiate into law and that's where the real test of disclosure has to occur and will occur. Everything else is just ultimately about those who have an interest in seeing what's happening in negotiations earlier so they can derail the process."
But Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson says Parliament would only get 20 days to review the details of the huge deal.
And he says the scale and complexity of the potential deal means it should be properly scrutinised with the Australian public having a say in what is under negotiation.
"What is really unusual about the TPP deal is it goes way beyond what we would call the traditional trade in goods and services and breaking open market access. It straddles enormous areas of public interest and public importance, like for example internet usage, intellectual property, food labelling, quarantine standards. You really have to wonder what Australia has left to trade away in these deals, because the nature of these negotiations is you don't get something unless you give up something."
How would the TPP agreement affect Australians? | SBS News
This is all beginning to fit into what the present government has brought in after it lied to the populace at election time.
The TPP
I never knew about it because it's not European, and it seems a lot of the people it affects don't know either.
I have always had a fear of The Establishment, the Right Wing, Big Business call it what you may, the way the world is going it is turning into my worst nightmare.
This organisation was set up to combat such things. SumOfUs
I have always had a fear of The Establishment, the Right Wing, Big Business call it what you may, the way the world is going it is turning into my worst nightmare.
This organisation was set up to combat such things. SumOfUs
I thought I knew more than this until I opened my mouth
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fuzzywuzzy
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- Joined: Mon Feb 02, 2009 5:35 pm
The TPP
Yeah I've heard of them. but what really gets me is the turmoil in the Asian region to do with all of this ...No one has yet figured out why there are 2000 american troops in the Northern Territory.
Our government has just taken out almost a billion from our health care system and hospitals...........where have they directed the money to? apparently medical research.....a new private company. American pharmasuetical company. Now if Australians try to knock this on the head guess who gets sued? The Australian government therefore the Australian people. They've got us by the balls.............did anyone vote for that? No one had a clue it was coming, didn't even get mentioned.
Our government has just taken out almost a billion from our health care system and hospitals...........where have they directed the money to? apparently medical research.....a new private company. American pharmasuetical company. Now if Australians try to knock this on the head guess who gets sued? The Australian government therefore the Australian people. They've got us by the balls.............did anyone vote for that? No one had a clue it was coming, didn't even get mentioned.
The TPP
Actually there are similar talks going on in europe and between europe and the us. Similar efect in tghat companies will be able to sue counries if they take actions - environmemtal legislation for instance - that impact on their profits. It's the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
A threat to democracy? The EU-US trade deal is no such thing | Ken Clarke | Comment is free | The Guardian
Make up your own mind but supra national corporations are not good imo.
A threat to democracy? The EU-US trade deal is no such thing | Ken Clarke | Comment is free | The Guardian
Make up your own mind but supra national corporations are not good imo.