
Read the TPP - SimplyUseless
https://www.readthetpp.com/
======
tptacek
I opened this page up, skipped forward to the first highlighted section (18.
Intellectual Property), and skimmed to the first annotation. The original
text:

 _1\. A Party may, in formulating or amending its laws and regulations, adopt
measures necessary to protect public health and nutrition, and to promote the
public interest in sectors of vital importance to their socio-economic and
technological development, provided that such measures are consistent with the
provisions of this Chapter._

The annotation:

 _In other words, the TPP overrides any domestic laws protecting public health
and nutrition, or socio-economic development._

That's not at all how the TPP works. The treaty doesn't allow foreign
governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims
against the governments themselves if they enact and enforce laws contrary to
the agreements in the TPP itself.

I'd really like the TPP annotated by legal experts. Instead, it's annotated by
the CTO of Fight For The Future. I'm not sure that's a win.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> That's not at all how the TPP works. The treaty doesn't allow foreign
> governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims
> against the governments themselves if they enact and enforce laws contrary
> to the agreements in the TPP itself.

Isn't this just semantics though? If you can use economic force (damage claims
against the governments themselves), its just as effective as using
executive/legislative force to "override" local law [1].

> I'd really like the TPP annotated by legal experts.

Luckily, they can! It's on Github. Its just a matter of finding legal experts
willing to mark it up.

[1] [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-
feat...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/big-
tobacco-puts-countries-on-trial-as-concerns-over-ttip-deals-
mount-9807478.html)

~~~
tptacek
No, it's not just semantics. The plain wording of the annotation, by one of
the site's sponsors, is that the TPP "overrides local laws". It does not.

The equivalence between allowing a trade treaty to literally rewrite our laws
and allowing a trade treaty to settle economic claims is not at all clear to
me.

This does not seem like a minor detail.

~~~
crdoconnor
What exactly would be the point of finding the host government except to get
them to change their laws?

~~~
tptacek
Think about it in the abstract.

Country X and country Y are trading partners.

Country X wants concession A from Y, who in turn wants concession B from X.
They agree to trade concessions and encode it in a treaty.

For several years, X and Y enjoy the economic benefits of those concessions.

Then X passes a law that vitiates, say, 50% of the economic benefit of
concession B. It is now free-riding off Y; Y is giving it concession A, but X
is only giving 50% of concession B owing to the law that contravenes the
treaty.

Y is entitled to make a claim for damages. _Not_ to change the law (treaties
don't work that way), but rather to make and resolve the argument of the form
"I am giving you (A) and you're only giving me 0.5(B); make up the difference
in cash."

~~~
pjc50
So we're establishing a property-like right to a profit in perpetuity, and if
the product in question is found to be harmful the seller is entitled to
compensation?

[http://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2015/dec/18/austra...](http://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2015/dec/18/australia-wins-international-legal-battle-with-philip-morris-
over-plain-packaging)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Morris_v._Uruguay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Morris_v._Uruguay)

That's how the "concession" will pay out in practice.

 _Y is entitled to make a claim for damages_

Your example is slightly off. In the TPP, it's not the countries that are
parties to the treaty that are suing, but individual businesses.

(There are plenty of treaties that oblige the passing of laws directly, as a
means of implementing the treaty; everything from the Montreal convention on
air passenger compensation to NAFTA)

~~~
maxerickson
Edit: Oops, I misread your comment.

 _Party means any State or separate customs territory for which this Agreement
is in force;_

[https://www.readthetpp.com/ch01.html](https://www.readthetpp.com/ch01.html)

Too bad they don't have anchors for significant sections/items, I'd direct
link the definition of "Party" given in the treaty. But the text I quoted is
on that page there.

------
walterbell
Citizen's Trade organized 1,500 groups to sign a letter to the US Congress,
against the TPP,
[http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/blog/2016/01/07/1500-groups...](http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/blog/2016/01/07/1500-groups-
urge-congress-to-oppose-the-tpp/)

 _"... the TPP elevates investor rights over human rights and democracy,
threatening an even broader array of public policy decisions than described
above. This, unfortunately, is the all-too-predictable result of a secretive
negotiating process in which hundreds of corporate advisors had privileged
access to negotiating texts, while the public was barred from even reviewing
what was being proposed in its name.

The TPP does not deserve your support. Had Fast Track not become law, Congress
could work to remove the misguided and detrimental provisions of the TPP,
strengthen weak ones and add new provisions designed to ensure that our most
vulnerable families and communities do not bear the brunt of the TPP’s many
risks. Now that Fast Track authority is in place for it, Congress is left with
no means of adequately amending the agreement without rejecting it entirely.
We respectfully ask that you do just that."_

------
johnmaguire2013
This seems like a perfect proof of concept for genius.com if they're serious
about becoming a way to annotate anything (not just songs).

[1] [http://genius.com/web-annotator](http://genius.com/web-annotator)

~~~
37
I believe this has already been started.

[http://genius.com/artists/Transpacific-partnership-tpp-
negot...](http://genius.com/artists/Transpacific-partnership-tpp-negotiating-
parties)

------
jariz
This is great and all and is something that should absolutely be shared,
however, if the intent behind this project is to share it with 'the average'
person it's completely useless. No one's going to read through that entire
thing, I'd expect them to at least put up a summarized version.

~~~
CaptSpify
We should hire someone to do the summaries for us. And since they'll already
understand it, we should have them vote for or against it based on our best
interest.... wait...

~~~
outside1234
except that we don't have that. we have representatives that have piles of
money from corporations and special interests. these piles of money on the two
sides of the scale are what drive any decision around voting.

------
shmerl
There really should be a stronger push to scrap this undemocratic monstrosity.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Have you called your congressional representatives to voice your opinion? If
not, do so!

~~~
shmerl
I did write to them, multiple times (and even got a response from one of them
that they oppose it, which interestingly changed form the past). I'll give a
call as well.

------
dpweb
_Read the TPP_.. Skipped right to the HN comments about the TPP.

~~~
pekk
It doesn't matter what the TPP actually says, or how that relates to the
status quo. All that matters is that you are outraged about it, and you're
angry and you're not going to take it for one more second. Whatever it is.

~~~
r00fus
I am legitimately pissed that the entire treaty was negotiated behind closed
doors and we the people won't get any say about something that will have a big
impact on the joined economies.

~~~
tinalumfoil
There's no other sane way to negotiate large international treaties. The
moment you open it to the public tens of thousands of political advocacy
groups, lobbying groups, interest groups, protesters, etc from each country
start yelling about all the things they want changed. You can't negotiate if
your needs keep changing or are conflicting.

Whether we like it or not the TPP really is the "gold standard" of
international treaties. Unfortunately it turns out no treaty at all is
probably better anyway.

------
lindx
This is what happens when you try to visit this site with Tor:
[https://anonm.gr/up/b386.png](https://anonm.gr/up/b386.png)

Cloudflare's captchas are nearly impossible to solve, which means that Tor
users are effectively blocked from seeing the site. Would you consider using
something other than Cloudflare to host the site?

~~~
teddyh
When that happens I always just click “New Tor Circuit for this Site”
repeatedly, until I get one of the other two forms of CAPTCHA, both of which
are solveable.

~~~
lindx
I tried that, but I never got an easier captcha even after many attempts.

~~~
teddyh
Yeah, it can take quite a while sometimes, but eventually I always get one.
For this site I got an easy one on the second try.

I used to try to solve the hard ones, but I found I could not do it; it’s most
often impossible to guess what _all_ the letters are in the garbled mess with
inverted blobs on top. From your example, I _think_ it’s supposed to be
“Thtllyt nthrwhyy”, but I’m usually wrong.

------
pluckytree
I think the positive benefit of this effort will likely be undermined (and
it’s already underway) by reactionary comments from uninformed people. They'll
play well to people that already know the TPP sucks, but not from those on the
fence or really wanting to learn about it.

------
krick
A brief question: should I know what this is if I'm not an USA citizen?

~~~
walterbell
If you're one of 800 million people in the 13 countries which have signed the
TPP, then your local laws will be revised to implement the TPP.

~~~
krick
So, there isn't anything worth spending time understanding it for the outside
viewer? Only for those who live inside this "TPP club" and care about local
laws?

~~~
walterbell
In Europe, there is TTIP. In Asia, there is RCEP. The three agreements
regulate similar goods.

There is also TiSA, which covers services in 50 countries.

------
jsprogrammer
It is ridiculous that after months of Obama telling people to "just read it",
he dumped the agreement as ~268 separate PDFs.

No body has time for that. It's nice that they have pared this down to 31
different sections, but my guess is that they are not showing the full
agreement here.

It would be much nicer if someone just dumped it all into a single PDF and
HTML file.

Edit: Care to leave a comment rationalizing your downmods?

~~~
envy2
"He" didn't dump the agreement as separate PDFs; that's how these things are
almost always handled because most people involved are focused on specific
areas (be they negotiators, interest groups, or concerned citizens). Other
governments published the text in exactly the same way [1].

The USTR also published the full text on Medium [2] for anyone who doesn't
want to download a PDF.

There are plenty of issues worth discussing when it comes to the text itself
and the way the original negotiations were conducted, but arguing that the
final agreement hasn't been made accessible is really not a legitimate
complaint.

[1] [https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/about-us/who-we-are/treaty-
makin...](https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/about-us/who-we-are/treaty-making-
process/trans-pacific-partnership-tpp/text-of-the-trans-pacific-partnership)
[2] [https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership](https://medium.com/the-
trans-pacific-partnership)

~~~
jsprogrammer
[0] [https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership](https://medium.com/the-
trans-pacific-partnership)

Authorship is claimed as "Barack Obama", @PresidentObama. [1]
[https://medium.com/@PresidentObama](https://medium.com/@PresidentObama) (Even
includes an avatar of Obama's face.)

[2] [https://ustr.gov/tpp/](https://ustr.gov/tpp/) The top header claims
"Executive Office of The President".

[3] [https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-
agreements/tran...](https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-
agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text) Also claims "Executive
Office of the President".

The US Constitution only grants treaty making powers to the President. Any
treaty that claims to come from someone other than the current US President is
not and cannot be a valid treaty.

Edit: "That’s why I am posting the text of this agreement here for you to read
and explore." (Authorship Claim: Barack Obama) [4]

[4] [https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership/here-s-
the-...](https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership/here-s-the-deal-the-
text-of-the-trans-pacific-partnership-103adc324500#.6tyhpo5qc)

Edit2: Will soon be lobbying HN to publish all downmods.

~~~
tomcam
SNAP! *

* There goes what little karma I had

~~~
jsprogrammer
?

