
Release of the Full TPP Text Confirms Threats to Users’ Rights - sanqui
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/11/release-full-tpp-text-after-five-years-secrecy-confirms-threats-users-rights
======
walterbell
Public Citizen has released initial analysis,
[http://www.citizen.org/documents/tpp-ecommerce-chapter-
analy...](http://www.citizen.org/documents/tpp-ecommerce-chapter-
analysis.pdf), _" The E-commerce chapter … addresses a range of issues
including duties on digital products, paperless trade administration, and
rules on electronic signatures, net neutrality and data protection. The text
also includes provisions limiting the ability of countries to keep data within
their territorial borders.

… any legal system that imposes limits on private sector data transfers to
jurisdictions for the purpose of safeguarding citizens’ data against foreign
government intelligence agencies, as was recently accomplished by the Court of
Justice of the European Union in Schrems v Facebook Inc, 2015 Case C-362/14,
could contribute to violation of Section A of the TPP’s Investment chapter and
be subject to sanction and heavy penalties through the investor-state dispute
mechanism.

… Article 14.17 prevents governments from requiring the disclosure of source
code as a condition of import, distribution, sale or use of software or of
products containing software … while the Article excludes disclosure
obligations in commercially negotiated contracts, it does not exempt source
code disclosure provisions imposed by means of a software license.

… As open source licenses are not ‘commercially negotiated’ but rather imposed
on others, there is concern that any attempt to enforce such licenses against
third parties by means of the courts would amount to a violation of this
Article, opening the country whose court system carried out such enforcement
to heavy-handed penalties through the investor-state dispute enforcement
mechanisms.

… addressing cybersecurity breaches can require mandating the publication of
source code so as to facilitate fixing of security flaws. The TPP’s
prohibition on such requirements could undermine security measures of this
type."_

ISDS primers:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=M4-mlGRPmkU](https://youtube.com/watch?v=M4-mlGRPmkU)
&
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=AABOIcXZZwg](https://youtube.com/watch?v=AABOIcXZZwg)
& [http://isdscorporateattacks.org](http://isdscorporateattacks.org)

~~~
chongli
We are truly headed for a cyberpunk-style, post-state world. Corporations will
succeed states and enforce their own draconian sovereignty. What remains of
states will exist only to serve the will of their corporate paymasters.

~~~
walterbell
There are lessons from the defeat of the Comcast/TWC merger, which was also
viewed as inevitable, [http://www.wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-
factory/comca...](http://www.wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-
factory/comcasttwccharter-looking-good-but-too-early-to-pop-the-champagne/),
_" … while lobbying and popular opinion don’t relieve the DoJ and FCC of the
need to have substance, the intense unpopularity of the deal and the
unexpected resistance it keeps encountering at the local and state level
certainly don’t help … the widespread discontent provides more evidence to the
agencies that these companies already have market power, and that the merger
will only make things worse … this looks a heck of a lot less like the
quixotic campaign and hopeless last stand many people thought it would be a
year ago."_

TPP opposition has been higher than expected,
[http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/stopTPP](http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/stopTPP),
_" … the dozen trade-watching stalwarts at Public Citizen divided into five
teams and went after the Brobdingnagians of global corporate power … it's
important to spread the story of the progressive coalition's successful
confrontation with the Global Goliath. Its methods and achievements give us a
new template for organizing (and winning) future populist challenges to the
corporate order. And the breadth, depth, and intensity of this effort show
what it will take to forge a real populist movement--multifaceted and with the
long-term capacity to pursue our country's deep democratic principles. We can
get there if we build on what we learn--and keep pushing."_

------
deciplex
xpost from the other thread because I'd welcome any insight on this:

What confuses the hell out of me regarding the TPP - and maybe it's just
because I'm in the HN/Reddit echo chamber on this - but if the TPP is so damn
important to reigning in China in the 21st century or whatever, then why did
they load it up with a bunch of unrelated antagonizing bullshit?

It doesn't seem to me that the intellectual property provisions of the
agreement are all that important to the overall stated goals of the TPP. Yet
they are so fucking regressive and antagonistic that there is some chance (I
guess? Again, echo chamber...) that they will sabotage the rest of the
agreement. After SOPA, etc., if it were me and I wanted to be sure that the
TPP passed in enough Pacific Rim countries to make it effective, I would keep
anything remotely like SOPA as far away from my precious treaty as I possibly
could.

Instead, the IP portions of the agreement are basically the language that was
in SOPA all over again, which pissed a whole lot of people off last time. It's
really hard to take seriously the claim that the TPP is so important, when the
people drafting it are including language that is pretty much guaranteed to
stoke vigorous opposition, for reasons that are mostly orthogonal to their
goals.

~~~
throwaway2048
This is due to the view that "IP industries" are the future of the American
economy, and this is how they are going to attempt to protect them.

~~~
junto
Lobbying power, poor and simple, which is just a push term for legalised
corruption.

------
Asbostos
This really doesn't seem that bad. It's mainly restricting what governments
can do to restrict their people. In other words - keeping trade free. Isn't
that kind of a good thing?

\- Governments are not allowed to restrict where companies store user data.

\- Governments can choose how to deal with spam, they don't have to adopt the
US's CAN-SPAM law.

\- Governments can't force companies to disclose their source code.

\- Copyright term hasn't been extended to life + 120 years as earlier feared.
Only to life+70 years which it already was in the USA anyway.

\- Governments don't have to impose net neutrality. That's an issue in the US,
but not everywhere else. And they still can if their people want. Such
restrictions could easily backfire, especially when they have exemptions for a
few hand-picked uses like VOIP and telemedicine. So what if somebody invents a
new technology that also needs preferential treatment for latency or
bandwidth?

\- Governments aren't allowed to impose security restrictions on users as a
tool to impede free trade. Does anyone really want the government to dictate
how they do internet security? Or for foreign companies to be blocked in favor
of domestic competitors?

~~~
shmerl
_> Copyright term hasn't been extended to life + 120 years as earlier feared.
Only to life+70 years which it already was in the USA anyway._

Which should be reduced (even life + 70 is ridiculously long). This agreement
makes internal reform much harder, because it solidifies the bad status quo.
Same goes for many other similar things.

~~~
kyouko
Agreed, It would take another international effort to reduce copyright term
again - and it'll be tough enough to even get one country to consider it
themselves

------
beeboop
I don't worry about stuff like this too much, or stuff about the UK wanting to
do stupid stuff like ban all encryption. I believe the internet is going to
become more private and more anonymous as time goes on. Eventually everyone
will be using the equivalent of VPNs on machines/browsers that don't give out
any identifying information unless a user extremely explicitly tells it to. Or
perhaps something similar to Freenet will become much more popular. We're
already seeing hardware (like the iPhone) coming encrypted from the
manufacturer with seemingly no way for any government agency to decrypt it
forcefully. Ad blockers and tracking blockers are more popular than ever.
Firefox just today released an update to help prevent trackers.

It's just a matter of time - ISPs and governments and corporations will lose
the ability to track their users outside of their specific platform, and many
of the platforms we use today will be replaced with P2P alternatives that make
tracking impossible and aren't "owned" by anyone. I am sure the governments of
the world will be livid.

~~~
kaizendad
Isn't a big side effect of laws like these that tools such as encryption and
P2P can be classified as designed to violate IP, and banned?

~~~
plonh
Yes, GP's view seems extremely naive. Unless you are using a pirate radio
network, your ISP can simply turn off all your encrypted traffic .

~~~
userbinator
_your ISP can simply turn off all your encrypted traffic ._

And then everyone starts using steganography.

~~~
gmac
Yeah, I can totally see my mum doing that.

~~~
filoeleven
Does she use email today? That was an esoteric practice only twenty years ago.
If the need arises, steganography will evolve to become similarly easy to use.

------
yourepowerless
Does anyone believe this will not become the law?

You can peaceably gather in protest and maybe get a few sniping remarks on the
nightly news, you can call, write, knock on your representatives door, you can
donate money and time, but none of it will stop this treaty from being passed
because those in power wrote it for themselves and will pass it for
themselves.

If anything were to stop it it would be the wide disregard and disobedience of
the illegitimate laws it supposedly creates.

~~~
gleenn
Whether or not that is true, that is some of the worst sentiment to be
spreading. If you feel strongly, call you congressman, organize a group, do
something. Posting that no one can do anything doesn't help anyone.

~~~
jamesdsadler
It seems to me like an accurate reflection of reality though. When governments
and corporations propose legislation in _secret_ it is _never_ going to be in
citizen's best interests. On the national and international scale democracy
almost doesn't exist. We are being governed by the rich elite and being able
to vote is just a sideshow.

Democracy as it is currently implemented is fundamentally flawed because it
puts politicians and political parties in _power_. I mean, it fundamentally is
about giving other's power. That is a freaking crude proxy to furthering
citizen's interests. It's a blunt instrument. People in power can be
influenced/corrupted/manipulated disproportionately by corporations and others
with power. Citizens are disenfranchised and mostly powerless.

IMHO the ultimate expression of democracy would not to vote others into
office, but to propose and collectively edit new legislation and vote on that.
Skip the politician middlemen, go straight to the issues that matter. I
imagine that citizens would be allocated a number of non-transferable expiring
vote-credits that they can use to spend on pushing legislation.

In summary: until the very nature of democracy evolves we are destined to
inhabit a dystopian world that serves only the interests of the elite.

~~~
deciplex
The basic idea of how we do democracy is more-or-less sound. Democracy is
pretty robust to different implementations e.g. federal democracy,
parliamentary democracy, etc.

If democracy has an Achilles's heel it is probably concentration of power.
Democracy works better when power is diffuse, and you even see this expressed
in the American constitution somewhat. However, although the framers of the US
constitution implemented diffusion of power pretty well within government
itself, they did nothing to secure diffusion of power across society more
broadly[1], and as it happens that is kicking the shit out of many Western
democracies now as wealth inequality (and imbalance of power, by proxy)
approaches levels that have not been seen in many generations.

[1] Possibly they even did this, by restricting the vote to land owners
initially (although I don't think that was their motivation to do so). There
is no question limited suffrage sucks of course, but I suspect participants in
American democracy early on were on a much more level playing field than what
we have now. It would have been a good idea to try to preserve that diffusion
of power in society somewhat, along the way to universal suffrage. We didn't,
and now may be paying the price.

~~~
Umn55
"The basic idea of how we do democracy is more-or-less sound."

Sorry to tell you but... human beings are bad at reasoning:

Science on reasoning:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ)

On democracy

[http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-
Inverte...](http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-
Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X/)

~~~
deciplex
That book seems to be exploring in part the very concept I outlined in my
post: that concentrated wealth will subvert a democracy.

~~~
Umn55
Except its much worse... it has always been so, you're just becoming aware of
it.

You really need to bone up on your history...

[http://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-
people...](http://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peoples-
governments-the-master-list)

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in
1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank
boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central
American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering
is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of
Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for
American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard
Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]

"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in
dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23] "The general public shoulders the
bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed
gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes.
Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking
taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]

General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties.
He writes with great emotion about the thousands of tramautized soldiers, many
of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he
notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die
prematurely than those who stayed home.

[http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-
Decorated/...](http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-
Decorated/dp/0922915865/)

