How the Trans-Pacific Partnership Would Undermine Internet Freedom
How the Trans-Pacific Partnership Would Undermine Internet Freedom
Remember SOPA - the "copyright" legislation before Congress last year that public outcry stopped cold? Well, the same corporations behind SOPA have pushed to insert its most pernicious provisions into TPP. Says who? The organizations that stopped SOPA like the Electronic Freedom Foundation and the ACLU.
Under this TPP proposal, Internet Service Providers could be required to "police" user activity (i.e. police YOU), take down internet content, and cut people off from internet access for common user-generated content.
Violations could be as simple as the creation of a YouTube video with clips from other videos, even if for personal or educational purposes....Mandatory fines would be imposed for individuals' non-commercial copies of copyrighted material. So, downloading some music could be treated the same as large-scale, for-profit copyright violations.
Innovation would be stifled as the creation and sharing of user-generated content would face new barriers, and as monopoly copyrights would be extended. The TPP proposes to impose copyright protections for a minimum of 120 years for corporate-created content... Breaking digital locks for legit purposes, such as using Linux, could subject users to mandatory fines. Blind and deaf people also would be harmed by this overreach, as digital locks can block access to audio-supported content and closed captioning.
http://www.exposethetpp.org/TPPImpacts_InternetFreedom.html
So, is 120 years really what the framers had in mind, when writing the Constitution?
Article One, section 8, clause 8:
"The Congress shall have power ... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law
Is 120 years the appropriate "limited time" term of copyright protection, given the framers stated goal of promoting "the progress of science and useful arts"?
EFF: All Nations Lose with TPP's Expansion of Copyright Terms
....corporate works that were not published within 25 years of its creation, are protected the term of protection is 120 years from the date of the creation.This provision expands the terms of the controversial US Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (or the “Mickey Mouse Act” as it was called due to Disney’s heavy lobbying) to countries of the Pacific region. New Zealand, a party to the TPP negotiations, currently has a copyright term of the author’s life and an additional 50 years for literary works. Another TPP member, Malaysia, has a copyright term of life plus 50 years for “literary, musical or artistic work.” Canada, which is just entering negotiations, has an even shorter term of just 50 years for fixed sound recordings. Pursuant to the current TPP terms [pdf], all of these countries would be required to extend their terms and grant companies lengthy exclusive rights to works for no empirical reason.
The common justification for granting restrictive monopoly rights in copyright law is to provide an “incentive” for people to generate material that can be enjoyed by the public. But economists and law scholars who have studied this rationale have found that “the optimal length of copyright is at most seven years.” . . . Long copyright terms are a poor recipe for compensating creators, who generally receive low royalties from their works.5 And yet, the strong copyright lobby prevents any recommendation to reduce the presently excessive terms, attacking any attempt to speak for the public domain or for users rights and dazzles politicians with nonsensical “copyright math”.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/all-nations-lose-tpps-expansion-copyright-terms
= new reply since forum marked as read
knowing the consequences.
There was also a leak that dealt with our Environmental Laws. I will look for that also, thanks Wikileaks btw. According to what was leaked, this 'agreement' would weaken our hard fought for Environment Protection laws and give Global Corps rights over our environment that no American, let alone Democrat should even consider.
This is part of the New World Order, where there is no sovereignty a Giant Corp needs to respect when profits are at stake.
Oh yes, edited to add, that this is why it is all so secret. It won't just affect this country either.
Who needs sovereignty anyhow? 
This sounds like the Rule of Perpetuities. Ridiculous when applied to the lies of Micky Mouse and Donald Duck:
The common law rule against perpetuities forbids some future interests (traditionally contingent remainders and executory interests) that may not vest within the time permitted; the rule "limit[s] the testator's power to earmark gifts for remote descendants".[1] In essence, the rule prevents a person from putting qualifications and criteria in his/her will that will continue to control or affect the distribution of assets long after he or she has died, a concept often referred to as control by the "dead hand" or "mortmain".
The scenario forbidden by the rule against perpetuities.
The rule against perpetuities forbids future interests that could potentially vest after the established time period.
The rule is often stated as follows: “No interest is good unless it must vest, if at all, not later than twenty-one years after the death of some life in being at the creation of the interest.”[2] For the purposes of the rule, a life is "in being" at conception. Although most discussions and analysis relating to the rule revolve around wills and trusts, the rule applies to any future dispositions of property, including options. When a part of a grant or will violates the rule, only that portion of the grant or devise is removed. All other parts that do not violate the rule are still valid. The perpetuities period under the common law rule is not a fixed term of years. By its terms, the rule limits the period to at the latest 21 years after the death of the last identifiable individual living at the time the interest was created ("life in being"
. This "measuring" or "validating" life need not have been a purchaser or taker in the conveyance or devise. The measuring life could be the grantor, a life tenant, a tenant for a term of years, or in the case of a contingent remainder or executory devise to a class of unascertained individuals, the person capable of producing members of that class.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities
Applying that to intellectual property like copyrights is sheer insanity.
It will impede creativity. And that is now what capitalism is supposed to do.
What a greedy bunch of lazy bums wrote that thing!
