New Leaked TPP Chapter Shows Countries Converging on Anti-User Copyright Takedown Rules

[n2doc]

A draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership's "Intellectual Property" chapter from May 11, 2015 has recently been leaked to journalists. This is the fourth leak of the chapter following earlier drafts of October 2014, August 2013, and February 2011. The latest leak is not available online and we don't have a copy of it—but we have been briefed on its contents.

In most respects the chapter follows previous drafts pretty closely; for example, the text on DRM circumvention and copyright term are both largely unchanged. But there is one area in which significant progress has been made since the last draft, and this is in the text on intermediary liability rules. Specifically, the new change involves the immunity that Internet companies enjoy from copyright liability, provided that they satisfy certain safe harbor conditions.

Under the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), these safe harbor conditions require Internet intermediaries to comply with a “notice-and-takedown” process. This has seen legitimate content taken off the Internet in response to bogus claims of infringement, as in the famous dancing baby case, as well as being misused for political censorship. Until now, one point of contention among the TPP partners has been whether countries that don't already have an equivalent to the DMCA's broken notice-and-takedown rules would be forced to adopt one.

more

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/07/new-leaked-tpp-chapter-reveals-countries-converging-anti-user-copyright

[GoneFishin]

1. Providing more bogus censorship and information gatekeeping mechanisms is great for an informed

citizenry.



What assholes.

[Kelvin Mace]

2. This was done with effect (for a while)

back when we were fighting Diebold and we published a trove of internal emails showing illegal and unethical conduct. It also showed them to be bald-faced liars about their voting machine software.

When we posted the emails, the used the DMCA to claim it was "copyrighted" material. This would have been all well and good, but they also were denying the authenticity of the emails, which led us to demand how they could claim copyright to emails they also claimed they didn't write?

It blew up in their faces, and the emails were mirrored all over the Net.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a nasty piece of work.

Unfortunately, most discussions about it in the past couple of years have been met with charges of
"oh, then I suppose you support piracy of movies and music then "

By introducing the DMCA in terms of "fighting piracy" ( much as NSA spying was introduced as "fighting terrorists&quot , teh really evil side of the act has been hidden.

There was one firm that was using DMCA to send letters to people demanding payment of 50.00 or so claiming someone had used their puter to download a movie. People got scared and paid up. Said company has been criticized and sued for that.
ISPs have strongly resisted turning over customer's browsing history, and to be playing policeman.
they need to be supported for taking that stand.

(Actually, DMCA snoops could prolly ask the National Spy Agency for those records)