[pp.int.general] alert about this son ACTA

[Enrique Herrera Noya]

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/02301112524/son-acta-worse-meet-tpp-trans-pacific-partnership-agreement.shtml



Son Of ACTA (But Worse): Meet TPP, The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
from the any-which-way dept

Back in December we noted that the industry lobbyists fighting for
increased protectionism via copyright and patent laws never stop trying,
and as soon as one thing finishes, they pop up somewhere else.
Specifically, we were noting calls from the industry for the USTR to
negotiate a hardline in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which
involves a bunch of Pacific Rim countries: Australia, Brunei, Chile,
Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, U.S, and Vietnam -- though Japan and Canada
may join as well. Apparently, the US government has already indicated
that it will not allow any form of weakening of intellectual property
law for any reason whatsoever in this agreement. In fact, the USTR has
directly said that it will only allow for "harmonizing" intellectual
property regulations "strictly upwards," meaning greater protectionism.
Given the mounds of evidence suggesting that over protection via such
laws is damaging to the economy, this is immensely troubling, and once
again shows how the USTR is making policy by ignoring data. This is scary.

The folks over at Public Knowledge have put together some initial
information on the TPP, noting that it's basically "ACTA the Sequel."
It's actually worse than that. As KEI has discussed TPP will be a much
stricter form of agreement:

    Unlike ACTA, the TPP will be subject to a dispute resolution
process, which means that the U.S. and other countries will be subject
to "fines" if they are not in compliance with the agreement.

Not surprisingly, just like ACTA, it appears that the USTR has decided
that "transparency" as required by the Obama administration really means
no transparency. Once again, KEI notes the ridiculousness of this:

    The Obama Administration has developed a policy on transparency for
the TPP negotiations which apparently does not involve any commitments
to sharing the text with the general public, even after it has been
given to all member countries in the negotiation and to hundreds of
corporate insiders on the USTR advisory board system.

It appears the lesson that the USTR learned from all the complaints
about a total lack of transparency on ACTA was that it could get away
with basically refusing to include the public (the biggest stakeholder
here) entirely.




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