Australia-US Free Trade Agreement Examined

PeterBecker writes "An evalutation of the impact of the changes Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement is available from the Australian Parliamentary Library (Research Paper #14). It takes a very critical stance, with statements such as "IPRs fit awkwardly in an agreement that has the aim of advancing free trade." and "While there has not been a comprehensive economic evaluation of IPRs, the Productivity Commission has found that, as a net importer of IPRs, Australia would lose more than it gains by strengthening IPRs. The net economic impact is thus likely to be negative.". Interesting read especially for those of you who might be affected but missed the fact thanks to close to no coverage in the mainstream media."

Comments

EU Council, Please Look at

[Karl-Friedrich Lenz]

this report and ask the same question:

Who would profit from legalizing software patents, the American or the European software industry?

DMCA - Our gift to you, Australia!

[Gavin Rogers]

Thanks to the free trade agreement, Australia is now likely to get DMCA-like laws.

Our copyright law is already strict - we aren't allowed to copy a CD that you own to tape to listen on a walkman or in the car and we have no "fair use" copying for backup purpose. Now add the DMCA.

Tack on to this the extension to the copyright period for most works approaching 90 years and we have to ask ourselves, was this "free trade" agreement worth trading in our reasonable copyright law in exchange for selling some more sugar, wheat and wool in the US market?

Re:DMCA - Our gift to you, Australia!

[arlandbayes]

was this "free trade" agreement worth trading in our reasonable copyright law in exchange for selling some more sugar, wheat and wool in the US market?

Actually, the "free" trade agreement exludes sugar exports. The Florida cane growers have quite a bit of influence with Bush since it is such a pivotal state under the US electoral system.

OB aussie

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not a Free Trade Agreement,
[pulls out big piece of paper] THIS is a Free Trade Agreement.

Hmmm...

[cujo_1111]

What is apparent is that Australia did not get the big gains in access to US agriculture it was asking for, but still agreed to some serious changes to Australian social policies which the US was demanding. While the agreement - unlike the North American Free Trade Agreement - will not allow corporations to sue the government for breaches of the agreement, it will mean restrictions on the right of Australia to regulate local content in the media, changes to Australian quarantine laws, new avenues for US pharmaceutical companies to press for greater profits from the Pharmaceutical Benefits scheme, and greater restrictions on creative products under copyright.

Re:The media

[Unordained]

... and that they might have something to gain from it. Most big news outlets are owned by companies that also make/sell movies, music, or other media covered under copyright law that would be worth protecting overseas (your nightly news really doesn't matter in that respect.) Now, it's quite possible that because it's not an inconvenience to them, it simply didn't interest them (and they figured you wouldn't care either.) If this were very much not in their own best interest, they could easily blow it into a "big deal" everyone would suddenly mildly care about (as much as anybody seems to care about anything these days -- oh, wait, has that been true for all of history? Oh.)

.au would be insane to accept this

[leonbrooks]

Guess what the single biggest transferrer of money in .us is?

Correct! It is indeed enforcement of IPRs. Parking meters on a grand scale.

Of what benefit to Australia is:

1. opening their markets to the biggest property-rights sharks in the world?
2. joining their markets to those of a country whose income is earned not so much from innovation or production as from milking them both?
3. Moving their laws towards those of a country already neck-deep in litigation?
4. Opening their markets to a huge producer of Australian staples like wheat?

From an Australian perspective, she's a no make sense.

At all.

So why is it going ahead regardless?

Enquiring Aussies want to know.

Re:.au would be insane to accept this

[The OPTiCIAN]

> So why is it going ahead regardless?

It's a tradeoff for other concessions. Australians get agricultural deliverables as a result of this.

Don't get me wrong - I am staunchly opposed to a FTA that incorporates any of the brainless concessions on Sonny Bonno, patent law and copyright definitions. But the FTA is not *pure* evil, although it is poorly-conceived and will be bad for Australia's medium and long-term economic interest if implemented.

It shouldn't be necessary but unfortunately the so called leaders of the free world are a bunch of protectionist arseholes and our farmers don't want to have compete against their tarrifs. The government's naive policy flows from this motivation.

A poster in another thread noted:
> Thanks to the free trade agreement, Australia is now likely to get DMCA-like laws.

Australia already *has* [stupid] DMCA-like laws. However, under this agreement they would be expanded and (more seriously), entrenched in a foreign treaty. This means that if it gets introduced we'll have an extra level of lockin to them even when the fogies in parliament have moved on.

As a call-out to geeks, the best thing you can do if you're pissed off about these things is to join EFA and to join a major political party. Too many geeks whine endlessly about how little their government does right, yet never get involved in a meaningful way. If you're pissed off about this stuff don't be a whining loser, go and meet some humans and see how it works.

You'll see that bad decisions almost always have more to do with incompetence than conspiracy. Particularly in Australia which is largely free of corruption, back-room donation skills, that sort of thing.

Baker & McKenzie FTA IP Symposium

[samj]

I recently attended The US-Australia Free Trade Agreement and Intellectual Property - A Symposium which was hosted by the Baker & McKenzie Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, UNSW Law Faculty. You can find the transcript here, and mp3 sound files here, here, and here. It was a most interesting presentation, although in some ways I think it missed important 'features' of the FTA. Features which affect us all like most of Chapter 17, especially the introduction of DMCA like laws. More time was spent discussing mostly irrelevant issues like the 'protection' of information that may otherwise be cached by ISPs. The site is a good resource nonetheless - it's just unfortunate that people don't know what's good for them and are more interested in irrelevant news than items which will actually make a difference to them.

Australia..the 51st US state

[nexx_au]

Just another step closer.

What advise could you give for similar scenarios?

[pisco_sour]

Here in Peru, the government is currently in the middle of negotiations regarding our own US-Peru free trade agreement. There's a lot of hype about it, most people consider it to be the great economic panacea which will solve most of our terrible economic problems, and the one instrument which may single-handedly bring us out of underdevelopment. I say 'Ha!', but I don't think they really care about my opinion.

Anyway, mainstream media is nothing but sugar talk for the FTA, and have hardly noticed all of the fine print, especially regarding "enhancements" on our IP law, or other areas of our Constitution - essentially opening wide for foreign investment without any kind of protection for our inner markets.

So, to the point, as a sort of mini Ask Slashdot: how would you go about publicizing these little known issues, particularly the IP one, especially when most of the mainstream media just tries to shush any voices that are just not complying with their views? These are legitimate issues which could very possibly rally valuable support, yet none of it is being mentioned, anywhere, just the positive aspects of the agreement are publicized, particularly by the government. As far as I know, similar issues are popping all through Latin America, perhaps even other places. I would certainly appreciate any insight from Australians who've just went through this, or anybody else with similar experiences, which we may possibly adapt to our local scenarios.

Re:The media

[caitsith01]

"An examination of some of the shortcomings of a trade agreement between the U.S. and Australia does not effect most people directly."

Of course it does, and the IP law parts of it certainly affect them a hell of a lot more than the provisions about sugar, for example, which have had the bulk of the coverage in the media including incessant front pages for several weeks a few months ago.

The problem is people are too lazy to try to understand the finer details, even when they are very important details. On top of which, there is only a very weak consumer advocacy movement in Australia, there is no Nader-type crusader to draw attention to such issues, and only a few interest groups (Electronic Frontiers Australia being one, but they never seem to get any media play).

People with your attitude are actually the problem. We are going to trade away our own laws, developed over hundreds of years through the British common law and then locally since federation, in exchange for the lowering of a few tariffs on manufactured goods, and you think its 'boring' to have to think about it.

Re:Short Answer

[TDRighteo]

Perhaps. Going off the current figures from www.aph.gov.au, the current scoreboard is:

Government (Liberal & National) 34
Labour 28
Democrats 7
Greens 2
Progressive Alliance (Meg Lees) 1
One Nation (Len Harris) 1
Independants (Harradine & Murphy) 2
---
Total 75
+ Casting vote of senate president (Lib)

The ALP currently look unlikely to vote for the FTA. The Democrats and Greens I believe have both stated they don't plan to vote for it either. This leaves the government *requiring* the four votes left:

Lees (South Australia)
Harris (Queensland)
Harradine (Tasmania)
Murphy (Tasmania)

Harris *might*, but One Nation didn't like things like this previously, so he's iffy. Lees... was a Democrat once, but who knows now. And the two independants are also questionable.

The odds are against it at the moment, but a few letters to senators can't hurt:
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/senators/index .htm

NIEIR FTA report

[quinkin]

The Age has an article on the report compiled by the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research (NIEIR) for the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union.

To summarise:

• A federal government commissioned study of the agreement, which found it would boost the Australian economy by more than $6 billion a year, was out of touch with reality.
• The deal could cost Australia around $52 billion within two decades, largely due to Australian governments surrendering their control of key policy decisions. This would be most felt in knowledge-based industries, with American companies likely to overwhelm their small Australian opposition, wipe out competition, withdraw domestic investment and take profits offshore.
• The study also put a cost to the proposed changes in copyright laws in Australia, that will extend copyright protection by 20 years, in line with the US. The NIEIR found this change would benefit the Disney Corporation, which has pushed the copyright extension in the US, at a $450 million cost to the Australian public.
• Changes in the copyright, pharmaceutical and knowledge-based areas, and restrictions on the ability of Australian governments to act in the country's best interests, all meant the deal was not in the national interest.
• It found the average loss of jobs would be around 57,000, but in a worst-case scenario, it could rise to 195,000.

Well that just sounds wonderfull...

Q.