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TPP Copyright Chapter Leaks: Website Blocking, New Criminal Rules On the Way
An anonymous reader writes: Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) [Wednesday] morning released
the May 2015 draft of the copyright provisions in the Trans Pacific
Partnership (copyright,
ISP
annex, enforcement).
The leak appears to be the same version that was covered
by the EFF and other media outlets earlier this summer.
Michael Geist unpacks
the leaked documents, noting the treaty includes
anti-circumvention rules that extend beyond the WIPO Internet
treaties, new criminal rules, the extension of copyright term for
countries like Canada and Japan, increased border measures,
mandatory statutory damages in all countries, and expanding ISP
liability rules, including the prospect of website blocking for
Canada.
WTF are you gonna do about it.
The goose that lays the golden egg that is the internet one day.
and considering the utter populace indifference, they will prevail.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
At this rate you'll soon be able to smoke all the pot you want, but damn, if you download that song you'll be doing hard time.
This global framework of laws will render the nation state useless. Corporations will have ALL of the power nation states used to have. And you will have none.
It is not that we are going to sit on our laurels and do nothing, but the said truth is, WTF can we do?
It's the *ELITES* that are controlling every f*ing thing - so much that now they want to criminalize the non-elites for dipping out hands on their exclusive domain
Yet more proof we live in a global oligarchy, championed by assholes, who have stacked the deck so heavily in favor of corporations the rest of us are completely fucked.
Everything in these damned treaties are about maximizing the profits of multinational corporations, and don't benefit the citizens.
The treaties are basically theft on a global scale designed to give corporations more rights than people.
This is really American politicians fucking over everybody else in the world because they're so undeniably on the fucking payroll of the corporations it isn't even funny.
It is now pretty much a moral imperative we either start eating the rich, or start copyright infringement on such a massive scale they simply can't do anything about it.
We've sold the farm on the bullshit promise that what is good for greedy assholes and corporations somehow uplifts us all, when nothing could be further from the truth.
The pressing problems we need to solve in the world haven't got a fucking thing to do with copyright.
This treaty is a terrible idea.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Internet may be the goose that lays the golden egg, to 99% of the people, but to the *ELITES* the same Internet has become a threat to their exclusivity
Before the Internet the masses had no way to know what the *ELITES* were doing - yeah, we may have the trash rags with occasional pics of the *ELTES* doing _something_, but all in all the *ELITES* were well protected, even their scandals could be covered up easily
With the advent of Internet, more and more of the scandals of the *ELITES* have been pried open and leaked into the wild. As more and more of the internal dealings are being known to the masses the status of the *ELITES* has started to crumble
That is why for the *ELITES* the Internet is no necessarily the goose that lays the golden eggs. It is a big threat to them, and is becoming more and more threatening
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"Our severe copyright penalties are only because we're following international law!"
^^^^^^^^ I'm just terse, that's all.
The Ferengi empire. Will somebody think of the profits! The profits!
Do you think voting for any other candidate would have created a better outcome?
Anti Trans Pacific Alliance eXchange, aimed at promoting lower-cost content from other producers than the big labels -- through all the channels we could manage to find... can't we use something like that to get (and pay) indie or alternative movies?
Surely we could make it worthwhile for small producers with big ideas, now that things like Blender enable good animations.
The best way to deal with TPP is by not watching their overpaid content (though, of course, it's asinine to enter a partnership which just benefits one party...).
No, the whole system is corrupted. To be elected you need lots of money and how do you get money, from the corporations or from being ./ owning a corporation.
Come to say, Donald Trump looks like the Grand Nagus.
TPP will pretty much be applied worldwide.
If you're stepping on this planet, you gotta be affected horribly by it.
How many billions did the recent Sherlock Holmes adaptions make? All because these are now in the public realm?
I used to buy all of the media I consumed. It seemed to be the right thing to do.
Now they say I can't rip the media I bought to use it when and where I want. I'm infringing simply by watching it where I work and on my way to work (oil rig, hotel on the way).
A treaty from another country gets to write my country's laws? And we don't have any say in it?
I am so sickened by all this that I stopped purchasing media. It only funds these assholes. I have no respect for copyright any more. Why should I? There is no respect for the consumer any more. I'm a freetard now.
Who knew that trade negotiators could pass legislation without the knowledge, let alone approval, of Congress? Do countries other than the U.S. also kowtow to the music and film industries? Google or Microsoft could buy the entire music and recording industry, and never bat an eye. How does such a small industry carry the weight to mandate worldwide legislation?
It's sad but true.
Here's what'll happen...
TPP will get to final stage approval of all nations. People will protest, etc. etc. and get ignored because governments don't give a shit since they can just walk all over the people as has been demonstrated by Snowden/Assange.
I foresee a corporate government within 5-10 years, maybe less, considering how aggressively they are pushing.
Freedoms? In a short few years your grandchildren will turn around and ask you "isn't this what you used to have back then grandpa, but lost because you were too much of a fucking coward to fight for it?"
Talk about a lovely future we got coming our way.
Funny enough in some countries that are pushing for 'hard time' for copyright infringement, I could commit manslaughter(maybe as much as 2nd degree) here in Canada and be out before they would be.
So in theory, killing everyone pushing this crap would result in less punishment than allowing it to pass.
Gee! I thought to get elected all you need are enough votes. To get media attention and free air time, just say, *Nigger*. That'll get you plenty of votes, too. Kind of unfortunate the things you gotta do to win. But this way, you can do it low budget.
And we have a Prime Minister who's vowing and trying to get TPP ratified just before the vote. He's disappointed he couldn't get it ratified before the election call, but in the middle of his campaigning, that's one of his key pillars.
Might also try to participate in that debate as well and ask about it. Though given bill C-51, and the other bills he's trying to get passed, website blocking might be the least of your problems.
And always - go vote. I know he also passed a new law making it harder to do so, and the courts have even admitted that while the law is bad, they won't overturn it because it will screw with the election. All the forms and all that were printed out and it's too troublesome for the courts to repeal the bad law because it's too close to an election. Between that and his efforts to disenfranchise voters through other means (including fake phone calls directing people to the wrong location - and handcuffing the officials in charge of investigating election fraud...), well, make sure you have all your ducks in a row, because unless you bring in a Conservative party member card, they're going to make it hard for you to vote.
In Canada it's an election year. One of the promises of the current party is - I kid you not - "we will not add a tax to netflix or youtube streaming". That's pretty weak. If that's the best they can think to offer - and they think "internet streaming" is so important - then perhaps having the TPP leak can garner enough bad publicity that they'll drop it like a hot rock (at least for now).
Regards
Slashdotgirl
The more I know, the less I know
The Rat bastard Harper was all up for this TPP (Toilet Paper Proposal). So vote the mutherfucker out! The election is set for October 5. 66% of the Canadian population believe his best before date is up. Its time he and his crap trade deals get shown the door. We can kill C-51 while were at it and the screwy changes to the election laws, and a lot of other money-squandering policies. And he hasn't done anything for the economy in the last 10 years (entire time he's been in office). Vote the rat bastard out!
A blueprint for the perfect kleptocracy: Domestic courts have no powers, interested parties (consumers, ISPs, criminals) have no rights. This is more than taxpayer-funded quislings obeying corporate demands, it's government ensuring corporations can take what they want, when they want.
Although it is hard to know because of the secrecy, it seems like there is a whole lot of stuff around 'intellectual property' and corporations getting to sue governments over policy changes which has been pushed hard by the USA and opposed not quite as hard by everyone else. So there is lots of stuff that objectionable to everyone but the USA. (Given that the USA parliaments haven't been allowed to see the TPP, possibly not even they want it. This could be stuff wanted only by the USA negotiators, not the country.)
What I want to see is USA kicked out of the TPP, then renegotiate to get rid of all the bad stuff USA pushed in. After that, the USA can negotiate for a late entry into the agreement. They can propose all this IP stuff, and the rest of us can consider whether we that badly want USA in the TPP.
That is pretty much a pipe dream, but more realistically: I'd like to see the governments of all participating countries go through all the provisions and state how strongly they are for or against them. If there are any bits that are liked only by negotiators, this would show them up.
It really worries me that this is secretly negotiated by people with almost no democratic oversight and will be presented as a monolithic take-it-or-leave-it with greater effective force than the laws of the participating nations.
Buying into the TPP is effectively accepting a huge lump of laws you had almost no say over and are almost impossible to modify in future.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
You honestly blame the low quality of the puppet theater on the punch, not his player?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This made me laugh audibly. Grand Nagus is an outstanding descriptor.
Next time you want to have music, don't download it. Go into a store, kick the guard in the nuts and grab the CD. Alternatively, find some old granny on the street, hit her over the head and grab her purse, then pay for your downloads.
The reason is simple: If you get caught, you'll be doing much less time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I would have thought that would be incompatible with the legal systems of most countries. "Damages" are normally limited to the real loss suffered by the plaintiff/claimant. "Punitive damages" is a US thing.
Given that it has not been openly debated in a democratic way, there is simply no mandate to pass this, and given the provisions in it, it looks openly hostile to the interests of the general population of nearly the entire area that would be detrimentally impacted.
The answer, of course, is that multibillion corporations can give massive amounts of money and a lucrative job opportunity to a politician whilst you can only vote. And since SOMEONE has to go in, all the corporations have to do is be ecumenical in their bribery.
Which is why you need to get money out of politics and reverse the Citizens United decision. wolf-pac.com.
Not when morons fed up on toxic corporate waste believe in the "two party system".
That's a pretty stupid thing to say. I don't live in American, I've never been to America, and I never will go to America. The only way I could possibly have any say in American elections is if my country becomes another American state - which is quite unlikely.
That's too easy a dismissal of trying, and too convenient an excuse for losing. Money is a facilitator, but it is not the only one, and fixating on it only takes your concentration off the REAL requirements. To be elected you need exposure, recognition, and the ability to sell, convince, and persuade. If you can't be bothered getting yourself exposed and recognized, and have no knack to sell, convince, and persuade, you join a long list of LOSERS complaining about "the system".
Yes, if you have a vast power structure behind you, you can be a cipher and still win. But a real doer does not take from that, that he has to either round up his own vast power structure or take his bat and ball and go home. A real doer finds a way to get around, or to attack and defeat, that evil power structure arrayed against him and oppressing the people.
Do you really think the Bolsheviks and the Nazis and a long list of others who really did change things had big bags of money? It's not only the evil actors who need charisma and cleverness.
Dealing with media (always getting Content ID'd for media we have licensed, often by someone else than who we licensed it from), this will eventually kill anything except Creative Commons. When you have the same song licensed by multiple sources, and you start getting lawsuits or threats of them for content you've actually licensed by a different entity, it's going to fall apart.
I believe if you really think about it, you will find that the election and re-election of Mr. Obama says a lot more about the unbelievably abysmal quality of the opposition, than it says about how dumb the voters are.
Do you realize that the Constitution says nothing whatsoever about political parties, conventions, or primary elections? As far as the Constitution is concerned there needn't be any political parties at all. But it does impose the Electoral College, and (surprise), those electors are not Constitutionally bound to honor the popular votes of their states. So while Constitutionally you could have a Presidential ballot with 50 or 100 unaffiliated contenders listed on it, there is no provision for a runoff if, say, none of them polls over 10% or so.
I don't know how you can destroy the lock the two Parties have on the process, and even more crucially, I have no idea how you can prevent them from conniving with each other. George Washington believed there should be no parties, but it would take a Constitutional Amendment to ban them, and as well as a chilling effect on free association, it wouldn't work anyway. It would just drive the affiliations underground. As a practical matter, most countries have more than two Parties in meaningful contention, many times a great many more than two, which tends to lead to coalition governments. What is not clear is how, practically, you can effect a change in power away from only two parties.
is one or two rabidly fanatical attacks on the first corporation that tries to sue a country through ISDS, and it will all fall apart in an instance.
i'm honestly surprised that there haven't yet been any Australians going postal over the Philip Morris cigarette plain packaging fiasco.
those fuckers are trying to use ISDS to cancel Australian legislation that enforces black-and-white labelling of tobacco products.
once again, tobacco companies leading the charge to legally kill you, and you can't stop them for love or money.
And really haven't looked into this at all, but it seems like there are traditionally two systems of law, criminal and civil, maybe it's time there become "corporate" laws, since a majority of criminal offenses seem to stem from corporate interests. I'd rather see corporate attorneys prosecute these laws then our government persecutors who should be focused on real crimes. I'm sure there are a ton of problems with a model like this, but could a real lawyer break down the pros and cons?
Maybe, maybe not; possibly. But even if a whole bunch of people are willing to commit a crime, it's good to prosecute (or at least talk shit about) the one who actually goes through with the dirty deed.
Don't let Republicrats off the hook for this, even if you think a third party president would have also pushed hard for it. If you're not willing to point the finger of blame, then you're not creating any incentive for anyone to ever try to avoid it, so why would someone else create a better outcome? Lay blame onto the specific names of people who are caught red-handed working against America's interests.
Obama isn't even pretending that he hasn't made this a priority agenda item. He really should take flak for that. Every current presidential candidate should be given a reason to speak out against TPP, even if it'll be too late by the time they're elected, and even if their campaign contributors would want them to work for TPP too. The current public debate should become "Look at what THEY are doing! I fucking swear I will not be that kind of president!" Because those people are (for very stupid reasons) in the media spotlight right now, so they will be heard and that's how you pressure the current Congress into voting against TPP.
Now is the time for everyone, of pretty much any right/left political persuasion, to become an Obama-basher over this specific issue. If you're not bashing Obama over this, you're part of the problem.
Just by framing this as an Obama thing rather than a generic corruption thing, you will get automatic thoughtless support from half of the Republicrat voters and media (the Republicans). You don't even have to argue the point or get them to think about the issue. You'll get it on Fox News. Then the "other" side might pick it up, wanting to have to take an adversarial position out of habit (and maybe they will, and maybe they won't). Next thing you know, mainstream people could be talking about it, and to TPP-advocates' horror, democracy could break out.
"TPP! Thanks, Obama!"
Just talking about it as though a corrupt politician, as long as their name isn't "Obama," might not have gotten bribed into doing this, could cause the silly assertion to become true.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
This is going to only increase the difficulty in catching people engaging in truely bad activity, such as terrorism and child pornography. Every time these idiots start trying to go after things that cause little or no harm to society, encryption and privacy tools make leeps and bounds because the demand for these tools sky rocket. And people that do cause acutal harm to society get these tools too. Hardly anyone used a VPN ten years ago, now that people know everything they do can be watched by anyone, people like my 70 year old dad use VPN just to do his banking..
All through the 20th century if you created some content and wanted to distribute that content to a wide audience, you needed to go through a distributor who could distribute that content. These distributors would distribute your content (whether it be music, movies, TV shows, books, video games, magazines or whatever else) to the wide audience and would take their cut.
But in the early years of the 21st century, things changed and new distribution methods have appeared that allow people to distribute their content (even paid content) to a wide audience without going through a big corporation middleman taking a cut.
And now the big corporations are fighting back and trying to put the Internet genie back in the bottle and return to a world where companies like Comcast, Disney, 21st Century Fox, Time Warner, Viacom and Sony get to control what content is available to the general public.
Its been said before but I am saying it again, the #1 problem with this world is the control of the worlds governments by big corporations. Find a way to end that and the roadblocks preventing many of the other problems with this planet from being fixed will disappear.
OK, prove your point. Show me a winning candidate for anything at a federal level who did it without lots of money.
Can you?
... Show Me something concrete. Since the TPP is still in negotiations, this is meaningless because, as any political Staffer will tell You, in politics nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.
What gets me is the provision buried in the TPP that allows the United States to nuke Japan if they fail to implement a 22 year patent for all drug modifications, which would result in countries like Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada paying about 20 to 100 times as much for prescription drugs, bankrupting Japan especially, with their aging population.
Surprised Japan didn't object to that provision.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
GGP's *ELITES* could mean more than one (individual) elite, and it could also mean *ELITE* (plural) from the political arena _plus_ *ELITE* (plural) from the corporation _plus_ *ELITE* (plural) who are in charge of the courts system _plus_ *ELITE* who are in control of the police, the military, et cetera
As all of us have witnessed in the real life - no matter which country you are from, the *ELITES* from different groupings may have some internal friction from time to time but in overall situation they do cooperate with each others to keep the social pecking order intact so to ensure that their *ELITE* status be protected and their *EXCLUSIVITY* - include by not limited to they are above the law and that _most_ of the laws were written to protect their (the *ELITE*'s) interest in the first place, like TPP, lie DMCA, like all those draconian anti-this and anti-that laws (anti-drug, anti-crime, anti-terrorist, three-strikes-and-you're-out, and so on, and so forth)
Keeping the social hierarchy is the most important task for any government on this planet, no matter where you are
If you are from the *ELITE* group you will do everything to protect yourself and to fool/hoodwink/lie to the masses, and when that doesn't work, to threaten them, and when _that_ doesn't work, to meter out punishments, because you, as the *ELITE*, has the GOD GIVEN RIGHTS to RULE the masses, whose sole purpose on earth is to serve you, the *ELITE*
The Constitution tries to insulate individual voters from power. Representatives are elected by district, but originally Senators were selected by state legislatures. The Electoral College was intended to get a bunch of intelligent men together to decide on a President, or possibly to make a short slate to be decided by the House of Representatives. (Originally, the Electoral College would vote on a President, and the guy with the second most votes would become Vice-President. It was changed so Electors vote for both a President and a Vice-President.)
As far as banning parties, I've lived where some offices were officially non-partisan, which meant only that the party affiliation was not listed on the ballot.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I think the Grand Nagus was more likable, especially when he started dating Quark's mom.
You are quite correct that the Constitution says nothing about parties and President Washington opposed them and warned about them; most Americans forget that most early Americans were British subjects living in the colonies for generations under British rule and therefore men like Washington were well aware of British politics with its parties - and the problems they generate.
You are also right that Mr. Obama's election is both a commentary on the people who supported him AND the people who ran against him. Unfortunately, anybody who runs against a progressive will be portrayed as a neanderthal in the press and culture and yet you need an anti-progressive to run against a progressive. The situation is even worse when the anti-progressive candidate is funded by the same rich elites who are backing the progressive candidate. Progressive ideology has for its entire history supported massive international agreements by and for the elites; if you vote for a progressive (even one who runs against another) you will end-up supporting these big international agreements that the super-rich elitists want - this is positively Wilsonian.
Where you have a problem is on the following two points:
First, the electoral college was deliberately placed into the Constitution for a critical reason: it makes small states matter. Modern progressives trash-talk it in their race to grab political power, where they have come to see it as an obstruction, but without the electoral college, Presidential candidates would completely ignore 49% of the public who would then become completely disenfranchised and the politicians would spend all their time and political attention on the big metropolitan areas. This would rapidly become politically toxic as smaller states realized they had no political power and we would be lucky as a nation if we avoided a rebellion and another secession movement. If you think modern politics have become toxic, just imagine if most of the states that voted against Obama in 2012 were told they would again have any national political influence... this would be seen as a coup and bullets would eventually fly.
Second, in a system like the US with two big powerful parties, any attempt to break things up by introducing a third has the effect history already taught us. A third party in such a system is either a Ross Perot style spoiler which hurts the big party most-aligned with it and helps the party that otherwise was less-popular to win. or it is an 1860 Lincoln style replacer. In the Lincoln case, the creation of the Republican party replaced the "moderate" Whigs who were great at guarding their money but had been unwilling to legislate against the immorality of slavery. In short, if you want more parties in the US you need a way to introduce multiple viable and large parties in one election cycle otherwise you are only asking the R's or the D's to unilaterally-disarm and lose in a two-party fight.
"Donald Trump looks like the Grand Nagus."
No it won't.
China will be China, and sell stuff in demand. They have a robust legal system immune from evergreening, and when assessing damages, look at taxes actually paid. Piss them off, and they get academics trawling world patents in multiple languages to prove said invention is no such thing.
The USA actually has a law that ignores 'obscure patents' so things in French or Japanese or Chinese can just be ignored.
The Australia FTA with USA went sour, because China and HK could supply the goodies cheaper. Now we have an FTA with China, its going to get interesting. The way the $USD is appreciating, one predicts China is going to have another 'golden' trading age.