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TPP Scuttles Attempts To Fix Orphan Works
jsrjsr writes: David Post, writing at the Volokh Conspiracy blog, describes how the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty may prevent any changes to copyright law regarding orphan works. Quoting: "Big problem #1 is that copyright law doesn’t require the plaintiff to show any damage whatsoever. And it authorizes awards of up to $150,000 in “statutory damages” for each work that is infringed — independent of any damage assessment. ... It appears that the latest version of the treaty contains, buried within its many hundreds of pages, language that could require the U.S. to scuttle its plans for a sensible revision of this kind. ... Any provision of U.S. law that eliminated 'pre-established damage' or 'additional damages' for any class of works could be a violation of various TPP provisions requiring that such damages be made available, and it even appears that distribution of orphan works would have to subject the distributor to criminal copyright liability."
The big big big power grab in TPP is the corporate sovereignty clauses. These allow company to sue governments if the government passes a law that disadvantages the companies profits:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150325/17151130431/corporate-sovereignty-provisions-tpp-agreement-leaked-via-wikileaks-would-massively-undermine-government-sovereignty.shtml
The court that decides this is a Kangaroo court too, not a legal court, a tribunal of industry lawyers would decide if a law violates a companies profits and needs to be reversed.
Sugary drink taxes, banning cigarettes, banning bee killing pesticides, you name it, the tribunal could override the elected government on all of these matters. Rendering democracy optional.
No wonder its being discussed in secret by a group of people, but thankfully we still have Wikileaks and the draft treaty has been leaked by a few honest people among the negotiators who are allowed to see how bad it is.
That's fine. The fees double each year. In 120 years the renewals will be $1M, $2M, $4M... each period. And a company like Disney has 10's of thousands works to protect.