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EFF: the Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared (eff.org)
An anonymous reader writes: Wikileaks has released the finalized Intellectual Property text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which international negotiators agreed upon a few days ago. Unfortunately, it contains many of the consumer-hostile provisions that so many organizations spoke out against beforehand. This includes the extension of the copyright term to life plus 70 years, and a ban on the circumvention of DRM. The EFF says, "If you dig deeper, you'll notice that all of the provisions that recognize the rights of the public are non-binding, whereas almost everything that benefits rightsholders is binding. That paragraph on the public domain, for example, used to be much stronger in the first leaked draft, with specific obligations to identify, preserve and promote access to public domain material. All of that has now been lost in favor of a feeble, feel-good platitude that imposes no concrete obligations on the TPP parties whatsoever." The EFF walks us through all the other awful provisions as well — it's quite a lengthy analysis.
This treaty is an outright declaration of class warfare, with lots of surveillance goodies thrown in to get the enforcement part of government on board.
The thing to do now in the US is simply vote it down. If it is fast tracked so that Congress can only vote yes or no, then "no" it is. Just in case there's a chance of passage, we should make a lot of noise, make sure our representatives know our will and that it won't be safe to ignore us.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Biggest ones to blame is the Obama admin
I've watched 3 different people in different settings go off about this to others. They have half the facts and half the fallacy along with all the hyperbole.
The problem is a communications problem. It gets so technical that most people gloss over and ignore it until something strike their ears but then they only catch half. Most people are like the GP and when they attempt to communicate about it, they end up looking like a loon freshly dipped in dingbat shit and people ignore them again.
What is needed is a cartoonish but reasonably well articulated summery of the situation and most people would grab their pitchforks and join the mob. I don't see that happening. Probably because they have been invested so long that it in and of itself seems engagingly ridiculous.
Since this weakens the public domain and strengthens rights for rightsholders, does it comparably strengthen the case for copyleft? How/would this change FOSS promotion and/or adoption strategies?
I can and will circumvent any technological or legal obstacles they can dream of, and they can all go fuck themselves. At some point they're going to run out of dimwits who don't know how to use encryption, VPN, tor, i2p, freenet, bittorrent, etc., and their entire consumer base will have collapsed with a mighty "ARRR!!!" How's that for an end game, you short-sighted, unimaginative, greedy bitches?
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
I strongly suggest that, in countries that will see their public domains turned back 20 years, electronic distributors of public domain works create a special "TPP Pack" -- a collection of works that are currently in the public domain, but will revert back to copyrighted status. This will give everyone enough time to download these packs before the TPP is ratified.
And I'm not getting any financial compensation for the fact that works I purchased, with the understanding that they would become public domain within the next two decades, will now not become so, and I'm sure that are those who are seniors and perhaps will never see those works enter the public domain during their remaining lifetime. Speaking of which, once those Generation Typewriter are removed from the voting constituents, perhaps Digital Issues will become more important and we will finally see copyright term reductions. Of course, retroactively, and without compensation as well.
PS why wasn't this included in the Canadian Government's "TPP summary"?
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
The Economist is a very pro-business magazine. Here's what they said about patents and the TPP:
"The cost of the innovation that never takes place because of the flawed patent system is incalculable. Patent protection is spreading, through deals such as the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership, which promises to cover one-third of world trade. The aim should be to fix the system, not make it more pervasive."
-- The Economist, "Time to fix patents", 8 August 2015
Man-Man sex and Abortion (and meaningful gun control) are all settled issues barring a constitutional amendment, so I urge anyone not to vote on the basis of these issues, because they aren't changing anytime soon.
I'm a pretty typical American liberal in the sense that I am pro-choice, pro marriage equality, and fuck if I wouldn't like to round up all the guns and throw them in the sewer. But it's not going to happen, so I would happily vote for someone who opposed all of these things if they were in favor of single payer healthcare or fucking over this Treaty, or something else achievable that I'd like to see fixed.
or vote them out of office
Uh, no.
You can't 'vote them out of office'. You can only vote to replace them with another asshole who's just as corrupt.
If we could 'vote them out of office', this problem would have gone away long ago, as most political offices would be empty.
I just want to thank you for sharing that link. I've since passed it on to another site where it's gotten dozens of views. After a decade or more of anonymously browsing this site I had /. send me a link so I could log in again, so I can say "Thanks!".
You encourage others to become aware of how they are played by their corrupt leaders. I encourage you to study your history, and see the big picture.
Our situation was not caused by a recent bad crop of politicians. Our situation is part of a cycle that has been repeating since the dawn of recorded history. I see no reason to expect that it should change now.
In fact, the only thing that has changed is technology level. Likely, that is the only thing that will change in the foreseeable future. If there is any hope of breaking the familiar human cycle of governance, the game-changer will be in our technology. But enough speculation...
Wealth and power corrupt, by their nature. And they are sought most vigorously by the already-corrupt. The net effect is that all world leaders seek primarily to serve themselves, and secondarily to serve their contemporaries (other aristocrats). They only serve the masses inasmuch as they must in order to further their own agendas. Throw them all out, and whoever you replace them with will be just the same. If they are not just the same, they will either become so, or will be politically outmaneuvered by someone who is just the same, with an obvious net effect.
You can't change this by shouting "wake up" at ordinary people. Nor can you change this by political action. You can't change this, period. The only thing you can do is apply political force, to ensure that your own agenda is in their best interest. This is done by funding lobbies, and organizing grassroots movements to encourage the poor to vote as a group on the issue. Apart from becoming an aristocrat yourself (no easy task, since they are not at all keen on sharing power), these are the only means available to you.
Beyond that, all you can do is recognize your place in the cycle, and adapt to it. Failing to do so will just create friction for yourself and others.
I'm a pretty typical American liberal in the sense that I am pro-choice, pro marriage equality,
Same here, but I'm also a gun owner (and have been for almost 40 years).
I'd bet I'm way more liberal than most people here (including you, probably) but I'm not a single-issue voter like a lot of people.
I vote for whomever I think will do the best job for the country even if it goes against my personal self interests. This time it'll probably be Bernie Sanders regardless of what the media says or how much they smear him.
Do I agree with everything he says? Of course not, but IMHO he's far better than any of the Republicans and far better than Hillary or Biden or whoever the Democrats dig up next.
I've never found an apt description for my political flavor, I suppose it'd be something like a "slightly-conservative-liberal" or "almost-social-democrat" or something like that. I sure as shit don't fit into any of the neat little categories they try to make us all fall into.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Copyleft uses the power of copyright to subvert its common intent.
By giving copyright holders more powers, maybe we can now do more savage things to corporate violators, like send them jail.
Perhaps we need an anti-TPP software licence to take advange of this new power.
The harder they squeeze....
I don't know about you, but 90% of the things I buy to live (Food, Toiletries, shelter) are owned and made by 13 companies. Unless you can afford really expensive boutique goods how the hell do you boycott? And if you can afford that TPP is good for you...
For food, you can go to local markets and buy it directly from farmers. At least here in Europe you can.
There are also local products in many categories, but they are often more expensive and sometimes only available in select shops (look for eco shops and sustainable products, that's a first pointer). But again, in this area there is so much scamming from big companies that you have to do research to be sure.
And that's the problem. We don't want to do that. We don't give enough of a fuck about the stuff we eat or use to care where it actually comes from.
Tell me how the hell to fix our politics...
Give back your nerd card. Robert Heinlein wrote a little book in fucking 1946 about this very problem, and little has changed since then:
https://www.goodreads.com/book...
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'm voting Sanders. He's had 30 years of consistent messaging. Finally a third party in the white house. Checks and balances could be restored between the two branches again.
The Corporatists in Congress with their < 15% approval rating will have to actually negotiate with a non-Corporatist for once.
I'm excited at that possibility.
A good part of jury nullification's bad reputation comes from the south during and for a time after the segregation era, which it was used on numerous occasions to let a white murderer go free after killing a black person. With jury nullification, community standards win - even if the community happens to be packed with racists who believe the black victim deserved it for having ideas above his station.