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Google Announces Support of the Controversial TPP (recode.net)
An anonymous reader writes: Google has announced in a blog post Friday their support for the controversial Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP). Recode reports: "The trade agreement includes key provisions about the global passage of digital data, intellectual property and copyright -- measures that have drawn criticism from both the political right and left, including several outspoken tech groups. Google's endorsement isn't exactly full-throated, but its stake clearly demonstrates another key area of support with the Obama administration, to which Google is close." Google's SVP and general counsel Kent Walker wrote: "The TPP is not perfect, and the trade negotiation process would certainly benefit from greater transparency. We will continue to advocate for process reforms, including the opportunity for all stakeholders to have a meaningful opportunity for input into trade negotiations." The company has already shown support of the TPP behind the Internet Association, which endorsed the trade agreement in March. Google joins a list of other tech titans, like Apple and Microsoft, who have shown their support as well. The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls the TPP a "secretive, multinational trade agreement" that will restrict IP laws and enforce digital policies that "benefit big corporations at the expense of the public." The TPP is still awaiting congressional approval after being signed in February.
The TPP was written by corporations, for corporations. No surprise that Google supports it. We need a revolution in this country.
Don't be evil... unless it gets in the way of profit.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Just like the 200+ comments on Hacker News, another news aggregation site with a very tech-savvy demo, you will have to look really hard to find anyone who supports the TPP.
The EFF has written extensively how digital rights are negatively affected by this.
The TPP is bad, bad, bad, and it's been fast tracked for passage with no debate/oversight. Hopefully there will be a SOPA-like outcry against it that shuts it down. All three Dem/GOP presidential candidates claim to be against it (but we'll see how long that lasts). Not sure about libertarian candidates.. somehow I suspect they'll take the more traditional "free trade" perspective, but maybe I'll be delightfully surprised.
Too bad Google's on the wrong side of history here.
Google has been sucking President Obama's cock since the day he took office. Their people have visited the White House just about weekly since he started work.
President Obama, like President Clinton, is a hard-core right wing conservative masquerading as somebody who gives a fuck about anybody who doesn't pull down a $30 million per year salary. Hillary Clinton will be exactly the same.
Google is backing Obama, Clinton and the TPP because all of them are bought and paid for by people who want to put you in jail if your 10-year-old kid downloads a Disney song.
That's not hyperbole, by the way.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Just after Google is apparently skewing search results for Clinton, they suddenly come out in support of a position that she's strongly in favor for. Just coincidence right? The number of coincidences going on with tech companies these days is just pretty amazing. There of course is another story on this with google saying it's true gov' we're not skewing anything. It's almost like when twitter started suspending non-feminists for objecting to the use of #killallmen, but feminists still use it to this day without any problems.
Om, nomnomnom...
Google now appropriately deserves to lose their Oracle case now.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Im pretty sure the party they mostly like is the prohibition on countries demanding data for their citizens be stored in the respective country so that the local militarized police can go in and demand access to it at any time. A lot of the other things they are not so happy about, but are willing to swallow a lot of bad things in order to get that in as a binding provision. Most people don't want to have to be building data centers all over the planet which can then be seized the next time a local politician thinks it would be neat to own a supercomputer. They also want to be able to migrate and replicate data outside the country in question to avoid downtime.
We are the most advanced nation on the planet and probably even the galaxy. how is it that we can't have a trade surplus against China .. Germany has one and they don't have any tariffs on Chinese goods and in fact Germans per capita buy more Chinese crap than Americans. China buys a lot of manufacturing equipment and high tech stuff from Germany .. so Germany actually has a trade surplus.
WE are ripping off China by buying stuff on credit and having a deficit with them what good are a bunch of I.O.Us to the Chinese? We need to sell them stuff they need to build their infrastructure .. if the Germans can figure it out why can't we?
Low tech jobs are never ever coming back. If you have no skill you are going to be useless in the future. A Chinese is taking your job now, but in 5 years it'll be a robot whose taking your job.
No it means that people are going to find new sources to produce the products. If it's to expensive to outsource, well then they have to source locally. It's better to export than import.
These 'agreements' are designed to create a 'race to the bottom', to deliver cheap labour, to lower employment rights, to extend the already crazy 'intellectual property' laws, to impose copyright maximalism, and to impose regulations that allow corporations to 'strip mine' the public sector for their own profit. There are no benefits for ordinary workers, or to any ordinary people. The term 'agreement' is also inappropriate, since they it looks like they will be imposed by fiat, without any democratic mandate, and without any debate.
This is called corporate totalitarianism, and like other forms of fascism, I don't find it acceptable in my country. The United States is the driver of these toxic agreements, and is as such, the primary enemy of workers throughout the world. I suggest a boycott, sanctions, and divestment to encourage the United States to change its ways. We can all play our part, simply by avoiding goods produced by American companies, wherever possible.
google has all those chinese sweatshop made phones & tablets they want to keep flowing over here,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The USA tends to drag the rest of the world around. So shitcan it there and it's effectively gutted.
TPP and TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) were written by the corporations and US government, so they've read the "trade deal". Meanwhile in Europe, hardly any politician has read TTIP, it's guarded like a top secret military document, no copies exist "on the outside". So how are most of Europe's politicians, ESPECIALLY the UK, in favour of signing TTIP?
Sounds to me like politicians are being blackmailed, given kickbacks, or both by the US government or corporations, either in money, or directorships in US company subsidiaries once the European politician leaves office.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
It's been interesting to watch the fall of Google. First they drop their "do no evil" motto, then all developers are told to use macbooks, and it's been a steady decline into doin things like Apple since. They've dropped open standards in favor of proprietary closed ones, they've abandoned the ideals of open source, and heavily adopted the walled garden philosophy. How quickly the Apple methodology has seeped into all American tech companies is really astonishing. I guess that's what happens when millions of mindless hipsters throw billions of dollars to the wind.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Blackberry is still superior for actually getting anything done (as opposed to playing). It wouldn't surprise me if they supported TPP too though.
- Sent from my BlackBerry Classic, using a real keyboard.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Okay, it is confirmed yet again that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
What planet do you live on? "Techies" haven't used critical thought to form what they want out of the industry for at least a decade. This Apple generation cares not for freedom, design standards, competition, or long term health of the industry. It cares only for fashion accessories and emoticons.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
This.
If Google is in favor of something, you can be fairly sure it's not something you want as an free individual and z citizen - even without reading what it's about. Me, that's my metric for determining whether or not I should support something without delving into the details.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
In Kent Walker's post, I can see what Google wants out of the deal: It prevents foreign governments to demanding servers and storage in their country and Google wants to keep them wherever they want to rather than where foreign nations demand them to. That isn't an issue that resonates with me.
He seems to think that I should be willing to abide by new additional copyright restrictions because they are offset by some fair use clarifications. I feel that copyright has encroached too far already and should be rolled back.
Finally he suggests the general public should have more participation next time negotiations like this occur, but doesn't say where they were this time when people wanted participation, or even access to what was being discussed? If they didn't help us participate this time why should the next time be different?
The post seems hollow and self-serving. I'm still convinced that the TPP is a bad idea.
Fool me once, shame on Hillary
1980's-1992: Served on board of Walmart, union buster. Nobody there ever heard her support unions.
1990's-early 2000's Hillary: I support my husband's push for NAFTA
Democrat Party supporting Unions: This is (provably) not good for us
2007-2008 Election season Hillary: I think NAFTA was a bad idea and I oppose free trade with Columbia
2007-2008 Hillary supporters: Hillary is allowed to change her mind (sound familiar?)
Fool me twice, shame on me
2011: Emails show she LOBBIED Congress to push for free trade with Columbia, which passed!
2012-2014 Hillary: I'm fully behind the Trans Pacific Partnership (she said this publicly 45 times claiming this is the 'gold standard')
(NOTE AFTER SHE SAID NAFTA WAS BAD!)
Democrat Party supporting Unions: This is not good for us
Sanders said TPP was not good!
2015-2016 Election season Hillary: I'm (now) against the Trans Pacific Partnership
right on schedule in late July, as soon as the convention is over, and the threat that Bernie represents has been defused. Same for fracking, minimum wage increase, and the other issues that the Sanders campaign was able to force her to tilt leftward on in the primary.
Hopefully, enough "Bernie or Busters" will head over to Jill Stein that enough threat will remain to keep her from COMPLETELY selling the progressive wing of the party out, at least until she actually wins the presidency. At which point, prepare for 4/8 more years of Corporatocracy...
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You can't deserve to have a matter of law on an unrelated topic
Would it make you feel better if I said, "They deserve to have a comet smash into their Mountain View headquarters?" Cosmic justice knows no logic, do not presume to argue with the divinations of karma.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
who are the enemy of the people.
> Bernie Sanders was the only major candidate so far in my lifetime who wasn't bought and paid for by the corporations
According to his FEC filings, Sanders is paid for by Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and by the post office (tax money).
https://www.opensecrets.org/po...
Bernie also has quite a few illegal contributions:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
Clinton is paid for primarily by Wall Street. As I recall, 8 of her top 10 donors are investment firms.
Reality TV star Donald Trump has largely paid for his own campaign so far. He's spent less by making ridiculous statements to get free press.
so stop saying that. Vote Left. Vote for the most left leaning (e.g. pro working class) candidate you can get. And keep doing it. Work to shift the country and the world away from oligarchy in steps. It took us 40 years of trickle down economics and oligarchy to get to this point. You're not going to fix it overnight.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
because a modern military would put down a rebellion in a second. And that's before you factor drones in. I've heard it's hard to get troops to fire on citizens. But from what I see all it takes is withholding food, shelter and medicine from their families and "better you than me" sets in. For the record, there has never been a successful violent revolution without the military and all of them ended with a system favorable to the new ruling class (including and especially the American one, where our entire system of gov't was built to keep the poor from voting themselves land).
/.ers don't have kids... ok.. get it out of your system) to two kids, preferable one. Fewer rats in the race. Make smaller, meaningful changes. This is what Prez Obama's been doing the last 8 years and it's had an effect. It took 40+ years of oligarchy to get us into this mess. Overnight solutions like Guns aren't gonna fix it.
You want to rebel? Vote Left. Vote for the most pro working class candidates you can get. While you're at it limit your reproduction (haha,
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
it's got nothing to do with privacy or supporting military states though. It's outsourcing. Expect to see a lot of good IT jobs that are left go off to India and the Philippines. Man I wish tech workers were such a bunch of smarthy asses. We're all convinced we're the one they can't replace. I hear it all the time from my coworkers who've been lucky enough to survive the various rounds of layoffs. I think it comes with the territory in IT. You talk to idiots all day. The dumbest of the dumb who can't open a spreadsheet by double clicking it. It's natural to think you're just smarter. It made us easy to outsource since we're either too proud or dumb to Unionize.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
He is the only one left willing to stop this BS.
The shrillness of the anti-trade deal folks on the right and left try to make up in volume what they lack in economics. The USA lost nearly all of its textile jobs two decades ago, and the result was excellent. The textile unions had been unable to recruit younger people to work there, and people had to pay $65 for a pair of USA made blue jeans. Moving those jobs through NAFTA and other deals was uncomfortable for the people who lost those jobs, but 2 decades later it would not have mattered. Google supports TPP because they are intelligent and probably have seen the TED talks by Hans Rosling which pretty much demonstrate that everyone in the world has benefitted immensely from freer trade. https://www.ted.com/talks/hans... Most people on Slashdot agreed 15 years ago, it's strange to see this place go protectionist. Nationalism and protectionism suck.
Gently reply
"Don't be evil"
? :(
Because, here in the US, we have a long, nasty history of implementing really shitty, terribly worded laws that cause endless suffering and hardship for people. And trying to get these shitty laws modified or (heavens forefend) revoked, is orders of magnitude less pleasant than having perfectly healthy teeth removed, sans anesthesia, via your urethra.
Do it RIGHT the first time or don't fucking do it! Because these asshats KNOW it's not going to be modified later. It's too much trouble to do so!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Seriously, that is so freaken cute that you think your government gives one single fuck what you write or think. They don't.
You think they give a single fuck if they are voted out? Why should they? They get their pay for life. They will always have a high paying job when they are out of office because of the favors that they sold to their corporate masters.
There are VERY few politicians who are willing to go against ruling class. Regardless of your letters.
No, your letter will make no difference at all. They system is too far gone. Too long corrupted. The checks and balances are gone. The people now fear the government and with good reason.
?Look at all the court rulings lately. Warrant needed for you bank card? Nope. Warrant needed to take your money? Nope. Criminal charges needed to take your money? Nope. It goes on and on.
Too long has the population sat on their collective asses while the power was consolidated. Too long were the masses so blinded by shiny gadgets that they would not look behind the curtain.
No fellow citizen, the time for letters has passed. It falls unfortunately to the young ones to get back on track. Most sadly, see nothing wrong with the current system.
> These are the employees donating, not the companies. Kind of a big difference, right?
Using Sander's largest listed contributor as an example, the corporation itself donated about twice as much of the PAC money than the executives and other employees. Most of the money, 2/3rds, is direct from the corporation.
> Or maybe you're against the employees of any company donating to a candidate?
I'm not against any legal donations, whether from one person or from a group of people. I find it rather strange that some people fall for the ridiculous argument that when people work together as a group they should lose their rights. Nobody believed that when it was Michael Moore's corporation, that was a desperate, last-ditch argument once when a group of conservatives made a movie too. Personally, I'm a supporter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation Inc. I think it's right that me and other like minded people can work together via the EFF.
Decently put. I'm in the same boat.
I was going to disagree with you about capitalism, but the wiki on free-market capitalism says that it includes some intervention where necessary to keep the market set by supply/demand (e.g. no monopolies). So it kind of depends on which definition of capitalism you go with.
I actually like Capitalism. But it seriously has to be protected from itself, as do most idealistic concepts. Because it kills itself very quickly. A system based on greed - or better put, the concept of doing well for yourself will almost always shake out to the greediest, after they get ahead of others, wanting to alter the game so they make more, or in pathological cases, all of the money.
As for the definition of capitalism, it has been corrupted, and altogether too many politicians have bought into it. The old "class warfare" pejoratives that used to be trotted out any time someone complained about excesses were the highlight of the one sided supply side argument.
Somewhere along the line, we forgot that the best way to have producers become wealthy was to have people have the money to purchase their goods.
Maybe this is why there's been a push lately to not teach algebra in schools. THe idea that an equation has two sides is dangerous thought.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Nobody likes it. Everyone hates it. TPP Overlords can go eat worms.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --