TPP and What Could Come From It

TPP stands for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is a trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States. Many people draw similar to this international trade agreement to the controversial NAFTA agreement. NAFTA was known to provide little benefit to signatories Mexico and Canada, but assisted major US corporations greatly. Much of the negotiation behind TPP has been dealt in secrecy, from even the majority of Congress, and have been conducted by the White House and lobbyists. Sen. Wyden, who is the chairman of the International Trade subcommittee, stated, “The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations – like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America – are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement.” A good portion of the public was kept in the dark about these negotiations until portions of the treaty’s draft have been leaked through Wikileaks, in November of 2013. TPP is major agreement with many different provisions, however, what is subjectively most concerning is how it would affect ISPs, intellectual property, and all Internet users.

The major points of concern behind TPP:

-The TPP will alter existing US intellectual property laws.

-Copyright holders now have control over temporary copies, holding ISPs responsible for cached versions of files, despite the difficulty in controlling those.

-Copyright holders do not have to prove irreparable harm in court.

-Using software to bypass a software lock, even for what is currently legal use, could now be criminalized

-TPP’s intellectual property laws are also of concern in the medical field, particularly those developing pharmaceuticals and medical technology.

-Signatories of these treaties will have intellectual property laws similar, and consequently just as strict, to the US’s legal code

This is just a brief summary of what could stem from TPP, however, I am interested in hearing your opinions on the subject. If there is any information I got wrong or missed, please feel free to contribute that as well.

ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech-technology-and-liberty-national-security/biggest-threat-free-speech-and

Russia Today: http://rt.com/usa/wikileaks-tpp-ip-dotcom-670/

Wikileaks TPP: http://wikileaks.org/tpp/

Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp

Here is an infographic I found, however I cannot vouch for its accuracy.