[LINK] Trans-Pacific Partnership IP Chapter Leaked

[David Boxall]

<http://pirateparty.org.au/2013/11/14/trans-pacific-partnership-ip-chapter-leaked-enforcement-provisions-abound/>

Trans-Pacific Partnership IP Chapter Leaked: Enforcement Provisions Abound

Posted on November 14, 2013

The overnight release of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement’s draft 
intellectual property chapter has exceeded Pirate Party Australia’s 
worst fears. While the Party is yet to undertake a thorough analysis of 
the draft, there are already some provisions that are glaringly 
ill-considered.

Despite numerous assurances from the Department of Foreign Affairs and 
Trade (DFAT) the TPP would not require changes to domestic intellectual 
property legislation, the draft text indicates that substantial 
legislative changes would be required if the United States and Australia 
got its way. These changes may include the criminalisation of 
“significant willful copyright […] infringements that have no direct […] 
motivation of financial gain.”

“This corporate wishlist masquerading as a trade agreement is bad for 
access to knowledge, access to medicine, and access to innovation. It 
re-enforces the worst parts of our intellectual property enforcement 
regime on a regional level, making the necessary positive reforms for 
the digital era much more difficult, if not impossible,” said Brendan 
Molloy, Councillor of Pirate Party Australia.

“It is absolutely appalling that we are still relying on leaked texts to 
determine just what we’re getting ourselves into with these trade 
agreements. Even Parliament is being kept in the dark. It’s time to 
release the text, and all future texts, so that transparency and 
oversight can result in texts that help, not hinder, legitimate 
Australian interests. There is no economic justification for the 
Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement’s intellectual property provisions. 
DFAT must immediately hold public briefings to explain their now public 
negotiating positions. It’s time for some accountability.”

The Australian delegation is attributed with the minority in many cases, 
often siding with the US. The current text would require the accession 
of all parties to several other intellectual property agreements in 
order to be a member of this agreement, endangering any future positive 
reform efforts due to layering of treaties. The US is pushing for 
pharmaceutical provisions that the Australian delegation is standing 
against.

The text sees copyright terms being reaffirmed, with Mexico pushing for 
life plus 100 years, and Australia pushing for life plus 70. Pirate 
Party Australia does not believe it is necessary to include such 
provisions in a trade agreement. Limitations and exceptions are 
significantly overlooked, with very minimal content provided in any 
section, while provisions for penalties are detailed, onerous, and go 
beyond our current legislative framework.

The text requires the implementation of policies that would require an 
ISP to hand over subscriber information on the mere allegation of 
infringement, without requiring evidence. The text also attempts to 
introduce regional enforcement of country-code top-level domains (ccTLD) 
such that domain name registrations would be required to be public and 
the introduction of dispute settlement processes, to solve what is 
coined “trademark cyber-piracy” in the text.

The United States is also pushing for provisions that would ban the 
rebroadcasting of TV over the Internet.

For a detailed analysis of the content of the text, please see James 
Love’s article on KEI: <http://www.keionline.org/node/1825>

The leaked text can be found here: <http://wikileaks.org/tpp>

-- 
David Boxall                         | "Cheer up" they said.
                                     | "Things could be worse."
http://david.boxall.id.au            | So I cheered up and,
                                     | Sure enough, things got worse.
                                     |              --Murphy's musing