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Release of the Full TPP Text Confirms Threats to Users’ Rights

246 points by sanqui 11y ago

walterbell 11y ago
Public Citizen has released initial analysis, http://www.citizen.org/documents/tpp-ecommerce-chapter-analysis.pdf http://www.citizen.org/documents/tpp-ecommerce-chapter-analy..., "The E-commerce chapter … addresses a range of issues including duties on digital products, paperless trade administration, and rules on electronic signatures, net neutrality and data protection. The text also includes provisions limiting the ability of countries to keep data within their territorial borders. … any legal system that imposes limits on private sector data transfers to jurisdictions for the purpose of safeguarding citizens’ data against foreign government intelligence agencies, as was recently accomplished by the Court of Justice of the European Union in Schrems v Facebook Inc, 2015 Case C-362/14, could contribute to violation of Section A of the TPP’s Investment chapter and be subject to sanction and heavy penalties through the investor-state dispute mechanism. … Article 14.17 prevents governments from requiring the disclosure of source code as a condition of import, distribution, sale or use of software or of products containing software … while the Article excludes disclosure obligations in commercially negotiated contracts, it does not exempt source code disclosure provisions imposed by means of a software license. … As open source licenses are not ‘commercially negotiated’ but rather imposed on others, there is concern that any attempt to enforce such licenses against third parties by means of the courts would amount to a violation of this Article, opening the country whose court system carried out such enforcement to heavy-handed penalties through the investor-state dispute enforcement mechanisms. … addressing cybersecurity breaches can require mandating the publication of source code so as to facilitate fixing of security flaws. The TPP’s prohibition on such requirements could undermine security measures of this type." ISDS primers: https://youtube.com/watch?v=M4-mlGRPmkU https://youtube.com/watch?v=M4-mlGRPmkU & https://youtube.com/watch?v=AABOIcXZZwg https://youtube.com/watch?v=AABOIcXZZwg & http://isdscorporateattacks.org http://isdscorporateattacks.org
- cyorir 11y ago
  Limits to data transfers can work in several ways. If the EU says it is limiting data transfers to help its citizens, I'll trust that that is how they are using the limitation. On the other hand, if a country like Egypt or Russia wants to limit transfer of data, I will be skeptical about why they want to keep that data in their country. I think I trust most countries about as much as I trust Russia, and would prefer that companies have the option to take data out of such countries.
- chongli 11y ago
  We are truly headed for a cyberpunk-style, post-state world. Corporations will succeed states and enforce their own draconian sovereignty. What remains of states will exist only to serve the will of their corporate paymasters.
  - walterbell 11y ago
    There are lessons from the defeat of the Comcast/TWC merger, which was also viewed as inevitable, http://www.wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/comcasttwccharter-looking-good-but-too-early-to-pop-the-champagne/ http://www.wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/comca..., "… while lobbying and popular opinion don’t relieve the DoJ and FCC of the need to have substance, the intense unpopularity of the deal and the unexpected resistance it keeps encountering at the local and state level certainly don’t help … the widespread discontent provides more evidence to the agencies that these companies already have market power, and that the merger will only make things worse … this looks a heck of a lot less like the quixotic campaign and hopeless last stand many people thought it would be a year ago." TPP opposition has been higher than expected, http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/stopTPP http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/stopTPP, "… the dozen trade-watching stalwarts at Public Citizen divided into five teams and went after the Brobdingnagians of global corporate power … it's important to spread the story of the progressive coalition's successful confrontation with the Global Goliath. Its methods and achievements give us a new template for organizing (and winning) future populist challenges to the corporate order. And the breadth, depth, and intensity of this effort show what it will take to forge a real populist movement--multifaceted and with the long-term capacity to pursue our country's deep democratic principles. We can get there if we build on what we learn--and keep pushing."
yourepowerless 11y ago
Does anyone believe this will not become the law? You can peaceably gather in protest and maybe get a few sniping remarks on the nightly news, you can call, write, knock on your representatives door, you can donate money and time, but none of it will stop this treaty from being passed because those in power wrote it for themselves and will pass it for themselves. If anything were to stop it it would be the wide disregard and disobedience of the illegitimate laws it supposedly creates.
- awqrre 11y ago
  but if everyone believes it is wrong and don't follow it (or part of it), they can't jail/fine everybody...
  - thegreatpeter 11y ago
    try to persuade everyone that it isn't wrong and don't follow it :) We're a small subset of the population. Remember, people believe that the govt snooping around isn't a big deal because they have nothing to hide
- gleenn 11y ago
  Whether or not that is true, that is some of the worst sentiment to be spreading. If you feel strongly, call you congressman, organize a group, do something. Posting that no one can do anything doesn't help anyone.
  - walterbell 11y ago
    Yes, powerlessness is self-fulfilling. If we believe we can effect decentralized change, we will succeed at some scale, at least within our immediate social circles. History is full of stories with small beginnings, outside of institutions that were subject to regulatory capture. At a minimum, we can create new business models that have not yet been forbidden, and undermine the economics of the desperate companies that have resorted to shameless manipulation of law and enforcement.
beeboop 11y ago
I don't worry about stuff like this too much, or stuff about the UK wanting to do stupid stuff like ban all encryption. I believe the internet is going to become more private and more anonymous as time goes on. Eventually everyone will be using the equivalent of VPNs on machines/browsers that don't give out any identifying information unless a user extremely explicitly tells it to. Or perhaps something similar to Freenet will become much more popular. We're already seeing hardware (like the iPhone) coming encrypted from the manufacturer with seemingly no way for any government agency to decrypt it forcefully. Ad blockers and tracking blockers are more popular than ever. Firefox just today released an update to help prevent trackers. It's just a matter of time - ISPs and governments and corporations will lose the ability to track their users outside of their specific platform, and many of the platforms we use today will be replaced with P2P alternatives that make tracking impossible and aren't "owned" by anyone. I am sure the governments of the world will be livid.
- kaizendad 11y ago
  Isn't a big side effect of laws like these that tools such as encryption and P2P can be classified as designed to violate IP, and banned?
  - plonh 11y ago
    Yes, GP's view seems extremely naive. Unless you are using a pirate radio network, your ISP can simply turn off all your encrypted traffic .
    - wyldfire 11y ago
      Agreed. Thankfully, commerce and many other well-accepted forms of traffic are end-to-end-encrypted by design. Distinguishing between the legitimate forms of encryption and those presumed to be illegitimate will be difficult/impossible. Can you imagine what it might be like to try and add TLS/IPSec to the Internet only just now? However ISPs can filter endpoints that they believe to be associated with undesirable activity.
    - userbinator 11y ago
Asbostos 11y ago
This really doesn't seem that bad. It's mainly restricting what governments can do to restrict their people. In other words - keeping trade free. Isn't that kind of a good thing? - Governments are not allowed to restrict where companies store user data. - Governments can choose how to deal with spam, they don't have to adopt the US's CAN-SPAM law. - Governments can't force companies to disclose their source code. - Copyright term hasn't been extended to life + 120 years as earlier feared. Only to life+70 years which it already was in the USA anyway. - Governments don't have to impose net neutrality. That's an issue in the US, but not everywhere else. And they still can if their people want. Such restrictions could easily backfire, especially when they have exemptions for a few hand-picked uses like VOIP and telemedicine. So what if somebody invents a new technology that also needs preferential treatment for latency or bandwidth? - Governments aren't allowed to impose security restrictions on users as a tool to impede free trade. Does anyone really want the government to dictate how they do internet security? Or for foreign companies to be blocked in favor of domestic competitors?
- nitrogen 11y ago
  One example of the bad things: ex officio IP enforcement. Regarding net neutrality, an ISP can remain fully "neutral" while honoring QoS flags.
- shmerl 11y ago
  > Copyright term hasn't been extended to life + 120 years as earlier feared. Only to life+70 years which it already was in the USA anyway. Which should be reduced (even life + 70 is ridiculously long). This agreement makes internal reform much harder, because it solidifies the bad status quo. Same goes for many other similar things.
  - kyouko 11y ago
    Agreed, It would take another international effort to reduce copyright term again - and it'll be tough enough to even get one country to consider it themselves
- cookiecaper 11y ago
deciplex 11y ago
xpost from the other thread because I'd welcome any insight on this: What confuses the hell out of me regarding the TPP - and maybe it's just because I'm in the HN/Reddit echo chamber on this - but if the TPP is so damn important to reigning in China in the 21st century or whatever, then why did they load it up with a bunch of unrelated antagonizing bullshit? It doesn't seem to me that the intellectual property provisions of the agreement are all that important to the overall stated goals of the TPP. Yet they are so fucking regressive and antagonistic that there is some chance (I guess? Again, echo chamber...) that they will sabotage the rest of the agreement. After SOPA, etc., if it were me and I wanted to be sure that the TPP passed in enough Pacific Rim countries to make it effective, I would keep anything remotely like SOPA as far away from my precious treaty as I possibly could. Instead, the IP portions of the agreement are basically the language that was in SOPA all over again, which pissed a whole lot of people off last time. It's really hard to take seriously the claim that the TPP is so important, when the people drafting it are including language that is pretty much guaranteed to stoke vigorous opposition, for reasons that are mostly orthogonal to their goals.
- throwaway2048 11y ago
  This is due to the view that "IP industries" are the future of the American economy, and this is how they are going to attempt to protect them.
  - junto 11y ago
    Lobbying power, poor and simple, which is just a push term for legalised corruption.

246 points by sanqui 11y ago

Public Citizen has released initial analysis, http://www.citizen.org/documents/tpp-ecommerce-chapter-analysis.pdf http://www.citizen.org/documents/tpp-ecommerce-chapter-analy..., "The E-commerce chapter … addresses a range of issues including duties on digital products, paperless trade administration, and rules on electronic signatures, net neutrality and data protection. The text also includes provisions limiting the ability of countries to keep data within their territorial borders. … any legal system that imposes limits on private sector data transfers to jurisdictions for the purpose of safeguarding citizens’ data against foreign government intelligence agencies, as was recently accomplished by the Court of Justice of the European Union in Schrems v Facebook Inc, 2015 Case C-362/14, could contribute to violation of Section A of the TPP’s Investment chapter and be subject to sanction and heavy penalties through the investor-state dispute mechanism. … Article 14.17 prevents governments from requiring the disclosure of source code as a condition of import, distribution, sale or use of software or of products containing software … while the Article excludes disclosure obligations in commercially negotiated contracts, it does not exempt source code disclosure provisions imposed by means of a software license. … As open source licenses are not ‘commercially negotiated’ but rather imposed on others, there is concern that any attempt to enforce such licenses against third parties by means of the courts would amount to a violation of this Article, opening the country whose court system carried out such enforcement to heavy-handed penalties through the investor-state dispute enforcement mechanisms. … addressing cybersecurity breaches can require mandating the publication of source code so as to facilitate fixing of security flaws. The TPP’s prohibition on such requirements could undermine security measures of this type." ISDS primers: https://youtube.com/watch?v=M4-mlGRPmkU https://youtube.com/watch?v=M4-mlGRPmkU & https://youtube.com/watch?v=AABOIcXZZwg https://youtube.com/watch?v=AABOIcXZZwg & http://isdscorporateattacks.org http://isdscorporateattacks.org

cyorir 11y ago
Limits to data transfers can work in several ways. If the EU says it is limiting data transfers to help its citizens, I'll trust that that is how they are using the limitation. On the other hand, if a country like Egypt or Russia wants to limit transfer of data, I will be skeptical about why they want to keep that data in their country. I think I trust most countries about as much as I trust Russia, and would prefer that companies have the option to take data out of such countries.
chongli 11y ago
We are truly headed for a cyberpunk-style, post-state world. Corporations will succeed states and enforce their own draconian sovereignty. What remains of states will exist only to serve the will of their corporate paymasters.
- walterbell 11y ago
  There are lessons from the defeat of the Comcast/TWC merger, which was also viewed as inevitable, http://www.wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/comcasttwccharter-looking-good-but-too-early-to-pop-the-champagne/ http://www.wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/comca..., "… while lobbying and popular opinion don’t relieve the DoJ and FCC of the need to have substance, the intense unpopularity of the deal and the unexpected resistance it keeps encountering at the local and state level certainly don’t help … the widespread discontent provides more evidence to the agencies that these companies already have market power, and that the merger will only make things worse … this looks a heck of a lot less like the quixotic campaign and hopeless last stand many people thought it would be a year ago." TPP opposition has been higher than expected, http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/stopTPP http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/stopTPP, "… the dozen trade-watching stalwarts at Public Citizen divided into five teams and went after the Brobdingnagians of global corporate power … it's important to spread the story of the progressive coalition's successful confrontation with the Global Goliath. Its methods and achievements give us a new template for organizing (and winning) future populist challenges to the corporate order. And the breadth, depth, and intensity of this effort show what it will take to forge a real populist movement--multifaceted and with the long-term capacity to pursue our country's deep democratic principles. We can get there if we build on what we learn--and keep pushing."

yourepowerless 11y ago

Does anyone believe this will not become the law? You can peaceably gather in protest and maybe get a few sniping remarks on the nightly news, you can call, write, knock on your representatives door, you can donate money and time, but none of it will stop this treaty from being passed because those in power wrote it for themselves and will pass it for themselves. If anything were to stop it it would be the wide disregard and disobedience of the illegitimate laws it supposedly creates.

awqrre 11y ago
but if everyone believes it is wrong and don't follow it (or part of it), they can't jail/fine everybody...
- thegreatpeter 11y ago
  try to persuade everyone that it isn't wrong and don't follow it :) We're a small subset of the population. Remember, people believe that the govt snooping around isn't a big deal because they have nothing to hide
gleenn 11y ago
Whether or not that is true, that is some of the worst sentiment to be spreading. If you feel strongly, call you congressman, organize a group, do something. Posting that no one can do anything doesn't help anyone.
- walterbell 11y ago
  Yes, powerlessness is self-fulfilling. If we believe we can effect decentralized change, we will succeed at some scale, at least within our immediate social circles. History is full of stories with small beginnings, outside of institutions that were subject to regulatory capture. At a minimum, we can create new business models that have not yet been forbidden, and undermine the economics of the desperate companies that have resorted to shameless manipulation of law and enforcement.

beeboop 11y ago

I don't worry about stuff like this too much, or stuff about the UK wanting to do stupid stuff like ban all encryption. I believe the internet is going to become more private and more anonymous as time goes on. Eventually everyone will be using the equivalent of VPNs on machines/browsers that don't give out any identifying information unless a user extremely explicitly tells it to. Or perhaps something similar to Freenet will become much more popular. We're already seeing hardware (like the iPhone) coming encrypted from the manufacturer with seemingly no way for any government agency to decrypt it forcefully. Ad blockers and tracking blockers are more popular than ever. Firefox just today released an update to help prevent trackers. It's just a matter of time - ISPs and governments and corporations will lose the ability to track their users outside of their specific platform, and many of the platforms we use today will be replaced with P2P alternatives that make tracking impossible and aren't "owned" by anyone. I am sure the governments of the world will be livid.

kaizendad 11y ago
Isn't a big side effect of laws like these that tools such as encryption and P2P can be classified as designed to violate IP, and banned?
- plonh 11y ago
  Yes, GP's view seems extremely naive. Unless you are using a pirate radio network, your ISP can simply turn off all your encrypted traffic .
  - wyldfire 11y ago
    Agreed. Thankfully, commerce and many other well-accepted forms of traffic are end-to-end-encrypted by design. Distinguishing between the legitimate forms of encryption and those presumed to be illegitimate will be difficult/impossible. Can you imagine what it might be like to try and add TLS/IPSec to the Internet only just now? However ISPs can filter endpoints that they believe to be associated with undesirable activity.
  - userbinator 11y ago

Asbostos 11y ago

This really doesn't seem that bad. It's mainly restricting what governments can do to restrict their people. In other words - keeping trade free. Isn't that kind of a good thing? - Governments are not allowed to restrict where companies store user data. - Governments can choose how to deal with spam, they don't have to adopt the US's CAN-SPAM law. - Governments can't force companies to disclose their source code. - Copyright term hasn't been extended to life + 120 years as earlier feared. Only to life+70 years which it already was in the USA anyway. - Governments don't have to impose net neutrality. That's an issue in the US, but not everywhere else. And they still can if their people want. Such restrictions could easily backfire, especially when they have exemptions for a few hand-picked uses like VOIP and telemedicine. So what if somebody invents a new technology that also needs preferential treatment for latency or bandwidth? - Governments aren't allowed to impose security restrictions on users as a tool to impede free trade. Does anyone really want the government to dictate how they do internet security? Or for foreign companies to be blocked in favor of domestic competitors?

nitrogen 11y ago
One example of the bad things: ex officio IP enforcement. Regarding net neutrality, an ISP can remain fully "neutral" while honoring QoS flags.
shmerl 11y ago
> Copyright term hasn't been extended to life + 120 years as earlier feared. Only to life+70 years which it already was in the USA anyway. Which should be reduced (even life + 70 is ridiculously long). This agreement makes internal reform much harder, because it solidifies the bad status quo. Same goes for many other similar things.
- kyouko 11y ago
  Agreed, It would take another international effort to reduce copyright term again - and it'll be tough enough to even get one country to consider it themselves
cookiecaper 11y ago

deciplex 11y ago

xpost from the other thread because I'd welcome any insight on this: What confuses the hell out of me regarding the TPP - and maybe it's just because I'm in the HN/Reddit echo chamber on this - but if the TPP is so damn important to reigning in China in the 21st century or whatever, then why did they load it up with a bunch of unrelated antagonizing bullshit? It doesn't seem to me that the intellectual property provisions of the agreement are all that important to the overall stated goals of the TPP. Yet they are so fucking regressive and antagonistic that there is some chance (I guess? Again, echo chamber...) that they will sabotage the rest of the agreement. After SOPA, etc., if it were me and I wanted to be sure that the TPP passed in enough Pacific Rim countries to make it effective, I would keep anything remotely like SOPA as far away from my precious treaty as I possibly could. Instead, the IP portions of the agreement are basically the language that was in SOPA all over again, which pissed a whole lot of people off last time. It's really hard to take seriously the claim that the TPP is so important, when the people drafting it are including language that is pretty much guaranteed to stoke vigorous opposition, for reasons that are mostly orthogonal to their goals.

throwaway2048 11y ago
This is due to the view that "IP industries" are the future of the American economy, and this is how they are going to attempt to protect them.
- junto 11y ago
  Lobbying power, poor and simple, which is just a push term for legalised corruption.