6 ms·

So when the TPP says: > No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition for th

by raquo 11y ago

So when the TPP says: > No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition for the import, distribution, sale or use of such software, or of products containing such software, in its territory. This means that requiring code audits is not allowed for any software, not just imported software, right? Because I've seen quite a few people misled into thinking that similarly worded provisions apply only to imported goods. If TPP was a legit trade treaty I would expect it to have anti-protectionism provisions (i.e. treating imported and home-produced software the same), not legislation-preventing ones. One provision like that is disturbing, 6000 pages of them is horrifying.

wavefunction 11y ago
Where do you see "imported" in that legal language? "Misled" or willfully ignorant? The second, of course.
- raquo 11y ago
  It's right there, "condition for the import". The text in question is just one sentence, but its meaning can be altered by any of the other 6000 pages. For example, this is how people who know more about this than me are reading it: http://www.ip-watch.org/2015/11/24/tpp-article-14-17-free-software-no-harm-no-foul/ http://www.ip-watch.org/2015/11/24/tpp-article-14-17-free-so... Seriously, you can't blame ordinary people that they don't want to perform legal analysis of such a huge treaty as TPP, even if you somehow think they are able to.
sukulaku 11y ago
> If TPP was a legit trade treaty I would expect it to have anti-protectionism provisions Indeed. An actual free-trade agreement would be really simple to implement. Just stop intervening in trade in any way, and you'll have Free Trade. But that would be against a lot of cronies' interests and very much in the people's interests, so it's never going to happen. On a related note: Stop intervening in what people do with their property, and you'll have a free market. That would preclude taxation though, and so, a lot of people who believe they somehow benefit from someone forcefully taking their money would object.
- RogtamBar 11y ago
  >Indeed. An actual free-trade agreement would be really simple to implement. Just stop intervening in trade in any way, and you'll have Free Trade. Is free trade even a good idea? Suppose industry in your country has higher costs, because people care about say, waterways, and thus there has to be filtering and proper waste disposal. If you allow free trade from a country where they simply dump waste everywhere, you are punishing industry for doing the right thing, and rewarding polluters.
  - sukulaku 11y ago
    > Suppose industry in your country has higher costs, because people care about say, waterways, and thus there has to be filtering and proper waste disposal. Well then people can buy stuff cheaper from abroad, I guess? That's certainly a benefit to them, compared to paying more. There are auxiliary benefits too, because then people have more money left to spend on other things (which contributes to jobs getting created etc). > If you allow free trade from a country where they simply dump waste everywhere, you are punishing industry for doing the right thing, and rewarding polluters. You know no one wants to live in a polluted environment, right? But it's the government everywhere that's supposed to protect it - not people from other countries with their purchasing choices. If you don't buy stuff from China, will China be less polluted? How? Suppose, for the sake of argument, 50% of all people outside of China decided to stop buying Chinese goods as a protest against "bad environmental standards"[1]. What would happen? [1] Nevermind that the standards are circumvented with bribes anyway. Now lots of stuff produced outside of China would become costlier to produce, or might not get produced at all. Living standards would decrease accordingly. Oh, and that might encourage foreign producers to do whatever it takes to lower their costs, including ignoring environmental standards (or bribing their way past them). What about China then? Would the polluting factories etc shut down, or would they be used for producing something foreigners were still buying? Would they keep polluting after being repurposed for something else? Would they pollute even more in an attempt to lower their prices to make their products more attractive to the protesting foreigners? I bet some people would start buying again if the products just were cheap enough. But all in all, you see it's not that simple. You can't expect to force higher environmental standards on anyone by not buying from them, especially when it's the government that decides what companies are allowed to pollute and how much, and those limits are circumvented through bribes.
simoncion 11y ago
It is... difficult for me to find a copy of the general Definitions section of the TPP, so I have to guess. :( > No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition for the import, distribution, sale or use of such software, or of products containing such software, in its territory. The meaning of this sentence hinges on the definition of the word "Party". My guess is that a "Party" is a signatory of the treaty. So, my read on this is that no government "shall require the transfer of & etc of source code..." "as a condition for the import, distribution & etc..." of software that is owned by someone (or something) that is not a citizen or is not based in that country. I suspect that software made and sold within a given country would not be subject to this restriction. I'm not clear on how this interacts with multinational corporations. I'm not entirely clear on how this affects state or local governments. (I expect that Federal treaties trump state and local law, but I'm not sure.) I'm also not certain that my analysis is correct. Edit: Ooh. I really super wonder how this interacts with code for which the original author(s) has relinquished all ownership and interest in. ;)
- vidarh 11y ago
  > I suspect that software made and sold within a given country would not be subject to this restriction. Unless it is "software owned by a person of another Party". Which has the defacto effect of making it impossible to require such provisions domestically because all you'd need to do to circumvent it would be to transfer ownership to a suitable shell company and/or because domestic companies would justifiably be upset at being subject to harsher rules than foreign companies.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    I was hoping that I wasn't going to have to add the "of course, unless the thing that ultimately owned the software was based out of another country" qualifier to that statement. I guess I should have. :( > ...domestic companies would justifiably be upset at being subject to harsher rules than foreign companies. As I read it, nothing in the quoted TPP section precludes software purchasers from making access to source code a requirement of purchase. It prohibits governments from blocking the sale of "foreign-produced" software in their country if the software owner refuses to make the source code available.
chongli 11y ago
From my limited understanding, this does not prohibit the auditing of software as part of a contract. It only prevents a legislature from mandating software auditing within its territory.
jeremyjh 11y ago
If a country wants to do this with domestic software produced by a domestic business, which other country that is a party to this treaty is going to have standing to bring litigation?
- raquo 11y ago
  > If a country wants to do this with domestic software produced by a domestic business It doesn't really make sense to do that with domestic software and to give imported software a free pass. > which other country that is a party to this treaty is going to have standing to bring litigation Why does it need to be a country? The domestic software maker whom the government forces to do something that is not allowed under the treaty should have standing. For example, there's Russia-Canada income tax treaty. If one of those countries wants to hose me in a way that is contrary to that treaty, I should be able to use it to defend myself. I assume it would work the same way with TPP, but obviously IANAL.
  - jeremyjh 11y ago
    >It doesn't really make sense to do that with domestic software and to give imported software a free pass. Yes but what is applicable are domestic laws that can differ from country to country. What really would not make sense would be for an international treaty to restrict what a country can do with its own software in that country. > Why does it need to be a country? The domestic software maker whom the government forces to do something that is not allowed under the treaty should have standing. Because the parties in this agreement are countries - and the terms in the treaty provide remedies for businesses and individuals who are infringed by another country that is a party to the treaty. You are not a party to this treaty with your own government.
    - raquo 11y ago
      > What really would not make sense would be for an international treaty to restrict what a country can do with its own software in that country That's why people are concerned about the TPP, it appears to do exactly that. Not just in case of source code audits, but in general TPP seems to limit a country's ability to pass new legislation pretty significantly, including in areas that are not related to global trade (e.g. IP).

by raquo 11y ago

wavefunction 11y ago

Where do you see "imported" in that legal language? "Misled" or willfully ignorant? The second, of course.

raquo 11y ago
It's right there, "condition for the import". The text in question is just one sentence, but its meaning can be altered by any of the other 6000 pages. For example, this is how people who know more about this than me are reading it: http://www.ip-watch.org/2015/11/24/tpp-article-14-17-free-software-no-harm-no-foul/ http://www.ip-watch.org/2015/11/24/tpp-article-14-17-free-so... Seriously, you can't blame ordinary people that they don't want to perform legal analysis of such a huge treaty as TPP, even if you somehow think they are able to.

sukulaku 11y ago

> If TPP was a legit trade treaty I would expect it to have anti-protectionism provisions Indeed. An actual free-trade agreement would be really simple to implement. Just stop intervening in trade in any way, and you'll have Free Trade. But that would be against a lot of cronies' interests and very much in the people's interests, so it's never going to happen. On a related note: Stop intervening in what people do with their property, and you'll have a free market. That would preclude taxation though, and so, a lot of people who believe they somehow benefit from someone forcefully taking their money would object.

RogtamBar 11y ago
>Indeed. An actual free-trade agreement would be really simple to implement. Just stop intervening in trade in any way, and you'll have Free Trade. Is free trade even a good idea? Suppose industry in your country has higher costs, because people care about say, waterways, and thus there has to be filtering and proper waste disposal. If you allow free trade from a country where they simply dump waste everywhere, you are punishing industry for doing the right thing, and rewarding polluters.
- sukulaku 11y ago
  > Suppose industry in your country has higher costs, because people care about say, waterways, and thus there has to be filtering and proper waste disposal. Well then people can buy stuff cheaper from abroad, I guess? That's certainly a benefit to them, compared to paying more. There are auxiliary benefits too, because then people have more money left to spend on other things (which contributes to jobs getting created etc). > If you allow free trade from a country where they simply dump waste everywhere, you are punishing industry for doing the right thing, and rewarding polluters. You know no one wants to live in a polluted environment, right? But it's the government everywhere that's supposed to protect it - not people from other countries with their purchasing choices. If you don't buy stuff from China, will China be less polluted? How? Suppose, for the sake of argument, 50% of all people outside of China decided to stop buying Chinese goods as a protest against "bad environmental standards"[1]. What would happen? [1] Nevermind that the standards are circumvented with bribes anyway. Now lots of stuff produced outside of China would become costlier to produce, or might not get produced at all. Living standards would decrease accordingly. Oh, and that might encourage foreign producers to do whatever it takes to lower their costs, including ignoring environmental standards (or bribing their way past them). What about China then? Would the polluting factories etc shut down, or would they be used for producing something foreigners were still buying? Would they keep polluting after being repurposed for something else? Would they pollute even more in an attempt to lower their prices to make their products more attractive to the protesting foreigners? I bet some people would start buying again if the products just were cheap enough. But all in all, you see it's not that simple. You can't expect to force higher environmental standards on anyone by not buying from them, especially when it's the government that decides what companies are allowed to pollute and how much, and those limits are circumvented through bribes.

simoncion 11y ago

It is... difficult for me to find a copy of the general Definitions section of the TPP, so I have to guess. :( > No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition for the import, distribution, sale or use of such software, or of products containing such software, in its territory. The meaning of this sentence hinges on the definition of the word "Party". My guess is that a "Party" is a signatory of the treaty. So, my read on this is that no government "shall require the transfer of & etc of source code..." "as a condition for the import, distribution & etc..." of software that is owned by someone (or something) that is not a citizen or is not based in that country. I suspect that software made and sold within a given country would not be subject to this restriction. I'm not clear on how this interacts with multinational corporations. I'm not entirely clear on how this affects state or local governments. (I expect that Federal treaties trump state and local law, but I'm not sure.) I'm also not certain that my analysis is correct. Edit: Ooh. I really super wonder how this interacts with code for which the original author(s) has relinquished all ownership and interest in. ;)

vidarh 11y ago
> I suspect that software made and sold within a given country would not be subject to this restriction. Unless it is "software owned by a person of another Party". Which has the defacto effect of making it impossible to require such provisions domestically because all you'd need to do to circumvent it would be to transfer ownership to a suitable shell company and/or because domestic companies would justifiably be upset at being subject to harsher rules than foreign companies.
- simoncion 11y ago
  I was hoping that I wasn't going to have to add the "of course, unless the thing that ultimately owned the software was based out of another country" qualifier to that statement. I guess I should have. :( > ...domestic companies would justifiably be upset at being subject to harsher rules than foreign companies. As I read it, nothing in the quoted TPP section precludes software purchasers from making access to source code a requirement of purchase. It prohibits governments from blocking the sale of "foreign-produced" software in their country if the software owner refuses to make the source code available.

chongli 11y ago

From my limited understanding, this does not prohibit the auditing of software as part of a contract. It only prevents a legislature from mandating software auditing within its territory.

jeremyjh 11y ago

If a country wants to do this with domestic software produced by a domestic business, which other country that is a party to this treaty is going to have standing to bring litigation?

raquo 11y ago
> If a country wants to do this with domestic software produced by a domestic business It doesn't really make sense to do that with domestic software and to give imported software a free pass. > which other country that is a party to this treaty is going to have standing to bring litigation Why does it need to be a country? The domestic software maker whom the government forces to do something that is not allowed under the treaty should have standing. For example, there's Russia-Canada income tax treaty. If one of those countries wants to hose me in a way that is contrary to that treaty, I should be able to use it to defend myself. I assume it would work the same way with TPP, but obviously IANAL.
- jeremyjh 11y ago
  >It doesn't really make sense to do that with domestic software and to give imported software a free pass. Yes but what is applicable are domestic laws that can differ from country to country. What really would not make sense would be for an international treaty to restrict what a country can do with its own software in that country. > Why does it need to be a country? The domestic software maker whom the government forces to do something that is not allowed under the treaty should have standing. Because the parties in this agreement are countries - and the terms in the treaty provide remedies for businesses and individuals who are infringed by another country that is a party to the treaty. You are not a party to this treaty with your own government.
  - raquo 11y ago
    > What really would not make sense would be for an international treaty to restrict what a country can do with its own software in that country That's why people are concerned about the TPP, it appears to do exactly that. Not just in case of source code audits, but in general TPP seems to limit a country's ability to pass new legislation pretty significantly, including in areas that are not related to global trade (e.g. IP).