11 ms·

How the TPP Will Affect You and Your Digital Rights (2015)

299 points by stakent 11y ago

Rumudiez 11y ago
Maybe off topic, but I always read this as Twitch Plays Pokemon first before realizing what it's actually talking about.
thejaredhooper 11y ago
Is this sensationalized? A single bullet-point makes me nervous. All of those together makes me feel smothered...
- walterbell 11y ago
  It's a roundup of previous blog posts. You can click through each bullet point for the original blog post with more detail.
- PeCaN 11y ago
  I've noticed the EFF has a tendency to exaggerate slightly, so it wouldn't surprise me if it's partly sensationalized. Even so, it's rather disconcerting.
  - Umn44 11y ago
    Well considering what you've lost, I don't think you're really in a position to claim EFF is exaggerating considering the whole of copyright law has been corrupted and the industry has gotten its way every time over the last 200 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/media/File:Copyright_term.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/...
  - pyre 11y ago
    It's probably more along the lines of, "the law could be interpreted this way, and you might find yourself on the wrong side of a court case where a hotshot government prosecutor is trying to make a name for him- or herself by pushing the boundaries of how the law can be interpreted." For example, the case where the US government tried to say that breaking a website's ToS was "unauthorized access of a website" and ran afoul of anti-hacking laws.
wyldfire 11y ago
> "If you stream some copyrighted gameplay ..." I guess it's not the first I've heard of it but doesn't it seem odd for the gameplay itself to be copyrighted/copyrightable by the game's creator? Doesn't it seem just ludicrous if we were to try to do the same for board games or sports?
- terminalcommand 11y ago
  A game is not a movie. Its core value is interactivity. You already pay a high price for purchasing the game itself. In addition to that the game company gets free advertisement. Fining someone or taking their content down for just streaming a gameplay is unproportional. Furthermore, the person who is playing the game is creating content. The streamers usually talk and show their image to entertain people. If the video game company is allowed to take down the video, or block his/her entire channel, that ought to be a clear violation of the streamer's rights. Law itself is ancient, it has perfected its concepts and continues to evolve. The issues with digital rights aren't hard nor new to law, all disputes in this area could be solved just by following basic law principles case to case. The legislation has always been hesitant to make just laws. Rights are won with fights and struggles. Too many people are ignorant on the matter of digital rights. One could argue every point of view with a harsh relativism. People forget easily that Slavery was once legal, women not allowed to vote... The people ignorant back then resorted to reasonable but unjust arguments too. In the end it's our world and our rights.
  - Barrin92 11y ago
    In regards to interactivity, it depends. It's true enough for chess surely which is a bazillion years old and basically just a set of rules, but a modern game's entertainment value is also the content to a varying degree and not just the interactivity.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  A video of someone playing a copyrighted game has value separate from the game, and the person producing that video almost certainly has copyright of their own over it, but the video clearly derives from the music, images, and other materials provided by the game. Under most circumstances, the person publishing or streaming the video should be able to defend their usage via fair use; fair use specifically mentions uses like "commentary" and "criticism". Similarly, people who upload/stream "reaction" videos, where they watch another video and provide commentary, can defend that usage via fair use. Fair use doesn't mean that the video/stream does not derive from the copyrighted game or other material, but rather that the video/stream may legally use that copyrighted material.
qznc 11y ago
Will TTIP contain the same stuff? I would assume, because the same corporations lobby it.
kobayashi 11y ago
Paging /u/tptacek: looking for HN's contrarian position
- throwawaymaroon 11y ago
  It's pretty simple: focus on the flaws of the EFF instead of the problems the EFF points out. If you want to be against the establishment, you have to be perfect in pedigree, politics, and poise. Your arguments must not only be factually correct on every level (which by itself would be fine to point out) but must also be in obeisance to the status quo by explicitly recognizing the good intentions of the establishment. All of this will be prefaced with "I'm no fan of the TPP, but..." Here's how you write as an establishment equivocator: --- There are certainly parts of the TPP which overreach. But the EFF is well known for taking things out of proportion [ignoring the absurd proportions of the actual situation]. Here we see another example: [point out something from the current EFF statement that is alarmist or not quite relevant to the TPP specifically, for instance...] a lot of what the EFF describes about copyright is specific to US law and copyright. The EFF is really just hitting its usual talking points and very little of this relates to the TPP; the TPP is just an excuse to talk about what they always talk about.
  - lawnchair_larry 11y ago
    This was actually pretty well done. Give the guy some credit.
- sarciszewski 11y ago
  > /u/tptacek I don't believe he even owns a Reddit account. The convention we follow here is as follows: 'tptacek
  - tptacek 11y ago
    s/convention we follow here/idiosyncratic convention I've been trying for years to start/g
    - 11y ago
macawfish 11y ago
Reading these things makes me angry. There are people in the world who uphold economic wealth and ownership over life itself. Money is supposed to serve life, not the other way around. Ownership at its best is a way to uphold responsibility and caretaking. It shouldn't be a way of domineering or exploiting peoples' very culture and spirituality. Who gets to play the song? Who gets to retell the story? Only those sanctioned by those with money, the owners. This is wrong. Creation and recreation are a forms of communion, not some contrived, egoistic world domination ritual. Excuse my colorful language, this is a religious issue to me.
- ccvannorman 11y ago
  You (and many others on HN) have highlighted what will be the dominant issue in global civ, "incumbent wealth owns everything (IP) and fuck the poor". Human greed knows no bounds, I wonder what will happen in 10, 50 years. Global trends suggest everyone will get wealthier but the super wealthy will control a larger fraction.
  - bigmanwalter 11y ago
    It's okay. The richest 85 people own the same amount of wealth as the bottom 50% of the global population (1). I'm sure after we spend 8 hours of our day helping them towards owning even more of it, they'll do us a biggie by paying for our food and tiny apartments. 1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2014/01/23/the-85-richest-people-in-the-world-have-as-much-wealth-as-the-3-5-billion-poorest http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2014/01/23/the-85-rich...
    - Outdoorsman 11y ago
      Up-vote--I'm reminded of a line from Pear Buck's The Good Earth... >"The common people had to move, then, and they moved complaining and cursing because a rich man could do as he would and they packed their tattered possessions and went away swelling with anger and muttering that one day they would come back even as the poor do come back when the rich are too rich."< In 1911 the Xinhai Revolution in China, which the quote alludes to, demonstrates what is possible when income disparities reach a tipping point... Leaves me wondering what's truly possible if the "global economy" ever truly begins a move in the direction of a global stasis...
macawfish 11y ago
Meanwhile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11037232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11037232
dniebiebbdi 11y ago
Wide scale civil disobedience is the only solution to unjust laws passed by a corrupt and illegitimate sovereign.
- digler999 11y ago
  People should start having "LAN parties", except instead of playing games, they should just start doing massive torrenting with 20 tb + NAS devices. evade the mafIAA and start amassing "master" collections, i.e. ALL music...ever. ALL books (libgen), etc.
  - userbinator 11y ago
    That concept is as old as software itself: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/copyparty https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/copyparty
  - anonbanker 11y ago
    In Canada, this might actually be fully legal to do, if you decided to make it a political demonstration, and did it on the steps of the Legislature of your province of choice. Basically, the same type of civil disobedience that happens at the legislature every April 20th for Marijuana, but for Piracy, and the right to copy.
- toomanybeersies 11y ago
  > illegitimate sovereign And who, exactly is the illegitimate sovereign here?
- jbpetersen 11y ago
  Here's betting all this will be a boon to pirate tech if it continues forward to become active law.
walterbell 11y ago
The TPP was signed yesterday by 12 countries, beginning a 2-year period for ratification and changing of national laws to enact new penalties, http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-internet-transforming-environment-destroying-tpp-has-been-signed http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-internet-transforming-e... & http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2016/02/the-trouble-with-the-tpp-day-23-on-signing-day-what-comes-next/ http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2016/02/the-trouble-with-the-tpp-... From http://www.freezenet.ca/tpp-signed-off-marking-the-beginning-of-the-final-fight/ http://www.freezenet.ca/tpp-signed-off-marking-the-beginning..., "... the trade deal would force countries to ratify many other copyright treaties including various WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) treaties, kill Internet privacy for domain name registrants, create a so-called “TPP Commission”, extend the length of copyright, add criminal liability to the circumvention of a DRM, effectively institute statutory damages for non-commercial infringement, mandate government spying on the Internet for the purpose of tracking copyright infringement, possibly add unlimited damages for copyright infringement, allow “destruction” orders of any product circumvents copy protection, allows authority to enforce copyright laws even when infringement hasn’t taken place (ala “imminent” infringement), seize personal devices at the border for the purpose of enforcing copyright law (and destroys your property and forces you to pay if a border guard believes you have copyright infringing content on your personal devices), institute traffic shaping and site blocking for the purpose of allegedly enforcing copyright, implement a notice-and-takedown regime, force ISPs to install backdoors for others to enforce copyright law, and force ISPs to hand over customer’s personal information without court oversight or compensation to the ISP. So, in short, the TPP is a major crackdown on civil rights on the Internet." TPP excludes devices (e.g. phones) in checked baggage from border inspections for copyright infringement, but the UN is considering a ban of battery-operated devices from checked baggage, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/28/un-panel-backs-banning-lithium-ion-battery-shipments-on-passenger-planes http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/28/un-panel-backs-..., "A UN panel has recommended banning cargo shipments of rechargeable lithium batteries from passenger airliners because they can create fires capable of destroying planes, according to aviation officials familiar with the decision."
- tluyben2 11y ago
  The part about the batteries is not about single passenger mobile phones etc though; it is about cargo shipments of batteries in passenger planes.
gremlinsinc 11y ago
Anyone think EFF will endorse Bernie? They align on a lot of the same things, and he'd repeal TPP given the chance.
- readams 11y ago
  Bernie might want to repeal TPP, but he'd do that because he's against trade. The EFF is against some of the riders attached to TPP especially around intellectual property and digital rights management. No current candidate has a record that is at all aligned with the EFF on this. A more direct problem is that as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the EFF is forbidden to directly endorse candidates.
  - dtornabene 11y ago
    No, Bernie sanders is not "against trade". He's "against" ceding elements of our sovereignty to unaccountable transnational corporations and the "trade" bodies that have sprung up to protect them.
    - damir00 11y ago
      It's the same thing. International trade is impossible without both sides ceding "elements of...sovereignty".
      - dtornabene 11y ago
        Not sure that thats true. And I'm not super interested in a prolonged semantic argument that would sort it out. I'll just note that the "elements of sovereignty" I was referring to are transnational corps attacking nation-states for enacting laws that would protect their populations but would cut into corporate profits. Many examples of which already exist, like, say, the cigarette labelling laws of Austraila and Togo. Or environmental protection laws in Canada (and else where). These are not the sorts of "sovereignty" one negotiates away in the traditional westphailian system of nation states.
  - r00fus 11y ago
arca_vorago 11y ago
There is something bigger at play here that even the EFF isn't touching on. (nor do I expect them to, I like how they stick to the technical facts.) The reduction if not straight out elimination of national sovereignty is a prereq for global governance under the collectivist model. Fast track, TTIP, TISA, TTP, and other more subtle treaties that have been falsely labelled as "trade agreements" are how they supranational oligarchy can chip away at sovereignty, because the same people and groups have already corrupted the system from the inside out so pervasively that they now have the ability to get this done, and here is the key, done despite whatever backlash the public is going to release!. This was actually the purpose of fast-track, as the precursor legislation that would enable them to run TTIP/TTP up America's ass before they could stop it. (by pretending something is a trade agreement instead of a treaty and with fast track now the required two-thirds majority in the senate becomes just a simple majority requirement, among other things.) Although I may be one of the hn resident conspiracy theorists, even this threw me for a loop because I was expecting a currency upset first, but apparently the way to undermine a nation is by corruption of it's government and business first and then death by a thousand cuts (read: laws), because afterwards the currency upset can be much more controlled. For me, an American who has sworn an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic...", I think that the country has forgotten the basic reasons for the American Revolution in the first place, and the principles upon which our country and it's constitution was founded, the Declaration of Independence, and the Declaration’s basis, Natural Law, but I digress. The point to me is that we have allowed our supposed "allies" to send us on wild hunts for foreign enemies, while in reality the larger enemies are domestic, and they wear suits and ties and are in DC and on Wallstreet. All the branches of government are corrupted from the top down (including the fourth estate of journalism), and all the middle men are in one of three modes. 1) I'm gonna get mine and fuck you. 2) If I say anything I lose my job or worse, much worse. 3) Who cares, everything is fine, let's put our head in the sand. There has been much debate about whether it is Eric Blair's 1984 or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I say it's being setup so that it's a brave new world, until you resist, then it's 1984 and a boot on your face. I ought to know, I was the man with the boots in Iraq. Throw in another recession or two and a depression, world resource wars, and technological revolution on an earth with an unsustainable population level, and what we have here is a recipe for disaster. It's ok though, I'm sure I'm just paranoid. (like I was about NSA before anyone started listening about that too.)
multinglets 11y ago
~ThAnKs ObAmA~ ~/sArCaSm~
chatmasta 11y ago
Getting upset about the TPP is a waste of time. The provisions of the TPP are a red herring. We should be much more concerned with what is not present in the TPP. It only has 12 signatories!!! There are 160+ "countries" in the world. How much could an agreement between 12 of them really increase "free trade?" There are notable absences (CHINA) that make the treaty effectively meaningless. If 30% of the world is not covered by it, then who cares what it says. The people getting screwed by this treaty are not the spoiled first world EFF supporters, but the people who assemble all our gadgets and gizmos. If you want an agreement that actually benefits humankind, it better include some protections for the outsourced labor that first world nations continue to exploit. Regarding the fearmongering bulletpoints in the EFF article... Let's be honest. Any mildly technical person knows that these kind of legal measures are technically impossible to enforce. If you want to bend or break the rules, you can find a way, and you can avoid detection. "The Internet routes around censorship" as John Gilmore says. He's also an EFF founder so I'm not sure why EFF is fearmongering so much when they should know these measures are meaningless until they're enforced, which will require implementing impossible, nonexistent technical solutions. If you don't like the rules, route around them. Or just leave the country trying to enforce them on you. There are 150 other countries you can go to if you don't like these rules. Honestly the concern over this treaty is so overblown that it almost seems insensitive to the people in the world who are actually suffering from global commerce. The real victims are the millions of people starving, working 12 hour days as children, losing their families to warmongering nation states, and running along a hopeless treadmill of despair. If you're going to get upset over what amounts to a relatively small set of unimplemented, highly unenforceable rules affecting your "digital rights," then you should at least devote 1% of your complaints to acknowledging the plights of the people who are actually suffering in the world.
- Umn44 11y ago
  "Let's be honest. Any mildly technical person knows that these kind of legal measures are technically impossible to enforce." I'm sorry to tell you but you're wrong, videogame industry is a foretelling of where we'll be in years to come, stuff that is locked down on oneside of the internet and rented in perpetuity, that is the end game for our upper class.
- 11y ago
CM30 11y ago
Personally, I'm also disturbed how little this bill and its implications are being discussed in the media. I mean, you've got a 'trade agreement' with a ton of worrying details and implications, yet newspapers, TV news shows, many popular websites, etc seem to have gone suspiciously quiet about it.

299 points by stakent 11y ago

Maybe off topic, but I always read this as Twitch Plays Pokemon first before realizing what it's actually talking about.

thejaredhooper 11y ago

Is this sensationalized? A single bullet-point makes me nervous. All of those together makes me feel smothered...

walterbell 11y ago
It's a roundup of previous blog posts. You can click through each bullet point for the original blog post with more detail.
PeCaN 11y ago
I've noticed the EFF has a tendency to exaggerate slightly, so it wouldn't surprise me if it's partly sensationalized. Even so, it's rather disconcerting.
- Umn44 11y ago
  Well considering what you've lost, I don't think you're really in a position to claim EFF is exaggerating considering the whole of copyright law has been corrupted and the industry has gotten its way every time over the last 200 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/media/File:Copyright_term.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/...
- pyre 11y ago
  It's probably more along the lines of, "the law could be interpreted this way, and you might find yourself on the wrong side of a court case where a hotshot government prosecutor is trying to make a name for him- or herself by pushing the boundaries of how the law can be interpreted." For example, the case where the US government tried to say that breaking a website's ToS was "unauthorized access of a website" and ran afoul of anti-hacking laws.

wyldfire 11y ago

> "If you stream some copyrighted gameplay ..." I guess it's not the first I've heard of it but doesn't it seem odd for the gameplay itself to be copyrighted/copyrightable by the game's creator? Doesn't it seem just ludicrous if we were to try to do the same for board games or sports?

terminalcommand 11y ago
A game is not a movie. Its core value is interactivity. You already pay a high price for purchasing the game itself. In addition to that the game company gets free advertisement. Fining someone or taking their content down for just streaming a gameplay is unproportional. Furthermore, the person who is playing the game is creating content. The streamers usually talk and show their image to entertain people. If the video game company is allowed to take down the video, or block his/her entire channel, that ought to be a clear violation of the streamer's rights. Law itself is ancient, it has perfected its concepts and continues to evolve. The issues with digital rights aren't hard nor new to law, all disputes in this area could be solved just by following basic law principles case to case. The legislation has always been hesitant to make just laws. Rights are won with fights and struggles. Too many people are ignorant on the matter of digital rights. One could argue every point of view with a harsh relativism. People forget easily that Slavery was once legal, women not allowed to vote... The people ignorant back then resorted to reasonable but unjust arguments too. In the end it's our world and our rights.
- Barrin92 11y ago
  In regards to interactivity, it depends. It's true enough for chess surely which is a bazillion years old and basically just a set of rules, but a modern game's entertainment value is also the content to a varying degree and not just the interactivity.
JoshTriplett 11y ago
A video of someone playing a copyrighted game has value separate from the game, and the person producing that video almost certainly has copyright of their own over it, but the video clearly derives from the music, images, and other materials provided by the game. Under most circumstances, the person publishing or streaming the video should be able to defend their usage via fair use; fair use specifically mentions uses like "commentary" and "criticism". Similarly, people who upload/stream "reaction" videos, where they watch another video and provide commentary, can defend that usage via fair use. Fair use doesn't mean that the video/stream does not derive from the copyrighted game or other material, but rather that the video/stream may legally use that copyrighted material.

qznc 11y ago

Will TTIP contain the same stuff? I would assume, because the same corporations lobby it.

kobayashi 11y ago

Paging /u/tptacek: looking for HN's contrarian position

throwawaymaroon 11y ago
It's pretty simple: focus on the flaws of the EFF instead of the problems the EFF points out. If you want to be against the establishment, you have to be perfect in pedigree, politics, and poise. Your arguments must not only be factually correct on every level (which by itself would be fine to point out) but must also be in obeisance to the status quo by explicitly recognizing the good intentions of the establishment. All of this will be prefaced with "I'm no fan of the TPP, but..." Here's how you write as an establishment equivocator: --- There are certainly parts of the TPP which overreach. But the EFF is well known for taking things out of proportion [ignoring the absurd proportions of the actual situation]. Here we see another example: [point out something from the current EFF statement that is alarmist or not quite relevant to the TPP specifically, for instance...] a lot of what the EFF describes about copyright is specific to US law and copyright. The EFF is really just hitting its usual talking points and very little of this relates to the TPP; the TPP is just an excuse to talk about what they always talk about.
- lawnchair_larry 11y ago
  This was actually pretty well done. Give the guy some credit.
sarciszewski 11y ago
> /u/tptacek I don't believe he even owns a Reddit account. The convention we follow here is as follows: 'tptacek
- tptacek 11y ago
  s/convention we follow here/idiosyncratic convention I've been trying for years to start/g
  - 11y ago

macawfish 11y ago

Reading these things makes me angry. There are people in the world who uphold economic wealth and ownership over life itself. Money is supposed to serve life, not the other way around. Ownership at its best is a way to uphold responsibility and caretaking. It shouldn't be a way of domineering or exploiting peoples' very culture and spirituality. Who gets to play the song? Who gets to retell the story? Only those sanctioned by those with money, the owners. This is wrong. Creation and recreation are a forms of communion, not some contrived, egoistic world domination ritual. Excuse my colorful language, this is a religious issue to me.

ccvannorman 11y ago
You (and many others on HN) have highlighted what will be the dominant issue in global civ, "incumbent wealth owns everything (IP) and fuck the poor". Human greed knows no bounds, I wonder what will happen in 10, 50 years. Global trends suggest everyone will get wealthier but the super wealthy will control a larger fraction.
- bigmanwalter 11y ago
  It's okay. The richest 85 people own the same amount of wealth as the bottom 50% of the global population (1). I'm sure after we spend 8 hours of our day helping them towards owning even more of it, they'll do us a biggie by paying for our food and tiny apartments. 1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2014/01/23/the-85-richest-people-in-the-world-have-as-much-wealth-as-the-3-5-billion-poorest http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2014/01/23/the-85-rich...
  - Outdoorsman 11y ago
    Up-vote--I'm reminded of a line from Pear Buck's The Good Earth... >"The common people had to move, then, and they moved complaining and cursing because a rich man could do as he would and they packed their tattered possessions and went away swelling with anger and muttering that one day they would come back even as the poor do come back when the rich are too rich."< In 1911 the Xinhai Revolution in China, which the quote alludes to, demonstrates what is possible when income disparities reach a tipping point... Leaves me wondering what's truly possible if the "global economy" ever truly begins a move in the direction of a global stasis...

macawfish 11y ago

Meanwhile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11037232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11037232

dniebiebbdi 11y ago

Wide scale civil disobedience is the only solution to unjust laws passed by a corrupt and illegitimate sovereign.

digler999 11y ago
People should start having "LAN parties", except instead of playing games, they should just start doing massive torrenting with 20 tb + NAS devices. evade the mafIAA and start amassing "master" collections, i.e. ALL music...ever. ALL books (libgen), etc.
- userbinator 11y ago
  That concept is as old as software itself: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/copyparty https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/copyparty
- anonbanker 11y ago
  In Canada, this might actually be fully legal to do, if you decided to make it a political demonstration, and did it on the steps of the Legislature of your province of choice. Basically, the same type of civil disobedience that happens at the legislature every April 20th for Marijuana, but for Piracy, and the right to copy.
toomanybeersies 11y ago
> illegitimate sovereign And who, exactly is the illegitimate sovereign here?
jbpetersen 11y ago
Here's betting all this will be a boon to pirate tech if it continues forward to become active law.

walterbell 11y ago

The TPP was signed yesterday by 12 countries, beginning a 2-year period for ratification and changing of national laws to enact new penalties, http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-internet-transforming-environment-destroying-tpp-has-been-signed http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-internet-transforming-e... & http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2016/02/the-trouble-with-the-tpp-day-23-on-signing-day-what-comes-next/ http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2016/02/the-trouble-with-the-tpp-... From http://www.freezenet.ca/tpp-signed-off-marking-the-beginning-of-the-final-fight/ http://www.freezenet.ca/tpp-signed-off-marking-the-beginning..., "... the trade deal would force countries to ratify many other copyright treaties including various WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) treaties, kill Internet privacy for domain name registrants, create a so-called “TPP Commission”, extend the length of copyright, add criminal liability to the circumvention of a DRM, effectively institute statutory damages for non-commercial infringement, mandate government spying on the Internet for the purpose of tracking copyright infringement, possibly add unlimited damages for copyright infringement, allow “destruction” orders of any product circumvents copy protection, allows authority to enforce copyright laws even when infringement hasn’t taken place (ala “imminent” infringement), seize personal devices at the border for the purpose of enforcing copyright law (and destroys your property and forces you to pay if a border guard believes you have copyright infringing content on your personal devices), institute traffic shaping and site blocking for the purpose of allegedly enforcing copyright, implement a notice-and-takedown regime, force ISPs to install backdoors for others to enforce copyright law, and force ISPs to hand over customer’s personal information without court oversight or compensation to the ISP. So, in short, the TPP is a major crackdown on civil rights on the Internet." TPP excludes devices (e.g. phones) in checked baggage from border inspections for copyright infringement, but the UN is considering a ban of battery-operated devices from checked baggage, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/28/un-panel-backs-banning-lithium-ion-battery-shipments-on-passenger-planes http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/28/un-panel-backs-..., "A UN panel has recommended banning cargo shipments of rechargeable lithium batteries from passenger airliners because they can create fires capable of destroying planes, according to aviation officials familiar with the decision."

tluyben2 11y ago
The part about the batteries is not about single passenger mobile phones etc though; it is about cargo shipments of batteries in passenger planes.

gremlinsinc 11y ago

Anyone think EFF will endorse Bernie? They align on a lot of the same things, and he'd repeal TPP given the chance.

readams 11y ago
Bernie might want to repeal TPP, but he'd do that because he's against trade. The EFF is against some of the riders attached to TPP especially around intellectual property and digital rights management. No current candidate has a record that is at all aligned with the EFF on this. A more direct problem is that as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the EFF is forbidden to directly endorse candidates.
- dtornabene 11y ago
  No, Bernie sanders is not "against trade". He's "against" ceding elements of our sovereignty to unaccountable transnational corporations and the "trade" bodies that have sprung up to protect them.
  - damir00 11y ago
    It's the same thing. International trade is impossible without both sides ceding "elements of...sovereignty".
    - dtornabene 11y ago
      Not sure that thats true. And I'm not super interested in a prolonged semantic argument that would sort it out. I'll just note that the "elements of sovereignty" I was referring to are transnational corps attacking nation-states for enacting laws that would protect their populations but would cut into corporate profits. Many examples of which already exist, like, say, the cigarette labelling laws of Austraila and Togo. Or environmental protection laws in Canada (and else where). These are not the sorts of "sovereignty" one negotiates away in the traditional westphailian system of nation states.
- r00fus 11y ago

arca_vorago 11y ago

There is something bigger at play here that even the EFF isn't touching on. (nor do I expect them to, I like how they stick to the technical facts.) The reduction if not straight out elimination of national sovereignty is a prereq for global governance under the collectivist model. Fast track, TTIP, TISA, TTP, and other more subtle treaties that have been falsely labelled as "trade agreements" are how they supranational oligarchy can chip away at sovereignty, because the same people and groups have already corrupted the system from the inside out so pervasively that they now have the ability to get this done, and here is the key, done despite whatever backlash the public is going to release!. This was actually the purpose of fast-track, as the precursor legislation that would enable them to run TTIP/TTP up America's ass before they could stop it. (by pretending something is a trade agreement instead of a treaty and with fast track now the required two-thirds majority in the senate becomes just a simple majority requirement, among other things.) Although I may be one of the hn resident conspiracy theorists, even this threw me for a loop because I was expecting a currency upset first, but apparently the way to undermine a nation is by corruption of it's government and business first and then death by a thousand cuts (read: laws), because afterwards the currency upset can be much more controlled. For me, an American who has sworn an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic...", I think that the country has forgotten the basic reasons for the American Revolution in the first place, and the principles upon which our country and it's constitution was founded, the Declaration of Independence, and the Declaration’s basis, Natural Law, but I digress. The point to me is that we have allowed our supposed "allies" to send us on wild hunts for foreign enemies, while in reality the larger enemies are domestic, and they wear suits and ties and are in DC and on Wallstreet. All the branches of government are corrupted from the top down (including the fourth estate of journalism), and all the middle men are in one of three modes. 1) I'm gonna get mine and fuck you. 2) If I say anything I lose my job or worse, much worse. 3) Who cares, everything is fine, let's put our head in the sand. There has been much debate about whether it is Eric Blair's 1984 or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I say it's being setup so that it's a brave new world, until you resist, then it's 1984 and a boot on your face. I ought to know, I was the man with the boots in Iraq. Throw in another recession or two and a depression, world resource wars, and technological revolution on an earth with an unsustainable population level, and what we have here is a recipe for disaster. It's ok though, I'm sure I'm just paranoid. (like I was about NSA before anyone started listening about that too.)

multinglets 11y ago

~ThAnKs ObAmA~ ~/sArCaSm~

chatmasta 11y ago

Getting upset about the TPP is a waste of time. The provisions of the TPP are a red herring. We should be much more concerned with what is not present in the TPP. It only has 12 signatories!!! There are 160+ "countries" in the world. How much could an agreement between 12 of them really increase "free trade?" There are notable absences (CHINA) that make the treaty effectively meaningless. If 30% of the world is not covered by it, then who cares what it says. The people getting screwed by this treaty are not the spoiled first world EFF supporters, but the people who assemble all our gadgets and gizmos. If you want an agreement that actually benefits humankind, it better include some protections for the outsourced labor that first world nations continue to exploit. Regarding the fearmongering bulletpoints in the EFF article... Let's be honest. Any mildly technical person knows that these kind of legal measures are technically impossible to enforce. If you want to bend or break the rules, you can find a way, and you can avoid detection. "The Internet routes around censorship" as John Gilmore says. He's also an EFF founder so I'm not sure why EFF is fearmongering so much when they should know these measures are meaningless until they're enforced, which will require implementing impossible, nonexistent technical solutions. If you don't like the rules, route around them. Or just leave the country trying to enforce them on you. There are 150 other countries you can go to if you don't like these rules. Honestly the concern over this treaty is so overblown that it almost seems insensitive to the people in the world who are actually suffering from global commerce. The real victims are the millions of people starving, working 12 hour days as children, losing their families to warmongering nation states, and running along a hopeless treadmill of despair. If you're going to get upset over what amounts to a relatively small set of unimplemented, highly unenforceable rules affecting your "digital rights," then you should at least devote 1% of your complaints to acknowledging the plights of the people who are actually suffering in the world.

Umn44 11y ago
"Let's be honest. Any mildly technical person knows that these kind of legal measures are technically impossible to enforce." I'm sorry to tell you but you're wrong, videogame industry is a foretelling of where we'll be in years to come, stuff that is locked down on oneside of the internet and rented in perpetuity, that is the end game for our upper class.
11y ago

CM30 11y ago

Personally, I'm also disturbed how little this bill and its implications are being discussed in the media. I mean, you've got a 'trade agreement' with a ton of worrying details and implications, yet newspapers, TV news shows, many popular websites, etc seem to have gone suspiciously quiet about it.