EFF is calling for folks concerned over the constant ratcheting of copyright maximalism to speak out against The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.
[The] trade agreement currently being negotiated by the United States and eight other countries: New Zealand, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Like previous U.S. free trade agreements, the TPP includes a chapter on Intellectual Property. Based on previous U.S. free trade agreements like the U.S.-Korea FTA, it is likely to export controversial parts of U.S. Copyright law like the DMCA’s ban on circumventing digital locks without any of the exceptions and limitations that have enabled technological innovation, user generated content and education, to flourish in the U.S.
It may be tempting to see this as less of a concern than ACTA, to which EFF compares it. The negotiating parties are quite a bit different even if TPP is being discussed under the same veil of secrecy and on just as rushed, if not more so, a timetable.
The risk with intellectual monopoly enforcement being crafted absent the public interest in any trade agreement is that once some new rules or powers gain a toehold anywhere, they inevitably make their way into future such negotiations. EFF has a laundry list of the enforcement measures tabled by the US, often the main instigator for increasingly broad, over reaching enforcement.
Read through the list and see if the prospect of these measures becoming the international standard bothers you as much as it does me. If so and any of your elected representative are on the two relevant Congressional committees, please use the provided form to act.
Don’t Let TPP Become the New ACTA: Contact Your Lawmakers and Demand Transparency! EFF
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