Tuesday, December 10, 2013

US Intellectual Property demands scuttle Trans Pacific Partnership treaty

The US has been negotiating with a bunch of Pacific rim countries on a new trade treaty.  The US negotiators have been playing hardball on copyright and Intellectual Property demands, and the treaty has gone down in flames:
The latest leaks, posted at Wikileaks, reveal how deeply unpopular some of America's most treasured TPP positions are.

For example, the US position on Technological Protection Measures (TPMs) is rejected by most of the countries involved in the treaty negotiations: only Australia, Peru, Mexico and Singapore are willing to stand with America.

America is completely isolated on the idea that its “Mickey Mouse law” of copyright terms should be the standard for the TPP treaty. The other countries in the negotiations also want their local parallel importation regimes to stay in place, rather than accede to America's parallel importation proposals.

It appears the US also offered up the idea that signatories should establish “criminal offenses for unintentional infringements of copyright”, something that's been universally smacked down.
Good.  How about a law criminalizing Big Corporation rent seeking by using politicians as their bully boys?  Maybe criminalize politicians proposing laws criminalizing unintentional infractions?  I can hope, can't I?

3 comments:

Divemedic said...

I understand making some money from your ideas, but I would think that ten years or so is more than enough.

You wrote a song, and I get it, you should get paid. That doesn't mean that you should get to fly around in a Gulfstream with a solid gold crapper for the rest of your life.

Alan said...

Copyright has devolved into pure rent seeking. It's in desperate need of reform.

Old NFO said...

I'm surprised the negotiations ever went anywhere...