The whistle blower organization Wikileaks leaked the details of intellectual property chapter of the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
TPP was a trade treaty which was prepared by and on the incentive of major corporations – mainly US. For a few years it has been in the making, and governments, parliaments around the world were not allowed to see the text of the treaty until recently. Even after diplomats and some politicians were then let to view the text, parliaments, media and public was still prevented from seeing the secretive treaty.
The treaty was to be an international treaty, and by virtue of that, was going to bypass democratic procedures and even laws in the countries that signed it. This way, it would be a set of rules and regulations which would totally override the laws of the country which signed it.
Some highlights from TPP are :
– It seeks to establish various international organizations which will have power over the citizens of countries, and will not be supervised, regulated or ruled over by local law – even including supreme courts.
– Seeks to create international organizations which will enforce its rules onto countries, even if the laws and rules imposed were not compliant with the laws of those countries
These were known until now, from what little information has made its way to public.
Wikileaks have leaked the intellectual property chapter in full today, however, and the details just double up the totally anti-democratic, anti-consumer provisions before.
– It seeks to create a copyright organization to enforce its will on all countries involved – bypassing Parliaments, local laws, courts and regulations
– It seeks to impose more severe punishments than 3 strikes law or similar for ‘copyright infringements’, and jail people.
– It goes as far to even break the information technology, by demanding that the devices on internet should not temporarily copy and work on information locally – which is something that is used to speed up and facilitate communication – every server, website, computer, even cellphones use it.
– It is based on desires of US corporations as it seems, with draconian measures to punish people to protect old business models – like selling printed Music CDs for high costs – at the expense of new technologies – like cheap online distribution.
– It seeks to increase copyright terms up to 120 years after creation of a work for corporate owned items – therefore effectively preventing hundred year old works falling into public domain, as it was ordained by law.
– Wants patent rules which will not only increase the cost of drugs, but even prevent surgeons from any other surgeon’s methods – by requiring and limiting them to things they can do with their bare hands.
Details galore. The ip chapter is deeper than that, and goes more in what has been described here to scuttle individual freedoms and privacy for corporate profits.
However, it is not limited to copyright, patents and similar – it actually is quite wide, ranging from making foreign corporations immune to local laws of the countries they are trading with, to scuttling local regulations and laws to drive down wages of employees. In short, it is a corporate coup against democracy, with the intent of undermining the public.
Here is a review of TPP by IBtimes
