Trevor Blogs The Economy #4: The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement And Intellectual Property
The real battle on the Pacific Rim
So Wikileaks just obtained and released the chapter of the… er, “controversial” Trans-Pacific Partnership draft agreement that deals principally with intellectual property and the Internet. This is a big deal.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership — TPP for short — is a multinational trade agreement that is going to make NAFTA sit in the timeout corner while it eats working and poor people from here to Myanmar for lunch. Discussion on the agreement began in 2010, five years after it was proposed. It includes provisions that would raise the prices of medicine, allow states to place huge restrictions on the Internet and allow companies unfettered access to labor and resources in the member countries, bypassing economic and environmental regulations in said member states.
Perhaps the biggest issue TPP raises is that it signifies more of the same from the people who claim to run the world. As NAFTA allowed corporations to invade Central America and drive wages to dangerously low levels, so too will TPP in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
But don’t just take my word for it. Here are excerpts of statements from Doctors Without Borders and the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
The TPP currently includes some of the harshest provisions against access to medicines ever included in a trade agreement with developing countries, gutting public health safeguards and leaving them unable to take the steps needed to protect the lives and health of their people above the profit of multinational pharmaceutical companies. — Doctors Without Borders, Nov. 13, 2013
In short, countries would have to abandon any efforts to learn from the mistakes of the US and its experience with the DMCA over the last 12 years, and adopt many of the most controversial aspects of US copyright law in their entirety. At the same time, the US IP chapter does not export the limitations and exceptions in the US copyright regime like fair use, which have enabled freedom of expression and technological innovation to flourish in the US. It includes only a placeholder for exceptions and limitations. This raises serious concerns about other countries’ sovereignty and the ability of national governments to set laws and policies to meet their domestic priorities. — Electronic Frontier Foundation white paper on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (retrieved Nov. 14, 2013)
