The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
Your guide to copyright in the TPP
September 14, 2012
This post was authored by Public Knowledge Staff Attorney Jodie Griffin. This is the fourth post in our series on how a US proposal for a copyright chapter in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) would hurt the rights of citizens in the 21st century. That proposal was leaked on the internet in February last year. […]
September 11, 2012
On Sunday, dozens of non-profits, companies, and members of the public gathered in Leesburg, VA, to speak out about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) during the ongoing 14th round of negotiations. Public Knowledge attended the events, stressing to the negotiators the importance of copyright limitations and exceptions, and explaining how the TPP can be fixed to […]
September 10, 2012
This is the third post in our our series on how a US proposal for a copyright chapter in the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) would hurt the rights of citizen’s in the 21st century. That proposal wasleaked on the Internet in February last year. For more details on the TPP, check out tppinfo.org. By reading […]
September 7, 2012
The following post was written by Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer. Many people use the Internet to better themselves. People use resources available online to teach themselves, or they take part in distance education. Traditional universities and web-native organizations alike are finding new ways to use the Internet for education. But the TPP could harm that, by […]
International forums provide the perfect opportunity to increase the rights of copyright owners at the expense of the public because many of these forums often lack of transparency, the negotiations are obscure, and the debates are easily disregarded as "far away".
That is why, when seeking policy changes that would otherwise be unpopular domestically, well-financed industry players often turn to international forums. Once harmful provisions are codified in international rules, they are easier to adopt domestically, or if already adopted, harder to change domestically.
This phenomenon—using international negotiations to adopt provisions that cannot be adopted in the U.S.—is not new. The term of art used to describe it is “policy laundering.”
Copyright limitations and exceptions can correct some of these imbalances between rights of owners and users of copyrighted works. That is why it was so significant when the US Trade Representative (USTR) recently announced that it would include provisions on limitations and exceptions within the TPP. Some of these provisions leaked recently. However, if what was leaked is the entirety of the US proposal, it does disappointingly little to protect users’ rights.
Well, since everyone but country negotiators and industry "advisors" have been kept in the dark, it's hard to say. But Public Knowledge has been tracking international IP issues for a number of years and a draft text was leaked in February 2011, so we can make an educated guess about what might be in the TPP's IP chapter. (The agreement also covers a vast range of other issues, including … Read More
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