TPP could thwart computer security research and tinkering
slate.com
slate.com
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger.
The more reality seems to inch toward the society of that story, the more I'm convinced that we should choose the side of freedom, even if it means giving up a little temporary security (to paraphase that famous quote.)
For a while it was illegal in the US to "unlock" your phone: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/unlocking-your-new-smart...
Could you expand on this point? E.g. are you referring to format shifting?
Contrast this to DRM and substitute a decompiler or memory editor for a microscope.
Imagine a chair that you couldn't view but could sit in. That's what modern closed source software is, only the "you can't" is now legally enforceable thanks to the Internet.
“... aides in both parties believe the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement will not be brought to the floor before the 2016 elections ... Waiting until the lame-duck session could allow members to take a tough vote on the free-trade deal without electoral consequences.”
The text could be public soon, http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-trade/2015/10/pro-...
“TPP countries could release the final text of the agreement as soon as next Tuesday — the day after elections in Canada — where the trade deal has proven to be a politically charged issue ... The AFL-CIO, meanwhile, is demanding the immediate release of the Trans-Pacific Partnership text ... "Creating a level playing field for American workers includes equal access to information, and the only way to ensure that is to ensure that all Americans have equal access to the text — not in 30 days, after the public relations spin has been spun, but right now."”
Also, if Bernie Sanders wins, he'll veto it. If Clinton wins, she'll "evolve" once again on the issue, and pass it. If Trump wins, despite him saying he doesn't like it he'll probably be convinced to pass it.
And in general, if he is leaving, why is he pushing it so much? Those who stay in power might do it for corruption reasons (money and power they'll get from those who lobbied for this garbage). But pushing for it when leaving is simply weird.
everything is moving to the net, so business wants to get money out of it, so far they came up with two models to do business
- surveillance as the business model of the internet
- DRM lock in
and so it goes that we run into a big reversal: the internet, which is after all a technology that promises freedom of information and transparency turns into a tool that results in exactly the reverse.
Except what is good for one business can be quite bad for another. And DRM in general is bad overall for business and economy (same as lock-in, growing monopoly and etc.). So this mantra doesn't sound meaningful.
There is a major difference between a self publishing artist and a record label; the artist is primarily interested in gaining a wider audience and DRM is a hindrance here; the artist wants to increase his reach, he is less bothered by piracy.
The record label however is very worried about piracy - i argue that your position on the subject depends on your initial position in the hierarchy of things.
Not really. DRM reduces sales and end user reach. It reduces quality of what they offer. Unless you define as "good" those reasons they really use DRM for. And for sure none of them are good in general.
> they don't mind that it kills opportunities for growth in the future
Then it's even more pointless for anyone to think in this context that "what's good for business is good for America".
I'd rephrase it. To certain legacy business which can't compete and instead wants to use various combination of corrupted laws and lock-in to preserve their control over the market. There as well can be big business which is hurt by TPP and the like.
maybe this whole business model thing is about domination - if megacorporation is not in a dominating position then there is no business model to think about, so there is nothing serious to begin with;
i mean that a position of dominance is a prerequisite for a business relationship - one where the owner of the business can turn the mutual relationship into money.
However this is only speculation, since i don't know enough on the subject of money making.
If there is a TPP vote in early 2016, before the general election, labor groups like the AFL-CIO can organize Nov 2016 election campaigns to punish/unseat members of Congress who vote for the TPP. If the TPP vote is moved to the lame duck period between Nov 2016 and Jan 2017, Congress can be re-elected before going on-record with a TPP vote that is opposed by American workers and possibly a majority of voters.
By moving the TPP vote to a lame duck session in Nov 16, the anti-TPP lobbying/campaigning power of American workers in the general election could be neutralized. Sen. Sherrod Brown from the linchpin electoral swing state of Ohio is not a TPP fan, http://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-to-...
"Access to the text has been inadequate throughout the TPP negotiations. A copy of the agreement was not readily available for Members of Congress until we demanded it. And even after the text was deposited in the secure reading rooms in the House and Senate, Members had to ask USTR for TPP annexes and other related documents to be made available. In addition, despite repeated requests, congressional staff with the necessary security clearance are still prohibited from seeing the text on their own."
That goes both ways. By pushing it to the lame duck session, it gives us an opportunity to neutralize TPP. We can vote out anyone who indicates support for it before they get the opportunity to vote on it.
Make it an election issue. Make the candidate go on record. If they won't go on record against TPP, then we can assume they are for TPP and vote them out. Don't even let them through the primaries.
> But we need to take this seriously. I don't want to live in a world where Google, Facebook, IBM, HP, Twitter, Microsoft, EMC, Cisco, Snapchat, etc., decide what content I can consume, what programs I can run, etc. And I doubt most of you do either.
Full comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10397034
seems like the trend is to make the devices we use as closed and locked up as possible...
[1] - http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/10/09/leaked-tpp-agreemen...
[2] - http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/7/9114149/facebook-freebootin...
"Venice’s elites were the chief beneficiaries. Like all open economies, theirs was turbulent. Today, we think of social mobility as a good thing. But if you are on top, mobility also means competition. In 1315, when the Venetian city-state was at the height of its economic powers, the upper class acted to lock in its privileges, putting a formal stop to social mobility with the publication of the Libro d’Oro, or Book of Gold, an official register of the nobility. If you weren’t on it, you couldn’t join the ruling oligarchy."
Many corporations did not have the opportunity to add their wishlists to TPP negotiations, e.g. to use a trade treaty to hijack law enforcement to slow business model competition and innovation in digital trade. These excluded corporations have many reasons to oppose the TPP's proposed entrenchment of their competitors.
The TPP is not itself a law. It's a meta-law, which commits its signatories to enact actual enforceable laws based on the framework established in the treaty.
No device can be destroyed "under the TPP". The TPP instead demands that its signatories enact laws so that they have a judicial process whose remedies can potentially include the destruction of devices. The TPP hasn't even been ratified yet, let alone enabled by law.
This seems like hair-splitting, but I don't think it is. I think the question of what impact TPP will have on security research depends entirely on what the enabling laws for the TPP look like in each country. In the US, our laws already cordon off security and interoperability research from anti-circumvention enforcement.
The TPP itself also acknowledges non-infringing use. First, note that the Vice article selectively quotes the leaked TPP text, which does not demand destruction of "anti-circumvention devices", but rather of devices engaged in prohibited activity. The TPP does not demand a prohibition on security research. Further, the TPP earlier (QQ.G.17) binds each party to balance IP law with fair use for criticism, comment, and research.
I'm not arguing that the TPP IP law is going to be a good thing for security research. It probably won't be (at least, not outside the US). But it's too early to know what it's impact is going to be, and certainly to early to say that it's going to result in the confiscation of security researcher laptops.
QQ.G.17 has no hard obligations, and is only a suggestion that nations should "endeavor to achieve an appropriate balance". That is like me suggesting that government should "endeavor to achieve a fair balanced budget". It doesn't actually say anything concrete, dictate policy, nor impact the political environment in any way at all. It's there to provide a good-feel nod, while the law makers can focus on the actual TPP obligations. EFF remarked this in their article a week ago (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/final-leaked-tpp-text-...).
What there is in the TPP is:
* No suggestion anywhere that security research involving circumvention should be restricted or regulated in any form
* Affirmative requirements that new copyright laws make room in some form for fair use, research, and criticism.
You certainly wouldn't get that impression from breathless secondhand stories like this one.
The Cato Institute's perspective, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/strong-fair-use-...
"... critics rightly point out that U.S. trade agreements fail to capture the balance of creator and user interests imbedded in U.S. IP law. Trade agreements have been a one-way street that set a minimum level of protection. Limitations on creators’ rights—like fair use—are an important part of U.S. law but don’t get included in the agreements alongside things like longer monopoly terms and stricter enforcement.
... For example, the U.S. Copyright Office has proposed reforms to deal with the growing problem of “orphan works”—works that are protected by copyright but can’t be published because no one knows who owns the copyright. The proposed reforms would limit the damages these phantom copyright owners can claim from infringement after such works are published. That proposal is potentially barred by draft language in the TPP requiring the availability of full damages in every case."
EFF and others addressed the USTR on Orphan Works, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/08/users-ustr-dont-sign-a...
"EFF has joined as signatory to a letter that calls on the U.S. Trade Representative not to agree to any provisions in the TPP that could prevent Congress from enacting fixes to address the orphan works problem. Other signatories to the letter are Authors Alliance, Creative Commons, Knowledge Ecology International, and New Media Rights."
The final TPP text? Orphan Works ignored, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/final-leaked-tpp-text-...
"On damages, the text (QQ.H.4) remains as bad as ever: rightsholders can submit “any legitimate measure of value” to a judicial authority for determination of damages, including the suggested retail price of infringing goods. Additionally, judges must have the power to order pre-established damages (at the rightsholder's election), or additional damages, each of which may go beyond compensating the rightsholder for its actual loss, and thereby create a disproportionate chilling effect for users and innovators.
No exception to these damages provisions is made in cases where the rightsholder cannot be found after a diligent search, which puts the kibosh on ideas for the introduction of an orphan works regime that would cap remedies available against those who reproduce these otherwise-unavailable works."
Moreover, the part of your comment concerning orphan works was added to your comment, without remarking about the update, after I wrote the comment you just replied to.
Please stop doing this.
(I fleshed this comment out after writing it and then noticing that you'd asked me to respond to an edit you wrote after I wrote my comment.)
Consider the legal threat model:
Team A: hundreds of industry lobbyists have years of online
access to TPP drafts (i.e. change history).
Team B: government representatives have physical access,
but only in a secure room where they can take no
notes/phone, and cannot bring their expert staff
to interpret complex legal language.
Team C: public advocates (e.g. US Copyright Office) are
effectively excluded from the process.
The flawed TPP process will affect 800 million people.
"it is little more than a daisy chain of corporate favors in the guise of removing trade barriers"
While I appreciate your attempt to tie in the quote, in this context it's actually greatly improving security. In the short term, yes, attackers will be able to exploit things, but in the long run, you actually have people discovering and reporting security issues so they won't be exploited. I think software security as a whole as benefited greatly from the openness of the community (this is most easily seen with respect to cryptography) and it would be a shame if laws pushed parts of it underground.
It always works, until people start killing each other - literally - then it resets, and the loop of history starts again.
When you want to see the end-result: Just watch the classic "Blade Runner" (and open your eyes between the action sequences).
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-10-08/did-obama-ju...
Does this agreement do anything to address the double standard? Is a local dictator still allowed to overrule whatever findings a court makes?
I really don't see how this chapter will be enforceable. If it isn't enforceable, it's hardly free trade. We just enter an era where tariffs are now decided by a court and approved or denied by local government. Much more uncertain and potentially much more expensive that way. "Oh, you sold a bunch of phones? Well, now you owe us a billion dollars. Didn't plan for that? Sorry, take it up with a judge."
I don't think any brand willingly put bad capacitors in just so that their products can self-destroy though?
Just recently observed this in a ten-year-old Viewsonic LCD monitor: the power supply capacitors needed to be changed, then it was OK again. It's a relatively simple repair operation if you know how to solder.
One world, with freedom and abundance for all.
And perhaps a few billionaires as well.
It's not even the average working person in the West that will benefit, it's big business.
These treaties are written by the wealthy for the wealthy. The average schmuck will be worse off.
So this TTP and TTIP can go fuck themselves.
nothing to hide, nothing to lose
I realise this is a very cynical comment, but I honestly don't believe even a sufficiently motivated populace would have any recourse at this point.
"Enlisting a core band of labor, environmental, and community allies, the dozen trade-watching stalwarts at Public Citizen divided into five teams and went after the Brobdingnagians of global corporate power ... it's important to spread the story of the progressive coalition's successful confrontation with the Global Goliath. Its methods and achievements give us a new template for organizing (and winning) future populist challenges to the corporate order. And the breadth, depth, and intensity of this effort show what it will take to forge a real populist movement--multifaceted and with the long-term capacity to pursue our country's deep democratic principles. We can get there if we build on what we learn--and keep pushing."
Do you remember Jon Oliver's video on tobacco lobbyists suing Australia for plain-paper packaging, https://youtube.com/watch?v=6UsHHOCH4q8? That ISDS video got so much attention that the TPP excludes the entire tobacco industry from suing government with lawsuits like http://isdscorporateattacks.org.
To slow/stop the TPP, public interest stakeholders need to lobby corporations to take a stand and declare their position on freedom of speech, freedom to tinker, freedom to compete against all business models. Wikipedia can go dark for one day a week, to raise awareness of the TPP. If the TPP passes, it will be easier to censor future online protest and raising of awareness on any issue. If the Web as we know it is about to change, now is exactly the time to use the Web in its own self-defence.