Comment by chiaro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chiaro | Hacker News Reader

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I was actually against the TPP back when all the rumours were spinning around before the text was released. When the full text actually came out, in an old-fashioned sense of obligation I read the whole thing. Then I did it again. Very few fears I had held were grounded. To my surprise though, the narrative didn't change at all. What was actually contained in the agreement was irrelevant. People were afraid of sovereignty, environmental and worker protections and more before the text was released, and they were after.

Here's a couple of common criticisms that will easily identify a commenter as having not read the agreement:

"the TPP (or ISDS) allows companies to sue countries for lost profits" (they don't)

"this is a power grab by pharmaceutical companies" (Pharma was second after Tobacco at being upset with the deal)

"it undermines Net Neutrality" (there are specific points allowing net neutrality regulation, NN was an Obama policy plank FFS)

"TPP worsens environmental or labor conditions" (it actually provides minimum standards that will improve these in developing countries specifically around overfishing, trade of endangered animals, and minimum wage. It's why the deal was endorsed by the WWF)

You have to be weary too of the exact meanings, not just how it reads. I remember reading an article from the EFF on the IP provisions which quoted a lot from the then-leaked information. The quotes all sounded quite fair and reasonable if you read them. Things like "countries should attempt to ensure proper protections of the public domain" (don't remember actual quotes, but that was the tone). But the problem was, as the EFF then pointed out, all of the provisions about protecting the people against corporations where just non-binding advice like that, while most of the provisions about protecting corporations from the people were strong and binding. So even if it seems like a reasonable text, if you look at it in a very critical lawyerish way, it could actually be very different.

Then again maybe you did read it that way and still found it not that bad. I admit I didn't read it myself, but then again I'm from Europe so it's not my agreement to check. Still I have some faith in the EFF and other organisations which did read it and found it a dangerous agreement. And I really think it's a good thing that it's now harder to negotiate trade agreements in secret. It doesn't matter what the traditional way to negotiate these was, they have a big impact on the countries that implement them, and people deserve more than just a (representative) YES/NO to a huge number of potentially life-changing provisions at once.

A lot of people are quoting from the EFF, which I caution with regards to the TPP. They had a shambles of an AMA last year on the TPP where they failed to argue their points very substantively at all:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/453zzk/what_tpp_means...

It's also worth noting that they were invited to be part of the TPP negotiation process but declined. The agreement itself is not that difficult to read. It's meant to be used as a practical functional document, after all. The one thing that is a little tricky is that carveouts and exceptions to one mechanism or another may be listed in a separate chapter.

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