Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

lifeisstillgood

There is a very interesting podcast (LSE series about a year ago now), with the chair of the previous round of physical goods talks explaining what has gone wrong, and how to fix it. In essence the idea is a good one - set out worldwide standards of trade - like WTO - for intellectual goods as well as physical.

If I remember it's things like having same standards of animal welfare innabbatoirs (the U.S. Think EU chickens are dirty IIRC).

But it has gone south because it was played badly politically - the heads of the main negotiating countries should apparently have a summit, announce it was crap and announce a new round that will be

- public and open - use a highest standard wins (ie if US rules on X are more stringent than EU then the U.S. Rules are the standard for TIPP) - something else about timelines - I think not setting big deadlines - being more multilateral like WTO

It seems a sensible move and likely to take a lot of the sting out of "rules made behind closed doors, race to the bottom etc"

Contrary views welcomed...

> In essence the idea is a good one - set out worldwide standards of trade - like WTO - for intellectual goods as well as physical.

You must play our game of pretend scarcity of information or face trade sanctions? Sounds like fun.

I am incredibly glad to know this has not happened yet, because it can easily be the death of innovation. IP, being a completely artificial market that can only exist through state power, has been abused so much and so often (be it software patents or Oracle v. Google or how the damn happy birthday song or Martin Luther Kings "I Have a Dream" recording is still copyrighted) and I have no doubts that any global IP regime would see the rise of a generation of IP lawyers and the death of a generation of ingenuity in intellectual pursuits.

That is how a lot of these countries can get ahead. China's ability to outright ignore US IP law means it can rapidly innovate on foreign or domestic ideas without having to be constrained by what US companies allow.

What about if one country wants to highen their standards in a certain area, will all the countries that signed up then immediately have to follow? Won't the other countries bully the first one to stay to the status quo?

Also, are there really always such a thing as 'highest standard'? Couldn't it be that more often than not, the rules aim for opposing values?

> Won't the other countries bully the first one to stay to the status quo?

That is _precisely_ what all of these trade agreements are about, TPP, TiSA, etc..

If the idea is "highest [regulatory] standard wins," I doubt the IP provisions of that new deal would be any more palatable to the folks here on HN than the TPP will be.

The "behind closed doors" concern is mostly fake. "Secrecy" is a story line that tests well with folks who don't know how policy gets made in general. For example, the PPACA (aka Obamacare) and Dodd-Frank bills were extensively negotiated in private before being offered on the House and Senate floors for votes. I don't recall much complaining about secrecy then (edit: I mean from Democrats like Senator Warren).

Generally speaking, people object to private negotiations only if they object to the substance of the negotiations.

Warren was not a senator while the ACA was being drafted.

She is now, so the honorific is called for when people refer to her now.

Before running for office, she was a major contributor to the ideas in Dodd-Frank, and many of those meetings took place out of the public eye and before the public debate on the bill.

This is not to criticize that particular bill (or the ACA) or her role in drafting it. Just making the point that negotiating and drafting policy behind closed door is a totally standard and unremarkable first step in the process.

Sometimes the "highest standard" is subjective, more regulation doesn't mean better regulation. Regulation, as expressed through licensing, also happens as a means to protect industry incumbents. Should the current most stringent taxi licensing be extended across multiple countries? What about cosmetology licenses[1]? It's a non-trivial issue to dissect what laws are worth keeping and what laws aren't, as there are people affected positively or negatively whichever way you go. It's a complex issue.

1: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/06/22/155596305/episo...

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