TPP Leak Reveals Take-Down Measures Softened – But DRM Rules Remain Harsh | Hacker News Reader

TPP Leak Reveals Take-Down Measures Softened – But DRM Rules Remain Harsh

forbes.com

92 pointswalterbell40 comments

"require intermediaries to pass on notices of alleged infringement to their users" aka they can intimidate and mislead gullible users into paying penalties for copyright infringement even if they aren't legally required to.

As someone outside the US, this trade agreement seems like the US trying to impose its poisonous, backwards copyright and intellectual rights laws on the rest of the Western English speaking countries.

All behind closed doors of course, with no open debate, to the massive boon of greedy corporations and at the expense of the common man as per usual.

It's exactly that. Listen to Obama's State of the Union speech. He said it quite clearly. The TPP is about fixing international law and the terms of trade to benefit the US - as opposed to China (who has been pushing for other trade blocs with non-US law).

> "...to benefit the US"

More specifically, I think it benefits US corporations. There's a sleight of hand in politicians/lobbyists presenting it as benefiting the US as a whole.

The political elite seriously see absolutely no difference. There are a number of directions we could go to expand on that.

yes. this is essentially the main concern, broad sweeping authority delegated in secret. It worked well for the FISA courts and natsec.

> As someone outside the US, this trade agreement seems like the US trying to impose its poisonous, backwards copyright and intellectual rights laws on the rest of the Western English speaking countries.

That's precisely what it is, yes.

"like the US trying to impose its poisonous, backwards copyright and intellectual rights laws on the rest of the Western English speaking countries"

I wish it were only on the English speaking countries. The US is trying to impose its laws globally.

Can we just have a breakdown of companies who played a large part in the TPP formation so we can boycott them? Money seems like the only way to speak to these dickheads.

Here's something close - a list of supporting businesses on the US side: http://tppcoalition.org/about/

What do we have here... Apple, EBay, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Xerox. This is going to be hard - I use every one of these companies every day. But what part did they play? If the press can find out, that will help the user make an informed decision.

It's going to be a harder decision as soon as you or your family get sick - are you going to boycott the pharma companies?

I don't really use them currently with the exception of aspirin or decongestant but if I or a family member were to become ill then there is no choice - we use the medicine if there's no valid alternative. Where you can safely cut something from your life, do it. It doesn't have to be a binary decision.

I'd argue that the average Western lifestyle, chiefly the work component, is a major source of stress, sleep loss, depression, poor diet, lack of exercise and all of those factors interplay to amplify the effects. We work harder to have things in order to increase status, like monkeys with the most bananas. We wan't stuff. Stuff that doesn't make us happy. Stuff that owns us. Stuff we purchased with money we don't have. Stuff produced by the assholes who make secret trade pacts that move power from the individual to the corporation.

Medicine is valuable, as are computers and the internet. And corporations aren't evil - they're just pushing what boundaries they can in order to maximise profit. It's an organic process just the way a toddler prods their way through what they can and can't get away with. Doesn't mean they're not little jerks though.

It seems the only way we can respond is with our wallets. We need an in depth analysis of who was pushing for certain aspects of the TPP which will affect the individual negatively.

thanks for articulating this nicely. I agree with your statements.

Honestly, the more productive thing to do is organize and fundraise to change how money influences politics.

  - https://www.kickstarter.com
  - Project title must inspire awe or anger - these valences are the most viral [1]
  - Make a decision about the split of funds - e.g. $150k for EFF, $30k for politician/s X to vote for/against X
  - Thank businesses and politicians who stand for your ideals - they might help spread the word or more
  - Ask community for graphics - some will be highly viral by virtue of humor or capacity to incite anger

[1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1528077

This is also one of those times when calling your Senator can work. The ones voting for it are kind of hoping that nobody notices. A lot of angry phone calls will convince them otherwise and could help give them cold feet.

It helps that there's not really a cohesive voting bloc in favor of the trade negotiations. It's just about the billionaires.

A comment on here might do little. Something a little noisier like a microsite or infographic linking each politician to payments from lobbyists might annoy them and get more attention?

That's not going to help this time, because the TPP is fast-tracked and can't be filibustered, and has the overwhelming support of the Republican majority.

There's a bill from Maryland's John Sarbanes, and which already has 150 co-sponsors in the house, which tackles that very problem. From the website[0]:

The Government By the People Act has three specific policy prescriptions:

1. Empower everyday citizens and engage them in the political process by providing a $25 My Voice Tax Credit for campaign contributions.

2. Amplify these small-donor contributions, and give candidates the incentive to seek them out, with a six-to-one match from a Freedom From Influence Fund.

3. Allow candidates to earn additional public matching funds within 60 days of the election so that citizen-funded candidates can combat Super PACs and outside groups.

[0]https://sarbanes.house.gov/bythepeople

> Can we just have a breakdown of companies who played a large part in the TPP formation so we can boycott them?

Unfortunately, it isn't that simple. We need to know what each company was pushing for. For example, maybe the TPP turns out to be not quite as awful as it might have been, because Company X wouldn't stand for the awful stuff. We really don't want to boycott them in that case.

The big problem here is not the companies, anyway. It's the government. Companies are private entities. They can only be expected to push their own interests. But the government is supposed to represent the people. Theoretically, the government is what keeps private companies from running amok. When it fails to do so, we need to hold the government accountable. When it does just the opposite, and enshrines companies' unreasonable demands into law, then we have a serious problem.

Free Trade Negotiated In Secret

They aren't free trade negotiations. They are protectionist trade deals meant to exclude China from trade in its region as it rises. (China has been trying, similarly, to arrange ASEAN trade deals to exclude the United States).

This is a bit of a myopic view isn't it? Given that these treaties often force Most Favored Nation status on the participants, the end result is lower tariffs overall (if only that they can't make it worse), so pro-free-trade

The reason I say this is that it's being used to exclude certain countries and it sets up rules that explicitly favor particular countries.

Given its strategic nature its role is to protect both Western powers and regional countries that want investment from the West and to grow against the rise of China.

Since it protects 40% of the world GDP at the explicit and planned sacrifice of other nations and because it is used to instantiate international laws that protect those same countries I call it protectionist. And if you look at the leaked memos it's really not so big a stretch. It's also been called protectionist by people not aware of its strategic value (e.g. Assange).

China's deals are a heck of a lot sweeter than the TPP though.

Out of curiosity, care to name one thing of any substance that was negotiated in public? Ever?

Today, for example, HN seems to love the Iran deal that was certainly not negotiated in public. It'll be decades before we see drafts, notes, etc.

That's because half of the TPP comments on this kind of article are astroturfing by the Chinese, and the rest are suckers who don't realize they're along for the ride.

We're used to negotiations resulting in agreements that limit states between themselves; disarmament treaties, border negotiations, etc. Or things with a single well-telegraphed purpose (anti-drug treaties do what they say).

Treaties that bind the parties to enact domestic law that constrains what ordinary members of the public can do are another matter. It's a way to make law that cannot be reverted by a subsequent administration.

Do you realize that most of our trade treaties enact domestic law right? According to the current interpretation of article II, section 2, clause 2 the treaties are essentially a manifestation of domestic law (as was NAFTA, for example.) Where you are incorrect is in the assumption that it cannot be repealed. In fact, it is easier to get out of them than it is to approve them: congress can pass laws that repeal any aspects of the treaty (and no, a treaty cannot prevent a future congress from such action -- no act of congress is in any way binding on future congresses and only a change to the constitution would allow for such a restriction), the supreme court could declare any or all of a treaty as unconstitutional, or a future president can just declare that the US is no longer party to a treaty. The latter bit is still somewhat untested, but in cases where it has been used by sitting presidents it has not been successfully appealed.

However, Congress changing it subsequently puts the US in breach of the treaty, and potentially subject to whatever arbitration system was built into the treaty. The US generally has the power to get away with this without significant cost, but smaller parties to the treaty do not.

> the section on DRM circumvention is apparently pretty much unchanged from previous versions. Previous leaks showed it criminalizes those who bypass technical measures aimed at restricting copyrighted content — even if they’re being bypassed for reasons that don’t contravene copyright law.

can someone explain how DRM would be enforced, and how someone could bypass it with "technical measures"?

For example DRM is present on most dvds and one can't watch dvds on Linux out of the box (for most distros). This can be bypassed by installing a library.

But you would never do this because this would be illegal...

Who cares about DVDs - Mozilla caved and added DRM (EME) to Firefox. These kinds of restrictions cut directly against freedom of speech and the press. This becomes yet another word game were you de jure have legal rights, but de facto do not because it is illegal to discuss the methods involved in actually exercising those rights.

/* before someone decides to repeat the propaganda that EME only applies to video (as if that is any better), remember the paranoid websites that try to disable the clipboard or show an image of text instead of just adding the text. "one frame video of text" is inevitable */

It was merely an example where the US laws relating to DRM and copyright are totally egregious - and possibly counter productive.

I would be surprised if someone leaps to defend DRM in this context.

Why would you be surprised? Copyright maximalists advocate all sorts of things. One of the very early cases was DRM enforcement on PDFs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Elcom_Ltd.

i mean on HN.

Thanks. I wanted to get a bit of clarity, at first I was thinking more along the line of VPN/Proxy to circumvent country restrictions or anonymize traffic, then cracking, but then I realized even this simple library example could mean a very high tariff.

A good article for establishing an anchoring bias in the naive masses. They'll be so relieved that it's not as bad as it COULD have been. Just like a flea market bargainer who quotes you an insanely high price then sells it to you for a 300% markup, but you think you're getting a discount. Reels em' in every time.

So they asked for more, and settled for less.

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