SOPA on Steroids: Learn about TPP

Writeindependent.org – SOPA – TPP – Trans Pacific Partnership – trade agreements – free trade – internet access – internet privacy – civil rights violation – digital locks – Digital Millennium Copyright Act – DMCA – online police

You thought SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) was bad? How about the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) which extends restrictive intellectual property laws around the world.

Under the TPP, “stakeholders” (code for certain corporations) have the ability to file for copyright infringement if anyone downloads content without the express consent of its copyright holder. If this provision sneaks by in this hundreds-page TPP “free trade” agreement, you can count on internet content to start costing money in ways you never expected.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, TPP also threatens to enact “…laws banning circumvention of digital locks (technological protection measures or TPMs) that mirror the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and treat violation of the TPM provisions as a separate offence, even when no copyright infringement is involved.”

Lori Wallach of the watchdog group Public Citizen speaks out against TPP’s new laws restricting our use of the internet in this YouTube published on May 12, 2012.

Lindsey Pinto, Canadian blogger at Rabble.ca wrote today of concerns over internet use because Canada has already agreed to sections of the TPP. “The TPP’s intellectual property measures would give large media conglomerates new powers to lock users out of their own content and services, provide new liabilities that might force ISPs to police online activity, and give giant media companies even greater powers to shut down websites and remove content at will.”

Again, and I can not stress this enough: do you know where your congressman stands on TPP? I’m going to start asking our candidates to vote yes or no on this horrible act, and see who knows how many civil liberties this law overrides.

Sources:

https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIxvaTg_XkI&noredirect=1

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alex/2012/06/canadas-digital-future-risk-ottawa-joins-trans-pacific-partnership-agree

This entry was posted in Writeindependent.org. Bookmark the permalink.