(Source: hypertensions, via them-good-old-boys)

Why You Should Care

TPP raises significant concerns about citizens’ privacy, freedom of expression and due process rights, innovation and the future of the Internet’s global infrastructure, and the right of sovereign nations to develop policies and laws that best meet their domestic priorities and enable access to knowledge for the world’s citizens.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is pursuing a TPP agreement that will require signatory counties to adopt heightened copyright protection that advances the agenda of the U.S. entertainment and pharmaceutical industries, but omits the flexibilities and exceptions that protect Internet users and technology innovators.

The TPP will affect countries beyond the nine that are currently involved in negotiations. The new TPP agreement will build upon a 2005 agreement between New Zealand, Chile, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam (the P4 agreement) but will include more extensive provisions on intellectual property and other issues. The TPP will set rules that will likely be adopted initially by the 21 member economies in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. The TPP is being negotiated by 9 members of APEC, and negotiators plan to finalize the “TPP concept” at the APEC Economic Leaders meeting in November 2011.

Like ACTA, the TPP Agreement is a plurilateral agreement that will be used to create new heightened global IP enforcement norms. Countries that are not parties to the negotiation will likely be asked to accede to the TPP as a condition of bilateral trade agreements with the U.S. and other TPP members, or evaluated against the TPP’s standards in the annual Special 301 process administered by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Apparently, the US government has already indicated that it will not allow any form of weakening of intellectual property law for any reason whatsoever in this agreement. In fact, the USTR has directly said that it will only allow for “harmonizing” intellectual property regulations “strictly upwards,” meaning greater protectionism. Given the mounds of evidence suggesting that over protection via such laws is damaging to the economy, this is immensely troubling, and once again shows how the USTR is making policy by ignoring data. This is scary.

ademska:

“As we noted in our post about people just discovering ACTA this week, some had put together an odd White House petition, asking the White House to “end ACTA.” The oddity was over the fact that the President just signed ACTA a few months ago. What struck us as a more interesting question was the serious constitutional questions of whether or not Obama is even allowed to sign ACTA.

In case you haven’t been following this or don’t spend your life dealing in Constitutional minutiae, the debate is over the nature of the agreement. A treaty between the US and other nations requires Senate approval. However, there’s a “simpler” form of an international agreement, known as an “executive agreement,” which allows the President to sign the agreement without getting approval. In theory, this also limits the ability of the agreement to bind Congress. In practice… however, international agreements are international agreements. Some legal scholars have suggested that the only real difference between a treaty and an executive agreement is the fact that… the president calls any treaty an “executive agreement” if he’s unsure if the Senate would approve it. Another words, the difference is basically in how the President presents it.

That said, even if Obama has declared ACTA an executive agreement (while those in Europe insist that it’s a binding treaty), there is a very real Constitutional question here: can it actually be an executive agreement? The law is clear that the only things that can be covered by executive agreements are things that involve items that are solely under the President’s mandate. That is, you can’t sign an executive agreement that impacts the things Congress has control over. But here’s the thing: intellectual property, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is an issue given to Congress, not the President. Thus, there’s a pretty strong argument that the president legally cannot sign any intellectual property agreements as an executive agreement and, instead, must submit them to the Senate.

It looks like folks have figured this out, and there’s now a new White House petition, demanding that ACTA be brought to the Senate before it can be ratified/signed by the US. This petition should be a lot more interesting than the other one if it gets enough signatures (so encourage people to sign, please!).”

(via techdirt.com)

Reblog this, because it’s MUCH more important and potentially effective than petitions asking President Obama to reverse his position.

Right now, Republicans are more anti-SOPA/PIPA (and by extension ACTA) than Democrats. If we question Obama’s authority to override Congress, they’re going to latch on and help us get this out of his hands, and at the very least they’ll bring it to public attention.

Believe it or not, Republicans are our biggest ally in the internet war right now, and this is the kind of politics fight they love most.

150,000 actually.

(Source: svexy, via fuckyeahqaf)

Things to note:

The United States has reportedly ALREADY SIGNED ACTA.

According to this person’s interpretation of ACTA, the treaty does not create law; it only creates the opportunity to pass laws that will support it (which is still dangerous).

Keep reading about ACTA and educating yourself with updated information. I’m not saying this piece from Reddit is absolutely correct, but I AM saying that we should read moar before we sign the multitude of online petitions demanding that the U.S. NOT sign the treaty (because it has apparently already happened).

We shouldn’t immediately believe everything we read on the internet.

(Source: maybejustified, via fiddleyoumust)

dammitjean:

sanityscraps:

unknown20troper:

justaway-sama:

I am sure that we have all heard about ACTA to some extent, whether it’s now, nearing crisis point, or before, going as far as two or three years back, when only a very few people paid any attention or tried protesting.

This is…

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

Suggest reading this, too: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/or8ag/ive_read_the_final_version_of_acta_heres_what_you/

(Source: mark2armour)