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The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

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Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#101

Post by zanny »

Asbostos wrote: post #34

Weren't there also thousands of tariffs removed? The economic advantages of that might outweigh any loses from tighter copyright, and I suspect was the carrot the US used to get all the copyright concessions. Everyone wants to export to the US but the US is traditionally too protectionist. Looking on the bright side of copyright. You never have to use somebody else's copyright work. You can always just make your own…

It it not just about content creation, it is about cultural participation. The insanely long and draconic copyright laws the US has cripples the national culture by restricting the common arts (which in modern times includes artful film and interactive media) to pretty much only things from the 19th century and earlier.

It also destroys culture. It is why we have lost a supermajority of 20th century film, art, and music. Nobody can reproduce it to preserve it, so the original creators copies are destroyed or lost and the material is then lost forever, because its over a hundred years after its creation before is freed to us.

These kinds of laws, if put in place and enforced for a century, would systemically ruin the cultures of all the participating nations and any innovation they may produce, because US IP law is so fundamentally broken that any truly creative endeavor will be crippled by false claims while anything successful will be kept behind paywalls and restricted access to control the social culture of the society for over a century, or longer if Disney gets its way.

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#102

Post by TeMPOraL »

ddingus wrote: post #63
EdSharkey wrote: post #37

To me, code is much more of a long term threat to the power structure than intellectual property theft is. I'm wondering how long before we have government-sanctioned libraries, languages, and chipsets that we may develop for. I see this TPP as power consolidating ahead of any looming citizen revolt in order to chop it off at the knees. It's very weird and awesome to watch. I do chuckle about all this though because…

>>>I'm wondering how long before we have government-sanctioned libraries, languages, and chipsets that we may develop for. "You there! STOP!" "Huh?" "We've got you on record for bootstrapping, machine code, and compiler writing!" "so?" "That's a threat, and you are going to have to come with us and register." "Register for what?" "As a weapon. We need to know where you are and who you associate with..."

I doubt it will go that bad, but I wouldn't be surprised if the end result of the War on General Purpose Computing will be laws limiting access to turing-complete machines to licensed software engineers. For everyone else, playing with a compiler will be illegal.

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#103

Post by jsprogrammer »

zanny wrote: post #92
jsprogrammer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>will only let very select, RIAA and MPAA owned content through What do you mean? Comcast/NBC will only let RIAA and MPAA broadcast over their networks? No indies?

They already give priority in their cable packages, and they already own Hulu. Content delivery is controlled by content creating big media IP holders. Obviously they will try to keep competition down, especially new media that understands how the Internet makes information free.

I think it will primarily be determined by who can support (fund) the artists who are making the content people want to watch.

Of course, easy, essentially-free, world-wide distribution will make it harder for RIAA and MPAA to maintain control over the flow of mainstream art.

Viewer-funded (or even mini-investor funded) models could be viable. I'd imagine they could even compete favorably with large production studios if the right structure was found.

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#104

Post by TeMPOraL »

oldmanjay wrote: post #3

I still feel strongly that disrupting the flow of free entertainment is the one thing that will actually get people up and protesting. Rights and freedoms stripped away with regularity have minimal impact, but SOPA got the world riled up in fear that torrenting the next season of Game of Thrones was about to get mildly more difficult. I suspect something similar will happen here.

Indeed. In Poland, which was the first country in Europe to stand up against SOPA, people only started caring after a popular video streaming site got taken down (it was something related to Megaupload scandal) - and they realized that this is what world with SOPA will look like. You can take away our freedoms, but you can't take away our Game of Thrones.

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#105

Post by SwellJoe »

The thing I find most galling about this is not merely what it contains. It is an awful document, with horrible policy, yes.

But, what is most disgusting is that we had to learn of how bad it is from leaked documents.

The leadership in many nations (not just in one nation, this is effectively a conspiracy at the highest levels of several nations, most egregiously the US) supported the TPP, lobbied for the TPP on behalf of a select few corporate interests, and all around sold themselves to the highest bidder, while keeping the details of it a secret from the people they allegedly represent. Democracy doesn't run on secrecy. What these leaders are pushing is not democratic, it is oligarchic.

It isn't one party's doing, either. This secret deal is not a Republican deal, or a Democrat deal. It has, at various times, had vocal support (even petulant support in the case of Obama, when fast track powers were on the line) from the likes of Hillary Clinton (she now makes noises acting as though she doesn't like it, despite championing it dozens of times, and after the damage has already been done), most high ranking Republicans in the house and senate, and damned near everybody else who ever cashed a check from ALEC.

All while it was secret. All while the only people allowed to see it were the lawmakers supporting and writing it and the corporations that paid for it (seriously, legal representatives from several multinational corporations saw this deal before the people of the United States were allowed to see it). Even if the deal weren't awful, it would still be awful, because of the way it is being made.

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#106

Post by EdSharkey »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #102
ddingus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>I'm wondering how long before we have government-sanctioned libraries, languages, and chipsets that we may develop for. "You there! STOP!" "Huh?" "We've got you on record for bootstrapping, machine code, and compiler writing!" "so?" "That's a threat, and you are going to have to come with us and register." "Register for what?" "As a weapon. We need to know where you are and who you associate with..."

I doubt it will go that bad, but I wouldn't be surprised if the end result of the War on General Purpose Computing will be laws limiting access to turing-complete machines to licensed software engineers. For everyone else, playing with a compiler will be illegal.

Your vision of the future sounds like hell to me! It's sortof like gun control ... only the bad guys will have access to development rigs.

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#107

Post by jrockway »

bediger4000 wrote: post #24
nostromo wrote: post #11

I think the EFF is being a bit hyperbolic here. This is certainly not all that we feared. TPP actually seems fairly banal from a U.S. perspective, in part because so much of what is listed here directly mirrors U.S. law. (Laws like the length of copyright and the DMCA.) From the issues listed, I don't see how life will change online after TPP for U.S. citizens in any major way. This seems positively mild compared to…

While the TPP "IP" provisions might be banal, mirroring current USA law, the problem with the TPP is that its for all intents and purposes, a treaty. The citizens of the USA can't up and decide that allowing DRM circumvention is a good idea and we should now allow it: that would break international law. The citizens of the USA can't decide to shorten copyright length for fast-moving areas (computer science) because t…

> that would break international law

Do we care? Didn't legalizing marijuana in Washington violate international drug treaties that the US is signed to? It seems to be legal anyway.

Ultimately, laws require money to enforce and after people forget about the laws they find other uses for the money. International law is especially fuzzy in that it's not like there are judges, a court, and a jail for violators. If two countries violate each others' treaties, all they can do is penalize each other somewhere else, or start blowing each other up. Is someone going to bomb one of the three nuclear triad nations over enforcing copyright law? Probably not. So there is no international law that applies to the US, Russia, or China.

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#108

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

vacri wrote: post #80
EdSharkey wrote: post #37

To me, code is much more of a long term threat to the power structure than intellectual property theft is. I'm wondering how long before we have government-sanctioned libraries, languages, and chipsets that we may develop for. I see this TPP as power consolidating ahead of any looming citizen revolt in order to chop it off at the knees. It's very weird and awesome to watch. I do chuckle about all this though because…

"I could create the replacement to the internet and destroy the current corporate powers in doing so. And despite this replacement's power, it'd be designed in a way that governments could never infringe on it. I just don't because I have a comfy job"? Oh, please.

What if you substituted "I" with "we" in that sentence?

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#109

Post by EdSharkey »

kobayashi wrote: post #88

>Jade Helm Found the /r/conspiracy subscriber

That's dismissive and insulting. I don't visit Reddit, it's a huge distraction to me. This is the only tech news site I frequent because it's simple and I enjoy reading the comments for the most part.

Jade Helm was extraordinary and just plain _weird_, I think it's okay to question it!

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#110

Post by TeMPOraL »

EdSharkey wrote: post #106
TeMPOraL wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it will go that bad, but I wouldn't be surprised if the end result of the War on General Purpose Computing will be laws limiting access to turing-complete machines to licensed software engineers. For everyone else, playing with a compiler will be illegal.

Your vision of the future sounds like hell to me! It's sortof like gun control ... only the bad guys will have access to development rigs.

Yes. It terrifies me. But that's exactly what we'll have if we actually get "programmer professionalization". This is a part of the War on General Purpose Computing; on one hand, as software runs more and more life-critical systems like cars or energy infrastructure, you see a push from both security professionals and big companies towards turning programming into real engineering discipline; on the other hand, you have media companies fighting to limit public's access to turing-complete computation. Unfortunately in this context, while everyone hates the big media shops, infosec has a lot of good karma currently, and they're also against us in this war.
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