The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by shubb » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

res0nat0r wrote: post #122

SwellJoe wrote: post #105

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 beh…

I thought that this whole "secret" thing has been explained ad naueum here and on reddit already. It is t secret before it becomes law, or is going to get snuck in under the radar. It will be open for review before it is voted on. Also you don't give away your bargaining wants to your competitors before you sign a contract, kind of like how you don't go to a job interview and tell them out of the gate the exact minim…

That doesn't seem right. The treaty will be signed by heads of state before it goes to legislators. They can't change it, by the time it is released it is fixed and the signing countries are obliged to make it law. Therefore your first paragraph is dead wrong.

The negotiating parties have access to the text so it is not about negotiating receives. It is secret from everyone except those competitors. The wants are circulated as annotations on the leaked drafts. Therefore your second paragraph is dead wrong.

I don't mean to annoy you, just help you realize you should reconsider your opinion on this.

A valid reason might be the negotiations effect share and commodity prices and need to be kept secret to avoid insider trading in these. But more likely it is so e.g. France can trade weaker pollution regulations for retaining farm subsidies, economically important but politically toxic. If voters are not mature enough to see this then is democracy a good idea?

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

#162

Post by drewgross » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

quanticle wrote: post #139

res0nat0r wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that this whole "secret" thing has been explained ad naueum here and on reddit already. It is t secret before it becomes law, or is going to get snuck in under the radar. It will be open for review before it is voted on. Also you don't give away your bargaining wants to your competitors before you sign a contract, kind of like how you don't go to a job interview and tell them out of the gate the exact minim…

It will be open for review, but not for modification. Thanks to "fast-track", Congress will just get an up-or-down vote. So, no, the final provisions won't be secret before they become law, but it doesn't matter at this point. Congress doesn't have the ability to say, "We'll take the good, but not the bad."

A country can't sign part of an international treaty. They must agree to whole thing, not only the parts they like. Leaving it open for modification would essentially mean reopening negotiations, which is a good recipe not never getting any trade agreements signed. Regardless of whether or not you agree with this particular trade agreement, SOME trade agreements are good, and forcing them to happen in the open with each government having the option to modify it would be a terrible idea.

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

#163

Post by EdSharkey » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

Natanael_L wrote: post #126

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 mostly agree, in the long term. There's no point in fighting if you'll need to replace what you're fighting with something more resilient, as merely building it and showing it is better can be a far more effective way of winning, by deprecating the entire system. That's the approach taken by Bitcoin - why attack the banks when we can circumvent them? We can build what we need and ignore the old system. No need to g…

Exactly! We can do better, or at least different, instead. Bitcoin has good incentives built into the system that improve its trustworthiness. And, it doesn't need to ever completely replace other currencies to be disruptive and useful. I think the same kind of design principles could be applied to the general problem of communications.

We CAN build what we need, in fact most of what we need exists in software bits and bobs already.

Connectivity to this alternative network I envision would be free, but users would need to pay local trusted individuals/businesses to aggregate and cache subscriptions to wider-area feeds for them. Consider that these feeds would necessarily constitute large amounts of data since you'd need to bring huge swaths of data you're interested in close to your locality.

The volume and freshness of the data users would subscribe to would be proportionate to how much they'd collectively be willing to pay to fetch and store on an ongoing basis (sortof like how we have tiers for internet connection speeds today.)

The software for the network would build on existing tools and libraries on the client with proper sandboxing of sessions. The storage, cache, feed management, payments, chargebacks, and crypto are all solved problems for the most part.

Yes, this would be a huge effort and would probably work best if some new consumer hardware were developed and that would require investment. But, I don't think anything I have in mind is technically infeasible. I'd like to have some reasonable systems and protocols in place that prevent users being identified and tracked on the network for most classes of communications.

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

#164

Post by api » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 6:05 PM UTC

striking wrote: post #59

insanity55 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

go on...

It means people are so tired of listening to self-interested politicians toe the party line that they're willing to elect a candidate solely based on how crazy his ideas are and how much he won't backpedal on them, even in the face of adversity. In terms of fearless leaders, he definitely is one. Of course, I also think his ideas are mostly inane and that within fifteen minutes of his inauguration he would have alrea…

I think his election would result in... nothing. No change at all. The office is almost a chair warmer position at this point.

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

#165

Post by SwellJoe » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 6:44 PM UTC

res0nat0r wrote: post #122

SwellJoe wrote: post #105

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 beh…

I thought that this whole "secret" thing has been explained ad naueum here and on reddit already. It is t secret before it becomes law, or is going to get snuck in under the radar. It will be open for review before it is voted on. Also you don't give away your bargaining wants to your competitors before you sign a contract, kind of like how you don't go to a job interview and tell them out of the gate the exact minim…

That doesn't explain it, at all.

Corporations wanting the legislation to be secret until it is a done deal is not a surprise. But, to assume that corporations are the stakeholders who matter and who should have access to the secret deals being made, is fundamentally incompatible with democratic ideals. The "explanation" is exactly what I am arguing against. The explanation assumes that the only people who should get to see this legislation are the corporations that paid for it, and the people on whom this legislation will be imposed have no rights other than to suck it up and deal with it.

Your explanation assumes good faith where there is demonstrably not good faith.

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

#166

Post by junto » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 6:54 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #113

SwellJoe wrote: post #105

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 beh…

Only one quibble. In large part, multinationals also wrote it.

And it is these companies that we should punish. I would love to find a way to inspire the consumers of this world to form a deep and powerful union.

A union that stands together and through collective boycotting, is able to effect just one corporate take down. And by that I mean complete, absolute and terrible market action that brings a company to its knees and bankruptcy, Lehman Brothers style (I understand the employees are 'collateral damage here but I think it would be worth it).

If we could just once, take down a stock market level company, through the pure will of the people, I think we could undermine the almost unmatchable power of the corporation as it stands today.

The argument against of course is that boycotts have never really worked. Consumers don't want to work in union. Corporations control the media and as such are able to persuade the people of it ineffectiveness.

But one success would change all that. I'd love to see that happen in my lifetime.

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

#167

Post by bediger4000 » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 7:32 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #107

bediger4000 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

I live in Colorado, so you can't fool me with the "marijuana is legalized" thing. The Feds still regard marijuana as something that only Satan himself would touch, so marijuana businesses can't officially use banks, and there's a lot of other fallout. You certainly can't transport it very far. State line crossings are a big, big deal. About the best you can say is, "it's less illegal".

The US only ducks out on treaties that require it to spend less on military/defence stuff, in all reality. Unfortunately, really, really draconian copyright laws align pretty nicely with deep state issues: you have to inspect packets to decide whether a stream of bytes violates some "IP" or other, which gives a damn good excuse to penalize encryption, and allow even less oversight on search and seizure. Also, let's face it, it's really really easy to violate copyright even if none of us really minds. Draconian copyright gives yet another law to selectively apply to someone you don't like, who exhibits contempt of cop, or whatever. If the US accepts the TPP, all of the excuses will be "we can't break International Law" or "We'd loose out in trading negotiations" or "what can we do our hands are tied by treaty" for any modification of copyright law whatsoever.

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

#168

Post by jandrese » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 7:41 PM UTC

joshAg wrote: post #7

walterbell wrote: post #2

KEI has a roundup of commentary on the TPP IP chapter, http://www.keionline.org/node/2335 A 6-min explainer video on TPP and ISDS, https://youtube.com/watch?v=AABOIcXZZwg HN discussion earlier today, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10359604 From the EFF article: > "One of the scariest parts of the TPP is that not only can you be made liable to fines and criminal penalties, but that any materials and implements u…

> Is TPM/DRM circumvention allowed for personal, non-commercial use? Not by default: > Although the TPP text does allow countries to pass exceptions that allow DRM circumvention for non-infringing uses, such exceptions are not mandatory, as they ought to be.

That seems to be a theme in the TPP. Corporate protections are mandatory, consumer protections are optional.

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

#169

Post by res0nat0r » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 7:42 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #165

res0nat0r wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that this whole "secret" thing has been explained ad naueum here and on reddit already. It is t secret before it becomes law, or is going to get snuck in under the radar. It will be open for review before it is voted on. Also you don't give away your bargaining wants to your competitors before you sign a contract, kind of like how you don't go to a job interview and tell them out of the gate the exact minim…

That doesn't explain it, at all. Corporations wanting the legislation to be secret until it is a done deal is not a surprise. But, to assume that corporations are the stakeholders who matter and who should have access to the secret deals being made, is fundamentally incompatible with democratic ideals. The "explanation" is exactly what I am arguing against. The explanation assumes that the only people who should get…

I'll link this comment which explains the reality of the situation much better than I can: https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/35mers...

There is continuous nonsense repeating "secrecy" when the reality is you or I have no business nosing around in international treaty negotiation since we are in no way qualified, so having some kind of open vote from everyone in the world during the negotiation phase would in no way be realistic. Nothing has been passed as of yet.

You have a chance to review and tell your rep to vote yes or no before anything has a chance of passing, to say otherwise is really just flat out incorrect.

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

#170

Post by res0nat0r » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 7:55 PM UTC

shubb wrote: post #161

res0nat0r wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that this whole "secret" thing has been explained ad naueum here and on reddit already. It is t secret before it becomes law, or is going to get snuck in under the radar. It will be open for review before it is voted on. Also you don't give away your bargaining wants to your competitors before you sign a contract, kind of like how you don't go to a job interview and tell them out of the gate the exact minim…

That doesn't seem right. The treaty will be signed by heads of state before it goes to legislators. They can't change it, by the time it is released it is fixed and the signing countries are obliged to make it law. Therefore your first paragraph is dead wrong. The negotiating parties have access to the text so it is not about negotiating receives. It is secret from everyone except those competitors. The wants are cir…

This explains it: https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/35mers...

Quoting a bit:

> All treaties are generally negotiated in secret, not just trade treaties, because draft documents do not actually represent what any country is actually seeking but rather a position they are taking to secure the terms they want. Countries will always overreach during negotiations by asking for insane/unrealistic things to be included such that the other countries involved are more willing to settle on a moderate position. Its precisely the same reason business deals, employment contracts and generally any other adversarial situation wont have working documents released publicly; it weakens the negotiation position for all sides to have a perfect understanding of the goals of the other side(s).