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TPP final negotiated text – IP chapter

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Re: TPP final negotiated text – IP chapter

#41

Post by pdabbadabba »

infamouscow wrote: post #37
shmerl wrote: post #22

The whole TPP should be dumped for good. Make sure to put pressure on your representatives. Copyright term increase is enough of a reason. And of course the usual anti-circumvention garbage, which forbids breaking DRM even for non infringing purposes. > Each Party shall provide that a violation of a measure implementing this paragraph is independent of any infringement that might occur under the Party’s law on copyri…

The President of the United States is the only person in the U.S. government that can sign and negotiate treaties. It is one of the few powers that the Constitution grants the President (Article II, Section 2). Congress has no role in the treaty process except that the Senate must be notified in the event the President has made a sole-executive agreement. The democratic process is working, you are just misinformed. T…

> The democratic process is working, you are just misinformed. The only person you should be blaming is the President.

That's a little too quick.

1. You're overlooking the Senate's constitutional "advise and consent" role in the formal treaty-making process. (Art II, s. 2, para. 2) This is typically understood to require the Senate to adopt a resolution of ratification with a two-thirds majority. Even for a executive agreement which require acts beyond the president's legal competence, the Senate is required to enact implementing legislation.

2. Just because the process is Constitutional doesn't mean it is democratic. It is at least possible (and certainly not impossible by definition!) that the U.S. has some lawmaking processes that are not democratic.

Re: TPP final negotiated text – IP chapter

#42

Post by guelo »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #30
guelo wrote: post #28

It doesn't make sense for Americans to oppose this treaty. We already live under most of these IP rules with no hope of relaxing them. Extending these profit protections to other countries will mainly benefit American companies and improve our economy.

They aren't American companies, they're multi-nationals, and will keep the money in a tax haven to avoid paying US taxes on it. And this isn't a prediction, this is what is happening RIGHT NOW. It won't help the US economy one iota, and if you push this dysfunctional nonsense out internationally you have gone from "almost no chance of reform" to "absolutely no chance of reform."

They can hide profits from taxes but they still create jobs and spend money here.

Re: TPP final negotiated text – IP chapter

#43

Post by pluma »

bediger4000 wrote: post #11
sp332 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does say "on a commercial scale", so it has to be big. However, I think using bittorrent counts since you are offering to upload the file to anyone on the internet who asks for it. Just singing it at a single private party wouldn't be included, but a restaurant chain singing it for every birthday party would. Not sure what "prejudicial impact" means, but it's probably something that would keep people from buying t…

so it has to be big I think you're putting too much faith in the usual meaning of words. Think about the wording of the US Constitution's 2nd Amendment (or 4th Amendment) and how different the legal meaning is from what someone who isn't a lawyer would expect. I bet that "commercial scale" is "at least on the scale of that guy selling knock-off Nikes out the back of his van" after we make it through the courts.

Technically, "commercial scale" can mean anything from "someone somehow made money while doing it" (e.g. from ads to pay for hosting) all the way to "how someone doing it for money might do it" (e.g. using a proxy or fake contact details). It's intentionally vague.

Re: TPP final negotiated text – IP chapter

#44

Post by cdellin »

infamouscow wrote: post #37
shmerl wrote: post #22

The whole TPP should be dumped for good. Make sure to put pressure on your representatives. Copyright term increase is enough of a reason. And of course the usual anti-circumvention garbage, which forbids breaking DRM even for non infringing purposes. > Each Party shall provide that a violation of a measure implementing this paragraph is independent of any infringement that might occur under the Party’s law on copyri…

The President of the United States is the only person in the U.S. government that can sign and negotiate treaties. It is one of the few powers that the Constitution grants the President (Article II, Section 2). Congress has no role in the treaty process except that the Senate must be notified in the event the President has made a sole-executive agreement. The democratic process is working, you are just misinformed. T…

From the section you referenced:

"He [the President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;"

I think that your claim that the only role of the Senate is that it "must be notified in the event the President has made a sole-executive agreement" is a misrepresentation. In fact, the Senate must vote to approve every potential treaty before it becomes valid.

Re: TPP final negotiated text – IP chapter

#45

Post by drcube »

matthewbauer wrote: post #38
infamouscow wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The President of the United States is the only person in the U.S. government that can sign and negotiate treaties. It is one of the few powers that the Constitution grants the President (Article II, Section 2). Congress has no role in the treaty process except that the Senate must be notified in the event the President has made a sole-executive agreement. The democratic process is working, you are just misinformed. T…

That's not true in this case. Like most trade deals, this one is through congressional-executive agreements. That means Congress will get an up or down vote for the deal.

All treaties have to be approved by the Senate. They just voted this time to approve a special "fast track" for TPP, which gives it a strict up or down vote in the Senate while waiving their right to amend the treaty or add attachments.

Re: TPP final negotiated text – IP chapter

#46

Post by [deleted] »

infamouscow wrote: post #37
shmerl wrote: post #22

The whole TPP should be dumped for good. Make sure to put pressure on your representatives. Copyright term increase is enough of a reason. And of course the usual anti-circumvention garbage, which forbids breaking DRM even for non infringing purposes. > Each Party shall provide that a violation of a measure implementing this paragraph is independent of any infringement that might occur under the Party’s law on copyri…

The President of the United States is the only person in the U.S. government that can sign and negotiate treaties. It is one of the few powers that the Constitution grants the President (Article II, Section 2). Congress has no role in the treaty process except that the Senate must be notified in the event the President has made a sole-executive agreement. The democratic process is working, you are just misinformed. T…

[deleted]

Re: TPP final negotiated text – IP chapter

#47

Post by arca_vorago »

infamouscow wrote: post #37
shmerl wrote: post #22

The whole TPP should be dumped for good. Make sure to put pressure on your representatives. Copyright term increase is enough of a reason. And of course the usual anti-circumvention garbage, which forbids breaking DRM even for non infringing purposes. > Each Party shall provide that a violation of a measure implementing this paragraph is independent of any infringement that might occur under the Party’s law on copyri…

The President of the United States is the only person in the U.S. government that can sign and negotiate treaties. It is one of the few powers that the Constitution grants the President (Article II, Section 2). Congress has no role in the treaty process except that the Senate must be notified in the event the President has made a sole-executive agreement. The democratic process is working, you are just misinformed. T…

Since none of the other posters have mentioned this, I would like to point out that before the latest version of the TPA, congress had the power to amend treaties, whereas now, post TPA, they do not. So a treaty is either passed or not, with no modifications, which I think is an undermining of our constitutional representative democracy.

Another thing to keep in mind is that an easy way around the treaty clause is to just pretend something isn't a treaty, which I have been told is how they intend to treat the TPP.

To me this is one of the most blatant power grabs of the supranational oligarchy, but I have heard a certain argument that I think is worth repeating, and it goes something like this: "Yes, the TPP enables an international and unaccountable tribunal to make decisions that could adversely affect participants, including the USA, but the reality is that we intend to have such power in the tribunal that it will just be another tool in our arsenal of national interests, and we won't allow adverse things against our own." I think the failure of logic in that argument is pretty apparent. All the TPP does is increase and centralize power to unaccountable entities while undermining the rule of law and our constitutional representative democracy. (and I'm sure it undermines other countries in similar fashion.)

Once again, the real issue is that our own governments are being used against us in class warfare, and the rich are winning.

Also I didn't realize the implications regarding DMCA, which I think was horrible legislation that should be repealed.

Re: TPP final negotiated text – IP chapter

#48

Post by nisa »

guelo wrote: post #42
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't American companies, they're multi-nationals, and will keep the money in a tax haven to avoid paying US taxes on it. And this isn't a prediction, this is what is happening RIGHT NOW. It won't help the US economy one iota, and if you push this dysfunctional nonsense out internationally you have gone from "almost no chance of reform" to "absolutely no chance of reform."

They can hide profits from taxes but they still create jobs and spend money here.

liberal copyright laws create jobs. This is the opposite of that. It's big corporations securing profits and making sure there will be no competition.

Re: TPP final negotiated text – IP chapter

#49

Post by arca_vorago »

guelo wrote: post #28

It doesn't make sense for Americans to oppose this treaty. We already live under most of these IP rules with no hope of relaxing them. Extending these profit protections to other countries will mainly benefit American companies and improve our economy.

First of all, we still don't know the whole text of the treaty, actually being treated as a trade promotion authority, so how can you at all make that statement without further knowledge of what the treaty contains?

Second, there are plenty of reasons to oppose this treaty that have nothing to do with this particular IP chapter, but even if we are judging the treaty based of this single chapter it would still be enough to oppose it due to the unaccountability it implements and the restriction of electronic freedom it pushes. The DMCA was bad enough, but to make it worse and then push it on other countries under the false premise that it would push up those countries is ridiculous. If anything, our broken IP system has hindered our growth, not helped it.

Re: TPP final negotiated text – IP chapter

#50

Post by zardo »

bediger4000 wrote: post #11
sp332 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does say "on a commercial scale", so it has to be big. However, I think using bittorrent counts since you are offering to upload the file to anyone on the internet who asks for it. Just singing it at a single private party wouldn't be included, but a restaurant chain singing it for every birthday party would. Not sure what "prejudicial impact" means, but it's probably something that would keep people from buying t…

so it has to be big I think you're putting too much faith in the usual meaning of words. Think about the wording of the US Constitution's 2nd Amendment (or 4th Amendment) and how different the legal meaning is from what someone who isn't a lawyer would expect. I bet that "commercial scale" is "at least on the scale of that guy selling knock-off Nikes out the back of his van" after we make it through the courts.

Commerce happens on all scales, therefore "commercial scale" could apply at all scales.
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