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Donald Trump to Withdraw US from Trans-Pacific Partnership

posted by on Tuesday November 22 2016, @09:31PM   
from the we're-going-back-to-bartering dept.

n1 writes:

Donald Trump says he will issue an executive action on his first day in office to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

In a video updating Americans on the White House transition, the President-elect described TPP as a "potential disaster for our country".

[...] Mr Trump said his administration instead intends to generate "fair, bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores".

Sky Correspondent Greg Milam said: "Donald Trump has been very critical of what trade deals have done for American workers and the damage that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) did in the 1990s - particularly to low-income workers in the Midwest, who it turns out voted for Mr Trump in huge numbers."

Source: Sky News

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Original Submission

• Re:Thumbs up! Re:Thumbs up! (Score: 4, Insightful) by black6host on Wednesday November 23 2016, @01:14AM

  by black6host (3827) on Wednesday November 23 2016, @01:14AM (#431596) Journal

  I have to agree with this. Copyright extension has long been a contentious issue with me. One of my main complaints with HRC was that she was in bed with entertainment producers to the detriment of the common man. Fuck Sonny Bono and the horse he rode in on and all those that followed in his footsteps. The "New Democrats" will pay a price and well they should.

  I won't comment on all the other potentially divisive issues regarding Trump, at this time. He's in. Let's see what he does. I didn't vote for him but I will give him a chance. Pretty fair thinking as far as I'm concerned.

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• Re:Thumbs up! Re:Thumbs up! (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @03:34AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @03:34AM (#431645)

  To me, that seemed to be a matter of upholding capitalism and fairness. When people don't respect copyright, then the cost of music, books, and movies goes into free fall, as we've seen. But the world has changed, you say. Well, it's quite a different matter if everyone decided they didn't want to listen to records made by the old guard anymore, but in fact they are listening to them, and are collecting their music - they were (and to some extent still are) doing it illegally.

  And yet Apple, Samsung, Verizon, Comcast, and ESPN and their executives always get paid, because there's no way to "infringe" on them in the same way that people have pirated the works of musicians, authors and publishers, actors and film studios, some software developers. Does that seem justified?

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  • Re:Thumbs up! (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @04:25AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @04:25AM (#431656)

    What are you getting at?

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  • Re:Thumbs up! (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @07:55PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @07:55PM (#432052)

    So because people are disregarding copyright law and swapping illegal copies around, we should... extend copyrights even longer, preventing some old works from falling into the public domain where they could be legally copied, while doing nothing to affect the illegal copying you're ostensibly concerned about? Try again.

    Setting aside all moral issues of how copyright should work, or even whether it should exist at all. Just look at the system we have, and how people react, given that they know there's meant to be a balance between an initial period of monopoly, followed by perpetuity in the public domain.

    • Set the term as short as you like, and some people will pirate anyway. Changing the term of copyright will have no effect on these people.
    • As you increase the term, the rate of piracy increases slowly (because people who don't want to pay will just wait it out, just as some wait for DVDs to hit the $2 discount rack), while publishing new works becomes more profitable.
    • But as you increase the term further, more and more people lose patience, and turn to piracy out of convenience. Meanwhile, each year of extension now benefits publishers less, due to declining sales on old works.
    • Finally, if you keep stretching the term, you'll find a point where people who know you owe them a public domain will conclude you've sold out to the publishing industries^*, and have no intention of reaching a balance. This is different than being seen to reach a balance different than they would have preferred; just as peasants who might grumble and tighten their belts when they don't have quite enough food, will steal what they like if they don't have any, your society will inevitably feature ubiquitous, guilt-free piracy if you go this far.

    If you're looking to reduce piracy (or better yet, to maximize total cultural value created) you should be near the top of that list; we're at the bottom today, and you're defending term extensions by whining about rampant piracy?!

    ^*Of course, this perception is also affected by the manner in which extensions are performed: if they let existing works fall into the public domain at the appointed time, while extending the term for new works, it looks more like good faith; if they retroactively extend copyright on works about to enter the public domain (as with most, if not all, US copyright term extensions}, it looks like a sell-out; and if they put previously uncopyrighted works under copyright (as the Copyright Act of 1976 did for certain works), it leaves no room for doubt.

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