Ars Technica writes about WikiLeaks' release of 17 secret documents from the negotiations of the global Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). If their interpretation is correct,
the EU would be forbidden from requiring that US companies like Google or Facebook keep the personal data of European citizens within the EU
and
Article 6 of the leaked text seems to ban any country from using free software mandates: "No Party may require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition of providing services related to such software in its territory."
What more nasty surprises will these negotiations bring?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 07 2015, @03:12AM
The thing is, the rights of individuals have been expanded far outside of their normal definitions -- for instance, the right to free speech has been interpreted as the right to give money to politicians freely.
Then you don't understand the point of the Citizens United ruling which wasn't to give money to politicians, but rather equality of opportunity to advertise before an election. A billionaire could buy speech right before an election, but a group of people incorporated for the purpose of political speech, such as NGOs or labor unions, could not. The ruling gave corporations the same rights as individuals. And you could try to block paid for speech right before an election by everyone, but that will run afoul of the First Amendment.
So, if you give those same rights to corporations, they get powers far beyond what an individual could do(more money, more people) but are held to the same rules. Obviously it's unbalanced and harmful to democracy.
No, such things are not obvious at all because they are not true! The whole point of a corporation is to do things that an individual can't do on their own.
I agree that corporations should have some rights, but the rights of groups of people should not be the same as the rights of individuals.
And in the real world, those rights aren't the same even in the US which has the strongest manifestation of the corporate personhood thing. Your concerns have already been long addressed.