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TTIP Documents Leaked

posted by cmn32480 on Monday May 02 2016, @12:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the secret-negotiations-are-always-good-for-the-people dept.

q.kontinuum writes:

Apparently, Greenpeace got their hands on a version of the TTIP documents and plans to release them to the public at today, Monday 2nd of May, 11:00am (UTC+2) from Netherlands, while at the same time giving a press conference at the re:publica. While Greenpeace is apparently mainly concerned about the loss of the precautionary principle (in Europe, if a product is thought to pose a risk to the population or environment, it is prohibited until proven safe, as opposed to the US where it is permitted until proven harmful. According to Greenpeace (sorry, only in German), this is a reason that in US, 170 genetically manipulated plants are in the agricultural market, while in Europe it is only one.

While these mainly environmental concerns deserve some consideration, the more fundamental issue is that such a far-reaching contract, invalidating many of hard fought-for consumers rights in one coup and affecting half a billion people alone in Europe, is negotiated secretly. This is entirely unworthy of any democratic government system.

The documents are available for download.

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  • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Monday May 02 2016, @01:03PM

    by bitstream (6144) on Monday May 02 2016, @01:03PM (#340206) Journal

    Since it's now 2 hours since the release. Where are the documents?
    In the end however. TTIP is bad news anyway you put it and this release most likely only serves to wake up more people to the fact. Btw, how will they screw Americans with TTIP?

    "11:00am (UTC+2)" ..Gosh! put in a real time statement like "UTC 09:00" plz.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Jiro on Monday May 02 2016, @02:17PM

    by Jiro (3176) on Monday May 02 2016, @02:17PM (#340242)

    Btw, how will they screw Americans with TTIP?

    EFF has an article from 2015 [eff.org].

    Similarly, in the US composers do not receive royalties when their songs are played in bars or restaurants. But this too has been the subject of a long hard-fought battle, which has even made its way to the World Trade Organization (which ruled, in part, against the United States). Europe has its work cut out for it if it expects the US to reverse its position here. So too it has a hard battle in pushing for payments to visual artists on the resale of their works, which the released documents have also flagged for the EU wish-list, but which conflicts with the US first sale doctrine.
    ...
    Meanwhile, there are other aspects of the agreement that remain troubling to us, perhaps most notably including Europe's insistence on including provisions on Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), that could allow foreign investors to challenge laws that they believe impact the value of their investments. Although the ramifications of this policy extend much further, there is the prospect that balanced intellectual property laws that one country adopts—such as an orphan works law, for example—could trigger an investor's claim.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @11:10PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @11:10PM (#340483)

      Also from the EFF: The 3rd puzzle piece, TISA [eff.org].

      Although it is the least well-known of those agreements, it is the broadest in terms of membership. As far as we know, it presently includes twenty countries plus Europe (but notably excluding the major emerging world economies of the BRICS bloc), who, with disdainful levity, have adopted the mantle “the Really Good Friends of Services”. Like its sister agreements, TISA will enact global rules that impact the Internet, bypassing the transparency and accountability of national parliaments. The only difference is that its focus is on services, not goods.

  • (Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Monday May 02 2016, @07:05PM

    by q.kontinuum (532) on Monday May 02 2016, @07:05PM (#340375) Journal

    Where are the documents?

    https://ttip-leaks.org/ [ttip-leaks.org]

    "11:00am (UTC+2)" ..Gosh! put in a real time statement like "UTC 09:00" plz.

    The real time statement was 11:00am, obviously German local time since the re:publica happens in Germany. The UTC+2 was just additional information because I wouldn't expect everyone to know exactly, in which time zone Germany exists.

    --
    Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum

  • (Score: 2) by TheB on Tuesday May 03 2016, @03:49AM

    by TheB (1538) on Tuesday May 03 2016, @03:49AM (#340623)

    Why isn't there a HTML time tag that the browser can automatically translate to local time?

    This problem isn't going away anytime soon.