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takyon writes:

The newly leaked "Intellectual Property [Rights] Chapter" of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), presumed by WikiLeaks to be the finalized version, contains the same worrying provisions that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been warning against for years:

If you dig deeper, you'll notice that all of the provisions that recognize the rights of the public are non-binding, whereas almost everything that benefits rights holders is binding. That paragraph on the public domain, for example, used to be much stronger in the first leaked draft, with specific obligations to identify, preserve and promote access to public domain material. All of that has now been lost in favor of a feeble, feel-good platitude that imposes no concrete obligations on the TPP parties whatsoever.

[...] Perhaps the biggest overall defeat for users is the extension of the copyright term to life plus 70 years (QQ.G.6), despite a broad consensus that this makes no economic sense, and simply amounts to a transfer of wealth from users to large, rights-holding corporations. The extension will make life more difficult for libraries and archives, for journalists, and for ordinary users seeking to make use of works from long-dead authors that rightfully belong in the public domain.

[...] The provisions in QQ.G.10 that prohibit the circumvention of DRM or the supply of devices for doing so are little changed from earlier drafts, other than that the opposition of some countries to the most onerous provisions of those drafts was evidently to no avail. For example, Chile earlier opposed the provision that the offense of DRM circumvention is to be "independent of any infringement that might occur under the Party's law on copyright and related rights," yet the final text includes just that requirement.

The odd effect of this is that someone tinkering with a file or device that contains a copyrighted work can be made liable (criminally so, if wilfullness and a commercial motive can be shown), for doing so even when no copyright infringement is committed. 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.

The analysis goes on to bash the TPP's provisions on criminal enforcement, civil damages, trade secrets, domain-name registrant contact information, and ISP liability. Public Citizen's analysis focuses on pharmaceutical monopoly rights and biologic drugs (in particular, "biosimilars").

Original Submission