The blogosphere is abuzz with speculation that the Transpacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is much worse than SOPA. Is this true? Since the text is currently top secret, there is no way to tell.  Of course, that’s part of the problem. But, after tracking international intellectual property (IP) issues here a PK for a number of years, I can try to make an educated guess about what may be in TPP’s IP chapter and how it may affect you.

Torrentfreak recently ran a fascinating pair of opinion pieces from two lawyers regarding whether or not someone could be liable for copyright infringement if someone else used their open WiFi connection. One attorney, Nicholas Ranallo, walks through the established law of direct and secondary copyright liability, and comes to the conclusion that generally, no, you're not liable for someone else's infringements using your connection. The other attorney, Marc Randazza, doesn't discuss copyright liability, but instead starts drawing out hypotheticals about the law of negligence.

UPDATE: Added mention of the $35 appeal fee in the "Appeals" section below.

Today, major ISPs joined the RIAA and MPAA in announcing a joint program to deal with file-sharing. The document governing this agreement, a "Copyright Alert System," is hosted here. Public Knowledge and the Center for Democracy and Technology issued a joint statement on the CAS, available here.

Beyond that, what does this agreement represent? It extends some of the characteristics of some ISPs' existing voluntary notice-forwarding agreements, while stopping short of a three-strikes-and-you're-out procedure.

On today's podcast we update the status of the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger, walk through the intricacies of politicians licensing music for their campaigns, talk about IP protection surrounding attempts to 3D print a cube from the movie Super 8, and mark the death and life of social networks.  We also discuss the decision of civil society organizations to pull out of international open internet discussions at OECD and consider the ramifications of this week's Supreme Court ruling on minors' access to violent video games.

You can download the audio directly by clicking here (MP3) or stream it using the player below:

Want to subscribe to our podcast? Click here for the MP3 feed.

As the Net Neutrality debate brews, PK and others continue push for strengthening the proposal. Our three points of concern are ensuring protections for wireless access to the Internet, preventing paid prioritization, and simplifying the definition of “broadband Internet access service” (to avoid potential loopholes). Senator Al Franken sent a letter to the FCC Friday emphasizing the importance of “significantly strengthen[ing]” the proposal. Also, PK’s head of government relations responded to the mythical the meme that “300 Members of Congress are opposed to Net Neutrality”.

Among the thousands of documents revealed to the press through WikiLeaks are apparently a number that deal with copyright issues. The Spanish newspaper El País has published a number of cables from the U.S. embassy in Madrid regarding U.S. efforts on IP enforcement in Spain.

One of the most interesting is this one from February 2008, which recommended that the U.S. threatened to put Spain on the Special 301 "naughty list” unless the Spanish government announced it would adopt a three-strikes style copyright enforcement law that would cut users off from the Internet after allegations of copyright infringement.

CLICK HERE TO WRITE THE WHITE HOUSE NOW

The Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement continues to roll along with negotiations taking place in Switzerland in the coming weeks. Rumor has it that these negotiations might be bringing us to a finalized ACTA soon, despite protests from public interest groups, technology companies, and legislators around the world that its ham-fisted approach to enforcement can do grave harm to consumers, innovation, communication, and can even make it harder for lifesaving medications to reach populations in need. It’s time to make sure that your voices are heard on this important issue. And we have two ways that you can do that. One is by signing a declaration of principles crafted by a coalition of experts assembled at American University. The other, more direct method is by writing to the President himself, using our action alert submission form.

Video bloggers VLOG Brothers posted this entry about SpikeTV, a subsidiary of Viacom, violating musician Jonathan Coulton's Creative Commons License for one of his songs (I've included the video blog below). Briefly, Coulton has released a video of his song Flickr under a Creative Commons license allowing noncommercial use and requiring attribution. SpikeTV grabbed the video and played commercials before it and associated with while playing.

(cross-posted from the American Constitution Society blog)

UPDATE: The deadline for comments passed at 5 p.m. today.

As John noted not too long ago, the new Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator has asked for your opinions on how the various government agencies involved with IP enforcement should go about doing their jobs—what harms of infringement should be addressed, and what changes in policies, regulations, and even the law, need to be made so that we can have a workable and effective national enforcement policy.

We want to make sure that enforcement efforts aren't so broad and indiscriminate that they target fair uses of copyrighted works, or use draconian tactics that will cut off Internet access for those merely accused of infringement. We also want to make sure that changes to enforcement policy and IP law are made in open forums, not in secretive agreements like the proposed Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

If you'd like to send your thoughts to the nation's first "IP enforcement czar," have a look at the request for comments and send in an email. Or, if you like, you can use our action alert form here.