The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA or TPP) is an international trade agreement being negotiated among contries of the Pacific Rim such as Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, U.S, and Vietnam. The agreement will encompass more aspects of trade like agriculture and textiles, so it is possible that the intellectual property chapter will get lost among high-priority concerns and will receive heavy industry pressure.

Public Knowledge's Position

Public Knowledge urges the USTR to recognize that an IP chapter in a truly “21st century trade agreement” should reflect the rights and interests of the wide variety of stakeholders affected by copyright.

Every year, the US Trade Representative (USTR) prepares a Special 301 Report that cites specific countries for insufficient enforcement of intellectual property and inadequate IP laws. Over the years, these reports have turned into an annual exercise of naming countries whose domestic IP policies do not meet the unrealistic expectations of IP rights holders.

Public Knowledge’s Position

Typically, the Report places blind reliance on rights holder assertions; it ignores the need for balanced copyright; it cites countries based on vague criteria; and it pressures countries to sign international agreements that don’t currently bind them and that these countries possibly consider detrimental to their national interest.

Public Knowledge calls for transparency and accountability in the process, as well as a more balanced perspective on copyright in the Report. 

US copyright law is a set of relationships, a system to reward creators on their work while simultaneously allowing others to comment and criticize their work. This principle, that users like libraries, educators, artists, documentarians, and journalists, also have rights in the copyright system, is recognized in other countries as well.

Public Knowledge's Position

There is a danger in international forums for disproportionate escalation of rights because there is a often lack of transparency, the negotiations are obscure, and the debates are easily disregarded as "far away". When seeking policy changes that would otherwise be unpopular domestically, big industry players often turn to international forums. Furthermore, once harmful provisions are codified in international rules, they are harder to change domestically.

Yesterday, a draft of the U.S. proposal for an intellectual property (IP) chapter of the transpacific partnership agreement (TPPA) leaked on the Internet. The U.S. proposal calls for IP protections and enforcement obligations more extensive than those called for in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) or the most recent U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) – the Korea U.S. (KORUS) FTA.

Here are the highlights of the U.S. proposal:

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.

The United States Trade Representative (USTR) plan to publish a separate list of  “notorious markets” as part of its report on intellectual property emphasizes the agency's transformation from a trade agency into a law enforcement agency, Public Knowledge (PK) said in comments to USTR filed Thursday (Nov. 5).

“The USTR should stop its transformation into a law enforcement agency,” PK said, adding that “at a minimum” the agency should “acknowledge its new enforcement agenda, and improve its process to respect legal norms.”

A full copy of the comments is here.

In its filing, PK said that USTR is trying to “have it both ways,” by claiming that the “notorious markets” list is not a finding of a violation of law, yet at the same time encouraging local authorities to increase their efforts to combat “piracy.”

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.

Government agencies involved in trade negotiations should open their private-sector advisory committees to include public representatives, Public Knowledge (PK) said May 25 in a filing with the U.S. Trade Representative and the Department of Commerce.

A copy of the filing is here.

(cross-posted from the American Constitution Society blog)

We've posted about the US Trade Representative's Special 301 process before. For a quick refresher, here's Harold's video explaining the process generally, and Rashmi's post with some more detail.

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) is heavily involved in the Special 301 process, filing submissions every year on behalf of its member organizations, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It's only natural that these trade associations would be concerned with intellectual property laws and their enforcement around the globe, since copyright is where their members make their livings. It's less understandable, though, when they seem to argue that their exclusive economic rights should have priority over others' basic human rights.