“We’ve mentioned a couple of times that now that ACTA is
“complete”, if not yet approved, USTR negotiators have moved on to
what many are calling the son of ACTA in the form of the Trans
Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The USTR has shown what it’s
learned from the ACTA negotiations: which is that it can absolutely
get away with unprecedented levels of secrecy. It has no problem
sharing details with industry representatives, but the public and
consumers who will be most impacted by the intellectual property
rules found in TPP are kept completely away. However, as with ACTA,
there are leaks. KEI has been able to get a leaked version of the
current proposal from the USTR, and as we’d been hearing, it really
is another industry wish-list of stricter anti-consumer
intellectual property rules, that go well beyond current US law.
This is the entertainment industry and the pharma industry trying
to bypass the actual law-making process and using “friends” within
the USTR to get such rules in place via secretive, non-democratic,
treaty making processes. It’s really a sickening display of crony
capitalism and regulatory capture at work. Anyone working in the
USTR should be ashamed of this document.”