The United States and ten governments from around the Pacific are meeting yet again to hash out the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) on May 15-24 in Lima, Peru. The TPP is one of the worst global threats to the Internet since ACTA. Since the negotiations have been secretive from the beginning, we mainly know what's in the current version of this trade agreement because of a leaked draft [PDF] from February 2011. Based upon that text, some other leaked notes, and the undemocratic nature of the entire process, we have every reason to be alarmed about the copyright enforcement provisions contained in this multinational trade deal.
The TPP is likely to export some of the worst features of U.S. copyright law to Pacific Rim countries: a broad ban on breaking digital locks on devices and creative works (even for legal purposes), a minimum copyright term of the lifetime of the creator plus seventy years (the current international norm is the lifetime plus fifty years), privatization of enforcement for copyright infringement, ruinous statutory damages with no proof of actual harm, and government seizures of computers and equipment involved in alleged infringement. Moreover, the TPP is worst than U.S. copyright rules: it does not export the many balances and exceptions that favor the public interest and act as safety valves in limiting rightsholders? protection. Adding insult to injury, the TPP's temporary copies provision will likely create chilling effects on how people and companies behave online and their basic ability to use and create on the Web.
The stated goal of the TPP is to unite the Pacific Rim countries by harmonizing tariffs and trade rules between them, but in reality, it's much more than that. The "intellectual property" chapter in this massive trade agreement will likely force changes to copyright and patent rules in each of the signatory countries. Accepting these new rules will not just re-write national laws, but will also restrict the possibility for countries to introduce more balanced copyright laws in the future. This strategy may end up harming other countries' more proportionate laws such as Chile, where a judicial order is required for ISPs to be held liable for copyright infringement and take down content. Such systems better protect users and intermediaries from disproportionate or censorship-driven takedowns. If the final TPP text forces countries to adopt a privatize notice and takedown regime, this could imply the end of the Chilean system. It would also undermine canada's notice-notice regime.
The content industry can and will continue to buy and lie to get their way to get laws that protects their interests, and what they want more than anything is for us to remain passively ignorant. They did it with SOPA, ACTA, and now it's TPP [ESP]. It's going to be a challenge to defeat these policies, but we can do it. The TPP is slated for conclusion this October, but our goal is to get the worst of these copyright provisions out of it. The way to fight back is to show that we will not put up with this: to demand an open transparent process that allows everyone, including experts from civil society members, to analyze, question, and probe any initiatives to regulate the Internet. The secrecy must be stopped once and for all.
Take action! (Not in the US? Go here.)
Below is our infographic highlighting the most problematic aspects of TPP. Please spread the word about how this agreement will impact you and your country. Right-click and save the image for the PNG file, or you can download the PDF version below. Remix it, build upon it, and get the word out. Let's protect and defend the Internet from this secret trade deal.
Reproduced with kind permission from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/tpp-the-biggest-global-threat-to-the-internet-since-ac-485634819
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It’s hard to gauge how popular Apple’s iCloud really is, but the idea behind it is solid: give developers a place to save their users’ data, give users control over this data and allow developers to focus on their apps and not storage. NimbusBase, which is launching at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 today, had built exactly that, with the ingenious twist that the data is stored in the cloud of the users’ choosing. Currently, NimbusBase supports Dropbox and Google Drive, with SkyDrive and other providers expected to launch in the near future. NimbusBase’s New York-based founders Ray Wang (CTO) and Alex Volodarsky (COO) told me that developers currently have three choices. They can use iCloud, but that’s limited to iOS; they can build their own storage infrastructure and then pay for server space; or they can use specialized backend services, but those tend to charge a premium for storage. With NimbusBase, developers can easily integrate the same features they would get from those tools into their own apps, but without any of the hassle because the cloud storage providers handle all of the storage infrastructure for developers and users. To get started, developers only need to add a few lines of code to their apps and NimbusBase handles the rest. For now, NimbusBase only works for web apps, but the team plans to release its Android and iOS integrations soon. Services like Dropbox, of course, aren’t designed to be storage backends for apps, which typically use databases to store their users’ data. NimbusBase gets around this by first storing the data in a local SQLite database (or in a local file) and then slicing the data up into small files that get synced with the user’s storage service. In addition to storage, these cloud storage providers also function as the de-facto user accounts for the apps – just sign in with your DropBox or SkyDrive account – so developers don’t have to worry about that, either. For users, this also means they remain in full control over their data. Don’t like the app anymore? Just wipe out the directory in your Dropbox account and you’re done. You can try NimbusBase’s demo app to see how this works in practice. To make sure that Dropbox and Google wouldn’t have any issues with how NimbusBase uses their services, the team talked to both of these companies to explain its service and got
