TPP signed on Feb 3, 2016

On Feb 3, 2016 the TPP was signed by the 12 countries involved in it. Now the US congress has to pass a package of laws to implement the changes. I don't think this is a conspiracy, because a broken democracy, and corporate greed, I don't think are conspiracies.

Here's what the Electronic Frontier Foundation has to say about the TPP.

The twelve nations that negotiated the TPP are the U.S., Japan, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, and Brunei Darussalam.

The IP chapter would have extensive negative ramifications for users’ freedom of expression, right to privacy and due process, as well as hindering peoples' abilities to innovate. Other chapters of the agreement encourage your personal data to be sent borders with limited protection for your privacy, and allow foreign corporations to sue countries for laws or regulations that promote the public interest.

The entire process has shut out multi-stakeholder participation and is shrouded in secrecy.

Create copyright terms well beyond the internationally agreed period in the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The TPP could extend copyright term protections from life of the author + 50 years, to Life + 70 years for works created by individuals, and 70 years after publication or after creation for corporate owned works (such as Mickey Mouse). (In most cases, the copyright extends to the end of the year the copyright holder, or author, dies, plus 70 years. While this simplifies the current US law, it also takes some items OUT of the public domain for projects like Gutenberg.)

The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is putting fair use at risk with restrictive language in the TPP's IP chapter. Companies that adopt more user-friendly rules could also risk lawsuits by content industry investors who believe these rules limit their profits.

There is a copy of the Ch 18, Intellectual Property in html here. Ch 18 would print out at about 74 pages alone.


Links

I had a lot of trouble getting the version of the TPP that was actually signed. I live in the US and I had to get a copy from the New Zealand gov't.

1. 2013 TPP from Wikileaks. Older version linked for posterity or research. 
2. KEI online article from Nov 2015. Summarizes some of the problems, like an interpretation that would ban open source software. 
3. A summary from Reddit. 
4. A series of PDFs from the New Zealand gov't.
5. From the US Trade Office. Also a series of PDFs. 
6. TPPInfo.org. This might be the official TPP site. Brought to you by Public Knowledge.

If you know of html versions with links to chapters and subchapters please comment.