TPP and Intellectual Property

The TPP has been signed but it still has to be ratified by the US Congress, and a whole package of laws needs to be passed to enforce TPP rules in the US. Some public projects that volunteers do for no pay, and for the benefits of the public are Project Gutenberg, which has 50,000+ older titles available in multiple formats (HTML, TXT, Epub, PDF, etc) for free. Google books also has many titles for free but many of them are 1) PDF (which do not rewrap to a different screen size) or 2) OCR'ed PDFs which have not been edited, and the OCR'ed versions contain a lot of errors. Hence the reason for PGDP.

However, Ch 18 of the TPP (Intellectual Property) extends the copyright uniformly for all countries that signed the TPP. In general, the copyright right is extended even longer than current US law, and the TPP copyright is generally held for Dec 31 in the year of the author's death, plus 70 years. There are some exceptions which you can read in the Ch 18 link below under "Links".

Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders is one organization that helps process books in PDF format to readable, rewrappable formats, and will also be affected by the TPP. In both cases, PG and PGDP will have to determine which books on file will have to be removed for a time. This means creating a massive database of author death dates, and any other info that will affect copyright.

They could certainly use your help with finding the deaths of authors, with proof. Here is a thread on PGDP (Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreading) talking about collecting author deaths to make sure the Gutenberg Project complies with TPP when it takes effect in the US.

If you have some spare time please consider helping out PGDP.net.

Links

Ch 18 of TPP in html format, with links to articles within ch 18. No links to chapters outside of ch 18.

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.