Glyn Moody’s analysis of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) draft leaked last week. In particular, he focuses on “elements relevant to TAFTA/TTIP and the digital world.”
He writes that the draft “wants patents for things that don’t actually do anything more than a current invention, but are simply ‘new’ – that is, different in some unimportant way. This would allow so-called ‘ever-greening’ of patents […].”
“The copyright section is one of the most interesting in the leak […]. Surprisingly, it manages to go beyond ACTA in its awfulness. […].”
“TPP would make even the transient copies of works made as they pass over the Internet, or stored in a computer’s RAM, all subject to copyright.”
“[TPP would mean that] people can be sent to prison for copyright infringement, even if there is no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain.” Moreover, some provisions “might catch open source developers if their code is used for making unauthorised copies, for example, even if they were not for financial gain.”
Moody summarises that the leak demonstrates that “we must push to have drafts released immediately. There is no justification for not doing so – they are not ‘secret’, since all parties can see it. The only ones who can’t are the public, in whose name and for whose benefit they are supposedly being negotiated. That’s truly a disgrace.”
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2013/11/ttip-update-v/index.htm