With every coming round of negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a trade agreement that carries intellectual property provisions that could have hugely harmful consequences for the Internet and our digital rights—the Office of the US Trade Representative has continually whittled away at any remaining opportunity for the public to have input into the drafting process. The TPP has been under negotiation for three years and the opaqueness has only worsened.
EFF has therefore joined a diverse coalition of civil society organizations and public stakeholders to send a letter to Barbara Weisel, the lead US trade negotiator for the TPP, to clearly outline our baseline demands for transparency and increased civil society engagement in these secretive backdoor meetings.
Our demands include that the schedule of the meetings be published well in advance to allow ample time for civil society representatives to organize travel and accomodations near the negotiation venue; that we be granted access to the venue itself (which we were denied in the last round in Auckland, New Zealand); and that a requirement be made to hold stakeholder presentations and tabling events at a time when official negotiations are not in session. These "stakeholder" events are meant to be brief opportunities for us to engage directly with the trade delegates over our concerns about the agreement, but their sparse attendance can be partially attributed to the fact that they have been scheduled concurrently with other official meetings or held on delegates' single day off.
In addition to these proposals, we strongly reiterate
that the drafts of the TPP text and US trade objectives be made public.
Under the trade advisory system, more than 600 official advisors, mainly
representing business interests, have direct access to the US proposals
by signing a non-disclosure agreement. This continues to enable
unbalanced, corporate influence over the terms of the TPP. As civil
society, we need to be able to know what is going on in these secretive
negotiations to ensure that they do not lead to binding international
rules that violate our digital rights. You can read the entirety of the
letter here.
If you live in the United States, join EFF and more
than 27,000 people in sending a message to Congress members to bring
transparency to these negotiations once and for all:
Recent DeepLinks Posts
-
Feb 5, 2013
-
Feb 5, 2013
-
Feb 5, 2013
-
Feb 4, 2013
-
Feb 4, 2013
Deeplinks Topics
- Analog Hole
- Anonymity
- Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
- Biometrics
- Bloggers Under Fire
- Bloggers' Rights
- Broadcast Flag
- Broadcast Flag
- Broadcasting Treaty
- CALEA
- Cell Tracking
- Coders' Rights Project
- Computer Fraud And Abuse Act Reform
- Content Blocking
- Copyright Trolls
- Council of Europe
- Cyber Security Legislation | CISPA, SECURE IT, Cybersecurity Act
- CyberSLAPP
- Development Agenda
- Digital Books
- Digital Radio
- Digital Video
- DMCA
- DMCA Rulemaking
- Do Not Track
- DRM
- E-Voting Rights
- EFF Europe
- EFF Software Projects
- Encrypting the Web
- Export Controls
- FAQs for Lodsys Targets
- File Sharing
- Free Speech
- FTAA
- Hollywood v. DVD
- How Patents Hinder Innovation (Graphic)
- Innovation
- Intellectual Property
- International
- International Privacy Standards
- Internet Governance Forum
- Locational Privacy
- Mandatory Data Retention
- Mandatory National IDs and Biometric Databases
- Mass Surveillance Technologies
- National Security Letters
- Net Neutrality
- No Downtime for Free Speech
- NSA Spying
- OECD
- Online Behavioral Tracking
- Open Wireless
- Patent Busting Project
- Patent Trolls
- Patents
- PATRIOT Act
- Pen Trap
- Policy Analysis
- Printers
- Privacy
- Reading Accessibility
- Real ID
- RFID
- Search Engines
- Search Incident to Arrest
- Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
- Security
- Social Networks
- SOPA/PIPA: Internet Blacklist Legislation
- State Surveillance & Human Rights
- State-Sponsored Malware
- Surveillance Drones
- Terms Of (Ab)Use
- Test Your ISP
- The Global Network Initiative
- Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement
- Transparency
- Travel Screening
- Trusted Computing
- Uncategorized
- Video Games
- Wikileaks
- WIPO
This video below was videoed at The Awareness Party meeting --http://www.theawarenessparty.com/?page_id=2764
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is a "free trade" currently under negotiation between NZ and 8 other countries, including the U.S. The countries want to complete negotiation by the end of 2011.
Trade is only a minor part of the agreement. That's just a clever branding exercise. A TPPA would be an agreement that guarantees special rights to foreign investors. If these negotiations succeed they will create a mega-treaty across 9 countries that will put a straight jacket around what policies and laws our governments can adopt for the next century -- think GM labelling, foreign investment laws, price of medicines, regulating dodgy finance firms, NZ content on TV ...To find out more go to http://tppwatch.org/what-is-tppa/
The TPPA is one the biggest political issues facing New Zealand, but one of the least publicised and least understood. Please take the time to watch this video, and learn more at http://www.itsourfuture.org.nz.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/itsourfutureNZ
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ItsOurFutureNZ
No comments:
Post a Comment