For those only interested in some of the potential effects in America, this treaty would violate
First sale doctrine.
For those who don't want to read the whole article.
The first-sale doctrine is a limitation on copyright that was recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1908 (see Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus) and subsequently codified in the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 109. The doctrine allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e., sell, lend or give away) a particular lawfully made copy of the copyrighted work without permission once it has been obtained. This means that the copyright holder's rights to control the change of ownership of a particular copy ends once ownership of that copy has passed to someone else, as long as the copy itself is not an infringing copy. This doctrine is also referred to as the "right of first sale," "first sale rule," or "exhaustion rule."
Here is the potential aftermath from the removal of first sale from copyrighted goods.
In 2009, in Pearson Education, Inc. v. Ganghua Liu,[8] the District Court in the Southern District of New York ruled that the first sale copyright doctrine does not apply to products that are lawfully manufactured abroad and then imported and sold in the U.S without authority from the copyright holder. The court reached this conclusion reluctantly, saying that it found nothing in the copyright statute that limits the doctrine to copies manufactured in the U.S., but it relied upon dicta in the 1998 Supreme Court opinion in Quality King Distribs., Inc. v. L’anza Research Int’l, Inc. (discussed above) to reach its conclusion. That case is currently before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, on petition for leave to appeal, a decision on which has been deferred pending a ruling in a similar case. The argument that § 109(a) does not apply to copies made abroad is often approached as a means for a copyright owner to seek to prevent the "gray market" importation of copyrighted goods made abroad without finding the first sale doctrine to be an obstacle, and thereby enabling the copyright owner to engage in geographic price discrimination without fear that copies it sells more cheaply abroad will find their way back into the United States and undermine the higher prices they seek to extract from U.S. consumers. While this theory has some appeal in economic circles, the implications of such an interpretation are much broader, as it would mean that any object (perfume, an automobile, a cell phone, a home appliance) bearing a copyrighted label or containing copyrighted computer code, where the label or code was made into a copy while outside of the United States, could not be lent, sold or given away without the permission of the owner of the copyright in that work[citation needed]. Given that modern technology allows literally thousands of discrete copyrighted works to embody the same tangible medium, just one copyright holder in a work that was reproduced onto the object, while outside of the United States, would effectively give the copyright owner power over the object[citation needed]. For example, if a new cell phone was made in China, where it was pre-loaded with a number of copyrighted computer programs, the owner of the copyright in each program could sue anyone who let someone else borrow their phone. Even where everything was initially made in the United States, if a student downloaded a "patch" or upgrade to a computer program while temporarily abroad would be committing copyright infringement by lending the computer to someone else upon returning to the United States
You all know the shooting war LG and Sony got themselves into? I bolded that part for a reason. This will kill trade as anything of significant value or use these days has copyright or patents. A patent troll on the lowest level demand to be paid for something without merit because they managed to slip something through the over worked and broken patent office.
Legal departments would explode in size as companies from the most mega to the smallest would be forced to gain approval from each and every copyright owner or else it can't be imported in fear that somebody with an obscure claim could ban a product.
Companies engaged in patent wars would find themselves in the trade equivalent of nuclear war where even the smallest guy could be packing a nuclear suit case.
For those who didn't read the original article.
It would require criminal enforcement for certain cases of circumventing DRM even when there's no copyright infringement, going beyond existing treaties even when there's no copyright infringement. There are some exceptions, but rather than allow countries to determine their own exceptions, it defines the exceptions and actually says countries cannot go beyond those.
If you have a freeloader disc, a switch at the back of your Gamecube that allows you to switch regions, ever use VLC or another program to watch a DVD from another region, transcoded a movie or episode for your ipod, you fall under this and are potentially a criminal.
Here is the original
article that the opening post sources from. It is a lot more dry and the commentary is at the end. At the end there is a
link to the original leak in PDF form. It's a lot of it is unreadable due to the brutal amount of complexity that is international legal language, but the summary is accurate. This is bad for anyone, companies and especially people who need to import generics to live due to cost.
Pharma-favored provisions included in many recent U.S. trade deals extend drug company monopolies and keep prices high. But price-lowering generic competition is essential to advancing global access to medicines. For example, over the past 10 years, generic competition has played a key role in reducing the costs of first-line HIV/AIDS medicines by 99 percent, enabling 5.2 million people worldwide to access lifesaving treatment.
New Zealand has manned up against this in a
leak.
The leaked New Zealand paper states the parties “should be cautious about moving beyond TRIPS [Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights] standards under [the] TPP,” noting “there is a tendency towards overprotection of IP in all our societies, particularly in the areas of copyright and patents.” New Zealand proposes an alternative “TRIPS-aligned” structure, focusing on operational coherence and enforcement, and capacity building in developing countries.
I would vote for John Key if he came out and out by giving the middle finger to the US industrial lobby over this, even after that embarrassing
capitulation clarification over the hobbits movie.
If this passes TJ, I hope you never, ever catch an illness that could be cured or controlled by generics because there will be no fucking way you are rich enough to live.
Topic: TPP: 'Son of ACTA' IP disaster in the making (Read 7623 times)
