[TechDirt] Where TPP Goes Beyond ACTA — And How It Shows Us The Future Of IP Enforcement

Posted on


ACTA and TPP have much in common. That’s no coincidence, since they are both born of a common desire to move away from multilateral forums like WIPO that are relatively open to scrutiny, to invitation-only groups negotiating behind closed doors. That lack of transparency has allowed all kinds of extreme measures to be proposed without any countervailing arguments being heard about why they are neither fair nor sensible. […]

Under ACTA, a country may give its authorities the power to force an ISP to identify an infringer to rightholders, subject to certain conditions. Under TPP, a country shall establish administrative or judicial procedures for forcing an ISP to identify an infringer to rightholders, without ACTA’s conditions. […]

As these excerpts make clear, TPP effectively tidies up all the lose ends that ACTA left dangling — generally imposing far harsher penalties, adding back patents, and making everything compulsory rather than optional. It also provides us with a clear sense of what ACTA 2.0 will be like unless it is negotiated with real transparency that allows all parties, including civil groups and the general public, to have their voices heard.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120402/09551618327/where-tpp-goes-beyond-acta-how-it-shows-us-future-ip-enforcement.shtml