via Alissa Kokkins
WikiLeaks Releases Draft Chapter For Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) On Intellectual Property
By Sophie Song
on November 13 2013 9:14 AM
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett
WikiLeaks released a draft chapter of a secret international trade agreement that could create tougher laws on digital copyrights and freedom of speech. The 95-page chapter, part of a broader agreement between the Trans-Pacific Partnership member countries, outlines intellectual property (IP) rights relating to medicine, publishing, Internet, patents and civil liberties for the TPP member states, which represent more than 40 percent of the global economy.
The 30,000-word IP chapter released by WikiLeaks on Wednesday lays out provisions for instituting a transnational legal and enforcement regime aimed at modifying or replacing existing national laws, including subsections relating to patents, copyright and trademarks, with potentially far-reaching impacts on countries and individuals alike.
“If instituted, the TPP’s IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons,” said WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange, in the accompanying press release. “If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you’re ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.”
The section entitled “Enforcement” outlines new policy measures, including a proposal for supranational litigation tribunals to which national courts are expected to defer but which have no human rights safeguards, the press release said. The chapter states that these courts can conduct hearings with secret evidence, and replicates many of the surveillance and enforcement provisions from the shelved SOPA and ACTA treaties.
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