Trade Agreements are Economy Killers

These New Trade Agreements are Treasonous

EU-US Trade Negotiations Continue Shutting out the Public—When Will They Learn?

Posted on October 5, 2014 Written by Electronic Frontier Foundation

Nego­tia­tors from across the Atlantic met this week in Chevy Chase, Mary­land to con­tinue dis­cussing the terms of the EU-US trade agree­ment, the Transat­lantic Trade and Invest­ment Part­ner­ship (TTIP). This is the sev­enth round of secre­tive meet­ings, and not much is known about the exact issues that are on the nego­ti­at­ing table. How­ever a press release issued today con­firms that “intel­lec­tual prop­erty”  (IP) rights were one of four areas given focus in this round of nego­ti­a­tions. Given how noto­ri­ously cap­tured by cor­po­rate inter­ests IP dis­cus­sions in trade nego­ti­a­tions are, this has us very worried.

The TTIP nego­ti­a­tions have been rife with con­tro­versy. Lead­ers from both regions rightly fear that they will face the same huge oppo­si­tion from the pub­lic as they did with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agree­ment (ACTA) two years ago. Tens of thou­sands of pro­tes­tors across Europe headed to the streets and pres­sured their rep­re­sen­ta­tives to reject ACTA, and suc­ceeded in defeat­ing the agree­ment when the EU voted down its rat­i­fi­ca­tion. EU and US trade offi­cials may have finally real­ized that Inter­net users will not let them get away with includ­ing dra­con­ian copy­right pro­vi­sions in omnibus treaties. But as they try to allay fears and claim that they no longer seek to include such copy­right terms in TTIP, they still have not learned the more impor­tant les­son from ACTA—shutting out the pub­lic from see­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in a given pol­i­cy­mak­ing venue only guar­an­tees that the pub­lic will see those result­ing poli­cies as illegitimate.

Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Beyond Copyright

If copy­right is sup­pos­edly out (though how are we to know, since it’s secret?), what other so-called intel­lec­tual prop­erty rights might be included in TTIP? First, patent law remains on the table. Whilst the EU and the US already have sim­i­lar sub­stan­tive patent laws, our con­cern is that by cement­ing the exist­ing form of these laws in a bind­ing trade agree­ment, much needed sub­stan­tial reforms in this area may become much more difficult.

Sec­ond, as we men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous post, there will almost cer­tainly be new pro­tec­tion of “trade secrets.” Since this is so new, it’s worth spend­ing a bit more time on its ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Trade secrets are dif­fer­ent to either copy­right or patents, in that they only pro­tect infor­ma­tion that is dis­closed in con­fi­dence and kept secret—but they are oth­er­wise broader in what they pro­tect, poten­tially includ­ing any eco­nom­i­cally valu­able infor­ma­tion at all, whether or not it is cre­ative or inventive—and for a poten­tially infi­nite length of time. For example:

• In one recent case, a com­puter secu­rity expert was sued under trade secrets law by Microsoft for sup­ply­ing unre­leased secu­rity patches (“hot­fixes”) for the Win­dows 8 oper­at­ing sys­tem to a tech blogger.
• In another, one online dat­ing ser­vice sued another for $6 mil­lion for allegedly copy­ing its sys­tem for orga­niz­ing speed dat­ing events.
  The scope of any agree­ment in the TTIP on trade secrets laws is unclear, as is how that agree­ment might effect US law. But with­out offer­ing any com­ment on the mer­its of the law­suits men­tioned above, they nev­er­the­less make it obvi­ous how trade secrets law could be mis­used to limit access to secu­rity infor­ma­tion, and to sti­fle tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. Thus the inclu­sion of new pro­vi­sions on trade secrets in the TTIP should alarm us.
  Investor-State (AKA Cor­po­rate Sov­er­eignty) Provisions
  Out­side of intel­lec­tual prop­erty, there are other pro­vi­sions that pose a huge threat to users. One of the most con­tro­ver­sial aspects of TTIP is the investor-state pro­vi­sions. Under investor-state dis­pute set­tle­ment (ISDS), if a reg­u­la­tion gets in the way of a for­eign investor’s abil­ity to profit from their invest­ment, the investor can sue a coun­try for mon­e­tary dam­ages based on both alleged lost prof­its and “expected future prof­its.” Investor-state pro­vi­sions there­fore require the cre­ation of a new court sys­tem, because national courts appar­ently can’t be trusted to admin­is­ter this kind of lawsuit.
  The con­struc­tion of these investor-state courts hardly allow for impar­tial rule­mak­ing. In exist­ing ISDS courts, they are com­prised of three private-sector attor­neys who take turns being judge and/or cor­po­rate advo­cate. Cor­po­rate plain­tiffs in ISDS cases can demand hun­dreds of mil­lions, or even bil­lions of dol­lars in dam­ages against coun­tries. Even a threat of an ISDS case can be enough for nations to strike down what­ever pol­icy a cor­po­ra­tion doesn’t like, because they sim­ply can­not afford to lose and be forced to pay such exor­bi­tant penalties.
  Since these sup­posed lost “invest­ments” can even include intel­lec­tual prop­erty, big media com­pa­nies could use ISDS to under­mine pro-user poli­cies. For exam­ple, even fair use in the United States could be chal­lenged using ISDS. Under the broad pow­ers that this sys­tem affords to cor­po­ra­tions, big media com­pa­nies could use ISDS to claim that some law or court rul­ing that expands fair use in the US poses a threat to their copy­right pro­tec­tion, and there­fore their future prof­its. Or what’s more likely to hap­pen is that they could use the threat of an ISDS law­suit to squash the pro-user pol­icy before it even passes.
  Thank­fully there’s increas­ing resis­tance to omit ISDS pro­vi­sions from trade agree­ments. The Com­pre­hen­sive Eco­nomic and Trade Agree­ment (CETA), is a trade deal between Canada and the EU that was con­cluded recently. Since the text was offi­cially made pub­lic last week the Ger­man Econ­omy Min­is­ter indi­cated that they would reject both CETA and TTIP, as long as it included those pro­vi­sions. Then this Sum­mer, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion held a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on ISDS. Orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als across Europe took part en masse, to tell their rep­re­sen­ta­tives that they did not want pub­lic pol­icy to be dri­ven by cor­po­rate inter­ests. By the clos­ing date they received over 150,000 responses. At the chief nego­tia­tors’ brief­ing this week, the EU Chief Nego­tia­tor stated that the y have frozen dis­cus­sions on ISDS until they could process and ana­lyze all of the responses they received. Hope­fully, they will lis­ten to the public’s con­cerns and remove the toxic, unde­mo­c­ra­tic ISDS pro­vi­sions altogether.
  Free Flow of Information
  Although the EU nego­tia­tors have offered their assur­ance that the TTIP will not seek to har­mo­nize pri­vacy laws across the Atlantic, indi­ca­tions are that the US nego­tia­tors will con­tinue to pro­pose pro­vi­sions that impact on the free flow of data across bor­ders, as part of the agreement’s e-commerce chap­ter. Most likely these may mir­ror those being dis­cussed in the equally secre­tive Trans-Pacific Part­ner­ship, which in turn shares lan­guage with the US–South Korea trade agree­ment. asset_upload_file816_12714.
  A US-based tech trade asso­ci­a­tion, the Inter­net Asso­ci­a­tion, has also sug­gested the inclu­sion of new pro­vi­sions on inter­me­di­ary lia­bil­ity in trade nego­ti­a­tions such as the TTIP. Such pro­vi­sions would seek to export CDA 230 of United States law, which pro­tects Inter­net inter­me­di­aries from lia­bil­ity for the speech of their users, and in turn makes those inter­me­di­aries more likely to be will­ing to host that speech online. This law has played a very impor­tant role in cre­at­ing an enabling envi­ron­ment for cre­ativ­ity and inno­va­tion on the Inter­net in this coun­try, and thereby in other coun­tries which access con­tent on US-based con­tent services.
  But note that CDA 230 was passed by demo­c­ra­t­i­cally elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Con­gress. The exten­sion of this impor­tant Inter­net law into trade agree­ments, per­haps in a stunted or mutated form, by unelected offi­cials who nego­ti­ate behind closed doors, could end up as a bad deal. Which leads into our next and final point.
  Grow­ing Pub­lic Pres­sure for Transparency
  As with all of these trade agree­ments, the fun­da­men­tal issue is trans­parency. The secrecy shroud­ing these deals leads to harm­ful, dra­con­ian dig­i­tal poli­cies. As a result of sus­tained pres­sure from civil soci­ety, the Euro­pean Ombuds­man launched two inves­ti­ga­tions into the Coun­cil of the EU and the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion over the lack of trans­parency in TTIP, and now has called for a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on TTIP’s trans­parency issues.
  The Euro­pean Com­mis­sioner con­ducted a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on ISDS, and the Euro­pean Ombuds­man is now open to receiv­ing com­ments on the TTIP’s trans­parency issues. So what is the US Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive doing to enable pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion? Despite all their claims of being trans­par­ent, they have pretty much made no effort to include pub­lic input into the nego­ti­a­tions. Accord­ing to Knowl­edge Ecol­ogy Inter­na­tional, who attended the TTIP stake­holder engage­ment ses­sions in Mary­land, they were only given 10 min­utes to speak to nego­tia­tors, and at a venue that was not eas­ily acces­si­ble to the pub­lic. So much for engag­ing with negotiators.
  As long as these omnibus treaties lock out the pub­lic from nego­ti­a­tions, we stand opposed to any terms that will impact users’ rights. It is impos­si­ble to cre­ate laws that respect com­mon, pub­lic inter­ests as long as cor­po­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tives and trade bureau­crats are the only ones who are able to see and craft their pro­vi­sions. It’s a won­der that EU and US trade rep­re­sen­ta­tives have not yet learned their les­son from ACTA. When they shut out the pub­lic and con­tinue to resist even min­i­mum require­ments for demo­c­ra­tic legit­i­macy, then the pub­lic has every right to reject such pol­icy instru­ments outright.

Related Posts

• Cap and Trade manip­u­la­tion leads to WCI Inc.
• Trans-Pacific Part­ner­ship, Agenda 21 and Redis­tri­b­u­tion of Wealth via EO and Cap & Trade
• The Next Phase of North Amer­i­can Inte­gra­tion. NAFTA to be Swal­lowed up by the Trans-Pacific
  Source: http://agenda21news.com/2014/10/eu-us-trade-negotiations-continue-shutting-public-will-learn/#more-2887
  Comments
  NAFTA and WTO actions have resulted in off-shoring U.S. jobs.  We can expect more of the same with the raft of trade agreements currently being secretly planned.  Our global corporations favor a one-world communist government.  They have taken over our political parties and candidates and are busy attempting to destroy our property rights.
  Governments in past decades have been careful to protect their jobs, but that changed in 1993 with NAFTA.  “Free Trade” sounded good, but when coupled with excessive immigration, it resulted in the decline of the U.S. economy.  Further globalist trade agreements will make this worse.
  Third-world, one-party dictatorships and other communist countries have discovered that they could attract U.S. manufacturers to set up shop in their countries at much lower costs, so our manufacturing jobs are there. 
  At the same time, the U.S. federal government is attempting to impose regulations that will further increase U.S. energy costs to ensure that our manufacturing jobs will never return.  The economic fundamentals make this a long-term problem.
  In past decades, third-world and communist countries were unattractive to U.S. corporations because of civil wars, cartel violence and property confiscation by rogue governments.
  Apparently, these problems are being handled to the satisfaction of our global corporations.  They are not moving out of Juarez, where the cartels and terrorists are in charge. 
  It’s important now to let Congress know that we voters believe that any support on their part of these treaties will be considered by voters to be a treasonous act.
  Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader