It's only semi related, but Michael Geist has been going through the TPP and writing about problematic parts of it for Canada. He is very focused on Canada, but I imagine a similar list could be generated for any non-american country. Below is a link to the latest post, which contains links to the rest at the bottom:
> And we will continue to press our partners to allow digital information to cross borders unimpeded. We are working to preserve a single, global Internet, not a Balkanized Internet defined by barriers that would have the effect of limiting the free flow of information and create new opportunities for censorship.
This is technically correct. It doesn't create new opportunities for censorship. These opportunities always existed.
> The TPP illustrates these shortcomings well. Its free flow of information rules would only be enforced for foreign enterprises, and only those entities based out of countries that have signed the TPP. So if a country were to enact a law banning some type of online content, the TPP's free flow of information rules would do nothing to prevent the enforcement of that censorship against websites or platforms that are locally-owned in that country.
Yes and nothing prevents that already. The TPP doesn't alter the sovereignty equation, it is a trade treaty.
The TPP makes things worse but such weak attacks against statements that are technically correct are largely ineffective.
Posts like these are much more effective as they show legitimate problems that could have been resolved favorably (for the general population) in a trade treaty:
> The TPP doesn't alter the sovereignty equation, it is a trade treaty.
Except that trade treaties become supranational constitutions when enterprises in other countries can use trade courts to enforce treaty clauses over national governments' own legislation and constitutions since they usually surrender their sovereignty to these treaties. These kinds of effects have already been amply documented with regards to the WTO, CAFTA, NAFTA and others. This is political science mainstream. See: Stephen Clarkson, Uncle Sam and Us: Globalization, Neoconservatism, and the Canadian State (2002), among many others.
I can't provide specific evidence for you to sue the US Govt over NAFTA, but your comment
> Commerce has to cross the border for what you are saying to be true.
seems overly broad. I think there are established cases which disprove that. All it has to do is have an impact across the border, not necessarily trade across it.
> This is technically correct. It doesn't create new opportunities for censorship. These opportunities always existed.
I suspect Maira (my colleague) was referring to opportunities for censorship due to the new IP provisions, rather than due to the failings of the free-flow-of-information provisions.
I find the EFF to be so weird sometimes. They do great, essential work on protecting encryption, but then occasionally post outright dumb stuff like this (from the linked post above):
> Its free flow of information rules would only be enforced for foreign enterprises, and only those entities based out of countries that have signed the TPP.
Yes, because it's an international trade agreement.
They're a lobbyist group. Lobbyists on our side, but they still are fighting for one tree in the forest of governing.
Policy is often a trade-off - sacrificing one good for another, and the EFF fights for only a few goods. In this case, I don't feel the EFFs concerns outweigh the benefits of the TPP, though obviously it's a lot bigger than that.
I don't think we can say just because the EFF supports an action, it is something we should do. But they should still fight for their trees to the end, even if we decide not to support it.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2016/03/the-trouble-with-the-tpp-...