After contributing money to Obama's campaign and voting for him twice, this is annoying.
At the risk of boring the few dozen family and friends I am closest with, I have been SPAMing them with emails about TPP and links to complain to their Congress-critters.
I'm being serious when I ask this: how did you not see stuff like this coming? Especially the second time around?
I mean no offense by this, but I may never understand how so many intelligent, thoughtful people managed to become so fully convinced of such a naive narrative.
Wouldn't this be one of those things poked through by either side? We have the same TPP secrecy and issues with copyright in Australia under a conservative government. I'd expect the situation to be largely similar whichever of the major parties were in power.
Oh, yes, absolutely. I don't believe for a second that had 2008 or 2012 turned out differently, commercial forces would have any less influence on those who write the laws, ratify the laws, or he who signs them. It's the nature of the beast.
But that isn't what I was getting at.
There was this mass euphoria surrounding one candidate, in which his supporters seemed to believe–despite all evidence to the contrary–that their candidate would somehow represent a kind of messianic deliverance from the status quo–at long last!–as if he would somehow be magically exempt from the forces that created the status quo in the first place.
I understand how people could bring themselves to believe such a thing once, but how they largely came back for more in the reelection, and are now shocked–shocked!–to discover there is gambling going on in this establishment, is beyond me.
Registering disappointment this late in the game says more about the voter than it does the politician, frankly.
I just want to understand how people who aren't lacking in intelligence came to, for lack of a better term, fall for it. The thinking of lot of highly rational people became more emotionally-driven than I've ever seen.
I think it's definitely true that the vast majority of people (even intelligent) don't realise how little influence they truly have. And that naiveté is present in the GP.
But, fall for what really? This was the best chance at hope-and-change amidst the reality of 'commercial forces', twice. As another respondent said, the alternatives were clearly worse.
I'd rather have a hopeful-of-change person in charge constrained by "the beast" than a status quo option also constrained by the beast. At least the former can apply some pressure via public support.
Even those that realise the beast is largely in control of proceedings had to reach that at some point; I didn't realise the extent of it until I was 35.
Please forgive me if this sounds rude, but did you read my comment before replying to it?
First paragraph: "I don't believe for a second that had 2008 or 2012 turned out differently, commercial forces would have any less influence on those who write the laws, ratify the laws, or he who signs them. It's the nature of the beast."
Anyway, there was virtually no lesser-of-two-evils narrative in '08 or '12 from the American left, or at least as little as there's ever been in recent history. From either side, really.
I'm not too worried about rudeness given your obviously trollish temporary username, but yes, I did read your comment.
I was only trying to suggest that there was something more pragmatic than wide-eyed naiveté at work when people voted for Obama the second time. There were plenty of Democrats who were tired of Obama and were ready to jump ship if only the Republicans had met them halfway and presented a candidate who wasn't contemptible.
"virtually no lesser-of-two-evils narrative in '08 or '12 from the American left"
Maybe not at rallies, but if you read lefty commentary or conversation sites it was nothing but lesser-of-two-evils in '08 and '12. Likewise on the right. Thoughtful people always know the score and Obama has been as hopey and changey as anyone could reasonably hope for -- specifically, he has been a little better than the one before him.
Claiming Obama is only a little better than Bush is a little silly.
We have obamacare; for all it's flaws, we've both massively reduced the number of uninsured in the United States and slowed the growth of health costs. It's a huge win, and while I would have loved single payer -- hmos and all health insurers are nothing but parasites -- the fact is he didn't have the votes in the Senate and Obama did as well as possible. I'm pretty confident that in the 20 year timeframe we'll have something pretty close to single payer, whether it's true single payer or strong caps on how much resources insurers can suck. Obamacare is also a massive gift to anyone who would like to start a company, both for the original founders and for early employees.
We have many fewer troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While I wish Obama were much better, those are two big differences from Bush.
But Obama has always been broadly in favor of more trade - he was never one of those candidates promising to dismantle NAFTA or use protectionist tariffs. Much as he always made it clear that he was no peacenik and would deploy US military power where he felt it would advance US interests.
I'm not saying you should like or agree with these policies, but I can't sympathize with your expressions of surprise. I'm hawkish enough (as a classical economic liberal or 'neoliberal' if you like) that I broadly support the policies mentioned above, and it was part of why I decided I'd prefer to see him in the job back in 2007.
It's about raising trade barriers together to protect incumbent industries at the cost of consumers and competition. They want to lengthen copyright, invade privacy, regulate internet services while empowering gatekeepers, strengthen licensing and reporting and taxation demands on small business, expand and unify patent regimes, and the like.
Canada, Mexico, China, Australia, and Japan are already reciprocal Most Favored Nation trading partners. We're not going to be getting any more access to their markets. They're not going to be selling us anything new, either.
The contents of the deal are still an official secret, but we've had leaks. It looks like the worst kind of big cartel, Disney, telecom monopoly, NSA, surveillance state, patent troll plan to terrorize consumers and innovating businesses. In fact, it's probably exactly what you might expect powerful insiders to negotiate in secret at the expense of the public.
Awesome, we need all the help we can get to make more people aware about this since the mainstream media isn't covering it all. If only John Oliver did a take on this for us... :]
- author of this blog post
Big corporations are pulling strings in the background, to annul democratic control. With bigger institutions (e.g. Washington, Brussels, ...) it becomes simpler and simpler to find people that are far enough from the voters and corrupted enough to support such endeavors. The result are secret proceedings and parliaments that become pressed to vote for big legislation where the effects for democracy and nations can not be foreseen.
In effect, those lobbies have their way (at least oftentimes in the last decades) and destroy democratic control and control of the big corporations. So it comes, that big corporations have a "free hand" to do what they want but are liable for nearly nothing.
The worst thing about this is, that when one "advance" is rejected by democracy -- no trouble, just give it a different name, make it a little different and give it an other 3 or 4 letters acronym ... and bring it back next year!
1. I'm not aware at any especial effort of secrecy about the TPP. It's normal to negotiate treaties behind closed doors; the time for public debate is when they come up for ratification in the Senate, which is in accordance with the Constitutional design.
2. This has little or no effect on US copyright law, but seeks to promote that standard elsewhere: * What they want is the most restrictive interpretation of U.S. policy to become the international "norm" by which all other TPP countries will be forced to conform their national laws.*
3. All TPP negotiating coutnries are already signatories to the EBrene convention and in principle are alsready signed up to these terms as fr as foreign works are concerned.
4. The US copyright regime got to be the way it is largely as a response to changes in European law (specifically the Sonny Bono copyright act extending it to life + 70).
I'm heartily in favor of copyright reform but until such time as it takes place it's entirely understandable that international trade negotiations would be based on the law as it currently stands rather than some hypothetical future version. Furthermore, the TPP copyright rules as discussed are basically just an affirmation of the existing copyright regime rather than some drastic change. The normal thing in any kind of trade deal is for the parties to try to get theri commercial marketplace rules onto the same page so that they can minimize the legal barriers to selling goods in each others markets.
What's your take on TPP's proposed criminal enforcement provisions which would criminalize noncommercial activities such as fanzines, even when rightsholders have no complaint?
OVerblown, when was the last time you heard of anything like that inside the US? Of course there's no way to make definitive statements unless and until an official draft is presented to the Senate for ratification, but the reality is that authorities are much more interested in going after obvious knockoffs of commercial property (fake DVDs, t-shirts or whatever) than obviously fan-driven projects that do not represent themselves as 'the real thing'.
If anything, the trend in US courts is towards expanding the boundaries of fair use. I think you might be interested in this recent case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cariou_v._Prince
All the articles are based on leaked drafts and interpretations by local lawmakers who are not allowed to take notes, e.g. TTIP (similar to TPP) lawmakers in the EU are allowed to read the drafts but not to leave with copies. The leaks have been consistently reported by multiple countries who are at the negotiating table.
If the concern is overblown, why has the US offered to delay enforcement of non-commercial criminalization laws until current governments are out of office? Are existing US laws not sufficient to prosecute commercial violations?
Under TPP, trends and views in U.S. courts may be less important than an ISDS arbitration panel which would rule on any multi-country conflict between a country and a corporate investor. Under current law, a country can tell a corporation e.g. that "guesses don't make valid patents", e.g. http://t.thestar.com/#/article/business/2015/02/11/canadian-... .
There are already $30B of corporate ISDS claims against EU nations, http://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/open-enterprise/ttip-up... , and that is before the expansion of scope that will come with TPP and TTIP, which will reportedly require that countries (including the US) submit to non-public arbitration.
Criminal enforcement proceedings take place in courts, by definition. Now you've switched to arguing about ISDS claims, a completely different subject. I'm not here to sell you the TPP; I've given my opinion and a good faith answer to your initial question, I have better things to do than follow a moving set of goalposts around.
Based on the limited available information, my understanding is that ISDS claims are arbitrated by an extra-national panel, then they become law in the affected country, then the country's courts are bound to enforce the ruling. So the question of "what is normal in US courts" seems inseparable from ISDS and any other extra-national trappings of TPP/TTIP.
Thanks for your original answer. I agree completely that the reported proposals seem absurd and inconsistent with precedent. Yet, the reports of leaked documents have been consistent in their absurdity, for more than a year. The push for fast-track does not inspire confidence that such a complex agreement will receive sufficient due diligence and public review by affected stakeholders, before being subjected to an all-or-nothing vote.
Video entertainment is inherently time-wasting, so for the majority of content that argument doesn't have legs.
For someone technical, there's little "futzing" - one time setup, and ongoing maintenance will take less time than when "cable company 2.0" is (down, showing advertisement, changing selection).
I do agree that piracy UI needs to be a lot better so that anybody can setup something that just works with a minimum of effort. But none of these pragmatic considerations invalidate my original point, which is that those who give money to the old style media companies are directly funding this corruption.
Projects like PopcornTime are just as easy to use, if not easier to use than Netflix/Amazon. It doesn't require a credit card, and has no region/platform restrictions.
At the risk of boring the few dozen family and friends I am closest with, I have been SPAMing them with emails about TPP and links to complain to their Congress-critters.