Stop the TPP Secrecy

While it is going to be a slow day and perhaps week for reviews here, I do want to give a shout out to an ongoing effort regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a highly secretive free trade deal that it looks like President Obama and other world leaders will try to ram through with almost no public debate or transparency. They've even tried to hide the ball from members of Congress. This is almost certainly because, outside of small cadres of neo-liberal and wealthy elites, such free trade deals tend not to be very popular these days as ultimately many of the promises made regarding past deals turn out to be lies.

Nonetheless, no matter how you feel about free trade deals or even the suspected Trans-Pacific Partnership terms themselves, I encourage you to go to Stop the Secrecy and add your name to a petition to demand that our political leaders recognize this is supposed to be a democratic republic and that the deal must be fully debated in public. The Stop the Secrecy effort is being supported by dozens of public interest organizations. Whichever side you fall on, secrecy over this or any other such deal is indefensible. Fair trade treaties that will affect every American should be transparent and subject to vigorous debate.

In addition to issues that affect all Americans, this pact is particularly critical for film-lovers, filmmakers, and every last user of the Internet, based on the little information that has actually leaked via Wikileaks (sorry, Captain America, but when Americans are only getting information that affects their livelihood from Julian Assange, he doesn't sound like the one working for Hydra). That's why I felt it was important to say something here.

The deal may have serious effects on copyright law and the Internet. The good old MPAA has been a major figure behind the scenes in pushing this deal, and in a classic bit of revolving door politics the MPAA just hired the guy that was negotiating the intellectual property provisions of the TPP. You may recall some controversy over something called SOPA a couple years back. Outrage over that and a major backlash from Internet companies pushed politicians to table that legislation. Now there are strong rumors that SOPA is being incorporated into the TPP via the backdoor. Such provisions, at a minimum, need to be debated openly.

You can learn more about some of these issues from Our Fair Deal and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Again, I urge you to and hope you will add your name to Stop the Secrecy.