TPP leak: US babies following bathwater down the drain

America is pushing too hard on too many fronts in the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty negotiations, making it unlikely the treaty will be finalised this year, according to a new round of leaked documents from the recent Salt Lake City meetings. The latest leaks, posted at Wikileaks, reveal how deeply unpopular some of America …

[Thorne]

Good on Australia

For siding with the Americans in selling us all out to the multinational companies........

Maybe they'll toss the good little lap dog a bone

[Big-nosed Pengie]

Re: Good on Australia

They used to call it treason.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Good on Australia

...and then you got shipped to Australia.

[Andrew Moore]

Re: Good on Australia

ERROR: RECURSION

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good on Australia

Aus was always considered as the 52nd state of the US when I was there in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

[DiViDeD]

Re: Good on Australia

"Aus was always considered as the 52nd state of the US"

Don't know how the merkins think of us these days, but it's a continuous source of bitter disappointment to me just how many Australians seem to thin we're part of the US, from the 'I don't give a stuff about my local MP - I'm voting in the president^W prime minister' to the fact that younger Australians are tending to speak in the most outrageous parodies of merkin accents.

Add to that the radio 'shock jocks' (Alan Jones, I'm looking at YOU) who seem to believe that the only solution to any issue lies in following right wing US republican politics (although Jones' combination of 'traditional fambly values' and trolling public toilets looking for random gay sex do provide a modicum of entertainment)

[Alan Brown]

Re: Good on Australia

with britain being the 51st?

[John Smith 19]

Re: Good on Australia

"For siding with the Americans in selling us all out to the multinational companies........

Maybe they'll toss the good little lap dog a bone"

Why bother?

You don't bribe those you have already bought.

[Number6]

Definition

Negotiations (US-style): Reasonable discussion on the subject at hand followed by complete agreement with whatever I said in the first place.

(With apologies to Sir Winston Churchill, I believe he came up with something like that)

[Charles Manning]

P=Partner, not Parent.

Right now US still has some financial muscle and can throw their weight around, but that strength is decreasing rapidly and they won't get taken seriously much longer.

Pacific countries are, however, getting to the stage where they can form a TPP that could still function without the USA. USA can play with the other children, not just tell the others what to do. It might however take the USA time to adjust to the concept of no longer being able to force their position.

[as2003]

Re: P=Partner, not Parent.

> that strength is decreasing rapidly and they won't get taken seriously much longer.

[citation needed]

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: P=Partner, not Parent.

[citation] http://www.ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/home.html or was it http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674057036

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: P=Partner, not Parent.

The Fed Must Inflate

[Christoph]

Re: P=Partner, not Parent.

[citation]

[Alan Brown]

Re: P=Partner, not Parent.

Funny how Obama is considered centrist. By European standards he's still somewhat to the right of Maggie Thatcher.

[Charles Manning]

Do you want the Blue Froot-loops or the Red?

It's really just a false dichotomy.

[Anonymous Coward]

As an Australian, I would rather they gave us a big foam clue-bat for use across the population - the people who elected this mess and the people who got elected. And then the people in the public departments that should know better.

[Thorne]

Usually I would crow that I didn't vote Liberal but Labor would sell us out in a heartbeat and in fact, they were in power when this crap started.

Who do you vote for when the two major parties are identical and the supposed third choice is a bunch of fruitcakes who would have us living in caves hunting feral animals with recycled sticks?

[Grade%]

Odd. I'd have thought the NSA would have poop on everybody to make them compliant. Funny, that.

[amanfromMars 1]

NSA .... Vapourware Central Intelligence Agency

Having the bullshit on everyone and being able to use what one would know and/or have collected [but not necessarily also understand, for some new information is notoriously difficult, by intentionally alien intelligent design, to parse] to one's greater exclusive advantage and oppressive perverse leverage, are two completely different sides of the same coin that those without such powers in Counter Intelligence instantly regret, for that is simply what rules and reigns supreme in the fields which host and server all such endeavours.

Time to Realise, Things have Changed. Get with IT and AI and New Orderly World ProgramMING with ForePlay Guaranteed CodeXSSXXXX Style Sheets of Mutually Beneficial and Addictively Insatiable Satisfaction. ..... thus to Ensure and Assure and Insure the Infinite Production of Even More Forever.

Would anyone sensible care to hazard a guess at the value of that on the open market and bourses, for such is there for the taking. I Kid U Not.

[tom dial]

"There is now gloom about whether the next round of negotiations ..."

Their gloom is my cheer. The proposed "intellectual property" regime would be more oppressive than any NSA activity we know about, notwithstanding that it would be all open and aboveboard.

[Lapun Mankimasta]

one use for US-style copyright laws

According to the copyright laws in common-law countries, as I understand it, copyright covers anything you write and anything you say. It therefore follows that any email conversation including the metadata thereof, and likewise any cellphone conversation including the metadata thereof, is covered by common copyright, and therefore, for the likes of the NSA to snatch-and-grab emails and phone conversations including the metadata thereof, is to violate the common copyright of the citizens so surveilled. Any penalty exacted on the persons of such people performing such massive copyright infringement less than what the Red Queen in public conversation with Alice, would approve of, may be too minor.

The disappointing thing about the US copyright (and patent) laws is that they serve as a hobble on US competitiveness and so, the US in its wisdom, wishes to hobble other economies - in this case its Asia-Pacific friends. Quite an unfriendly attitude, in fact.

[Suricou Raven]

Re: one use for US-style copyright laws

The 'automatic copyright of everything' thing is in the Berne convention. It was put in to fix some issues with draft works. If you copyright a movie, but then someone discovers you'd been showing the script to people and hadn't written a copyright notice on it, the script could potentially be uncopyrightable. So the convention required that anything set down in a fixed form, even without an explicit notice, would be copyright by default.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 'automatic copyright of everything'

That's not the only reason. It's also the only sensible default. Otherwise you're just forcing everyone to put copyright notices on everything (because why wouldn't they claim copyright if they can, even if they're licensing under the GPL?) and then punishing anyone who ever forgets: lots of unproductive work for "lawyers".

I wish they'd make all the stupid disclaimers on by default as well.

[Charles Manning]

GPL confusion

Only the copyright holder of GPL code can actually enforce the GPL. It is only copyright that gives GPL any teeth. Without copyright, GPL becomes something closer to BSD and would be completely unenforceable.

Do away with copyrights and the GPL goes completely flaccid.

[Anonymous Coward]

US state abuse of value and power means they are now losing both!

The US used to have value backed money, they now only have worthless fiat currency, a fiat currency which was fully backed by oil purchases, but that backing is sliding away because they misused their power.

The US used to have productive industry, but they off-shored much of that, so they now lean on fake Intellectual Property, but they have less traction there and abused there power there too, so that is now sliding away, as we see here.

So what will become of the US?

[JC_]

"Fiat Currency"? Really? Is this Slashdot?

The US used to have value backed money, they now only have worthless fiat currency

What would you propose instead of "fiat currency"? Would it make more sense to you to have the US money supply determined by the amount of yellow metal dug out of the ground in Africa?

So what will become of the US?

My best guess is that it'll be alright; demographics is on their side and occupying a large chunk of a continent full of resources is favourable, too. If HRC is elected to two terms then things might even get better than alright.

[DerekCurrie]

TPP Is By And For The USA's Corporate Oligarchy, Period

The USA Corporate Oligarchy wrote TPP. The US Corporate Oligarchy is the beneficiary of TPP. The core of TPP is treating customers of the USA Corporate Oligarchy as DEFAULT CRIMINALS. I call it customer abuse, the spirit of the age in modern biznizz.

No thank you. Go parasitize another planet.

[Anonymous Coward]

US state abuse of value and power means they are now losing both!

The US used to have value backed money, they now only have worthless fiat currency, a fiat currency which was then backed by deals with oil selling countries, but that backing is sliding away because they broke their promises and misused their power.

The US used to have productive industry, but they off-shored much of that, so they now lean on fake Intellectual Property, but they have less traction there and abused their power there too, so that is now sliding away too now, as we see here.

So what will become of the US?

[willi0000000]

having these talks blow up in my country's face would be a wonderful holiday gift for me.

now, if we could only get rid of the bizbots and paranoid-farming spyfriends in all branches of federal, state and local governments. then we could get on with repairing this country.

[hey, i can dream, can't i?]

[Euripides Pants]

Re: having these talks blow up in my country's face would be a wonderful holiday gift for me.

me too.