First, I would like to thank the USTR for inviting comment on Canada's participation in the TPP negotiations. It is a hallmark of open democracies that all political and economic policies affecting the public are open to comment, and it is a pleasure to take part in this process.
The citizens of the United States and of every other TPP country have been kept in the dark over what the secret TPP negotiations are in aid of. However, some information has come out, and it is clear that the TPP involves such repressive measures as:
In 1890, the United States passed the historic Sherman Act, the basis of all subsequent antitrust legislation. In the words of its sponsor, Senator John Sherman, the Act was intended "to protect the consumers by preventing arrangements designed, or which tend, to advance the cost of goods to the consumer." The Trans Pacific Partnership appears to be just the sort of "arrangement" which Senator Sherman sought to suppress. He would be horrified to find his own country imposing such an "arrangement" on its own citizens and those of other countries.
CONCLUSION:I have had the privilege of living and working in the United States, and of pursuing graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In writing this submission, I am promoting the interests of the citizens of the United States. These interests would be severely and permanently damaged if the TPP were to survive in its present form.
But I am a citizen of Canada, and live in that country. I am the founder of a popular website, widely used by schools as well as by individual Canadians, which offers free digital editions of works which are out of copyright in my country. Copyright in Canada generally lasts for 50 years after the death of the author. The same is true of New Zealand, another TPP country, and this is no coincidence: it is the term of copyright mandated by the Berne Convention. It has been the basic rule of copyright in Canada for almost a century.
But a secret provision of the TPP "intellectual property" chapter proposes forcing a TWENTY YEAR extension in copyright duration. This is a direct attack on the property rights of the citizens of Canada and New Zealand, and any other country following the Life+50 rule. The public domain is OUR property, and it is not the place of the United States or any other foreign government to attack our personal property.
Since the public domain, by definition, belongs to the public, copyright extensions are a tough sell. In fact, they are impossible to sell: the citizens of the world will not knowingly consent to their property being confiscated. If Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies were put up for sale to condo developers, the citizens of Canada would of course reject any such deal. Similarly, the public domain belongs to the people of Canada: we, the people, will not allow our own property to be expropriated, particularly by foreign governments acting under the cover of what is represented as a trade agreement.
Consequently, to the maximum extent possible, these extensions are done out of the public's sight and out of the public's control. The original disastrous 20-year extension of copyright in Europe in 1994 was done by the European Union in the interests of "harmonization" with Germany's extra-long Life+70 copyright term: no consideration seems to have been given to the rights of most European citizens to what had been their public domain.
Similarly, in the United States, the 20-year extension was passed in 1998, when the furore over the possible impeachment of President Clinton was at its height, and public attention was distracted. The bill was passed by a voice vote: there is no record of who supported it or opposed it. There has always been suspicion that massive corporate lobbying rather than any regard for the public interest was responsible for the extension; and the undue role played by corporate political contributions continues to be a source of lively debate in the US. In January 2012, after the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) lost support in the White House and in the US Congress following unprecedented public protests, Christopher Dodd, the CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, said on Fox News that "Candidly, those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake...Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake":
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/19/exclusive-hollywood-lobbyist-threatens-to-cut-off-obama-2012-money-over-anti/
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that corporate lobby groups think they are buying something when they make political donations, particularly in the area of copyright law. Perhaps this is why the 1998 US copyright extension has been called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.
The relevance of this is that the intellectual property draft chapter of the Trans Pacific Partnership was provided by the United States government. If this draft chapter is nothing more than a wish list from corporate lobby groups using their government as a courier service to deliver legislation that other countries must then enact, it is worse than a waste of time: it is a menace to the public of every single country in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, including the United States, since it makes a mockery of the principles of transparency, and of representative democracies upholding the interests of their own citizens.
Canada, like all representative democracies, is founded on the principle of government by the people, for the people. The United States, of all countries, should respect the democratic rights of the citizens of other nations.
Most American citizens are probably not aware that until recently copyright in the U.S. generally lasted only 56 years from a work's publication. This system certainly worked well: music and literature flourished, and the American film industry became the envy of the world. There was no demonstrated need for the U.S. to extend copyright durations, but this is exactly what happened in the late 1970s, when the United States joined the Berne Convention; twenty years later this was followed by the 1998 twenty-year extension described above.
It is difficult to exaggerate the damage done by these successive copyright extensions. For example, Winnie-the-Pooh, first published in 1926, should have entered the American public domain in 1983. Because there have been not one but two copyright extensions, it will remain under copyright until 2018 -- unless a third copyright extension happens between now and then. But Winnie-the-Pooh has at least remained available to the American public. What about the countless excellent works which are out of print but still under copyright, and lost to the citizens of America? The Constitution of the United States states that copyright is to be temporary. A succession of copyright extensions make a mockery of the intent of the Founding Fathers.
American citizens should certainly ask Congress the following questions:We, the citizens of other countries, can ask whether this new regime will involve fresh incursions on the public domain of the United States, followed by incursions on the public domain of other countries bundled with "free trade" agreements.
The secrecy of the negotiations is itself deeply offensive. This is particularly the case since the TPP agreement, if enacted in the US, will remove remove important parts of American law from Congressional oversight and control: they will be considered "international obligations". In other words, the TPP will be a method of bypassing the will of the American people and of Congress.
But the conduct of the TPP negotiations is already blatantly unconstitutional.
The United States Constitution (Article 1, Section 8) states that "The Congress shall have Power ... to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations". But U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, chairman of the U.S. Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade Customs and Global Competitiveness, has stated that "the majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations — like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America — are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement"
http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/blog/post/iycmi-wyden-statement-introducing-congressional-oversight-over-trade-negotiations-act
Even as a mere onlooker, a citizen of a foreign country, I am outraged by this disregard for Congress.
As a Canadian citizen, I have no access to or insight into a process that may affect me deeply. But my situation is even worse than that. When Canada was invited to join the TPP negotiations, some extraordinary conditions were attached:
Similar conditions were laid on the government of Mexico.
This "my way or the highway" approach is entirely inappropriate, and shows a complete lack of respect for the neighbours and close allies of the United States.
There have already been demonstrations and protests in the TPP countries against the secret negotiations. There is always a temptation to dismiss protesters as a mere activist fringe, not representative of the public. This temptation should be avoided. The July rejection of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) by the European Parliament was the final step in a process which started with individual protest groups. The secrecy of the ACTA process is in every respect parallel to the TPP negotiations: the public was excluded, civil society groups were excluded, but corporate lobbyists were most definitely included. Yet this process led to the agreement collapsing because, in democracies, in the end public support is required, and it was not there.
Is the American Library Association, the oldest and largest library association in the world, a mere fringe group? On July 4th, the ALA joined with eight other national library associations and the International Federation of Library Associations in stating that "The draft text proposed by the United States for the IP chapter of the TPPA, leaked in February 2011, does not reflect the balance necessary to protect the public domain and the ways in which society may access and use content. Exceptions to copyright protection are noticeably absent from this 'gold standard' IP agreement for the 21st century."
The full text of this very important statement is well worth reading, and can be found at:
http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/library-statement-on-trans-pacific-partnership-agreement-negotiations
Its signatories include:
The countries represented include
The current Trans Pacific Partnership process is fatally flawed, and is too far advanced for patchwork repair to make it acceptable. The agreement should be abandoned as being fatally flawed because of
After a pause, a new process could be started, one that is more respectful of the citizens of the TPP countries. In the meantime, nothing is better than something, if that something is the TPP.
In closing, I would like to thank the USTR for allowing me this opportunity to make a submission. Genuine free trade agreements, arrived at openly and without coercion, benefit the economies of all countries involved. I am a friend of the United States: and my comments are intended to promote the interests of Americans, many of whom I count as friends, as well as those of my fellow Canadian citizens.