[CTC] Mission Not Accomplished

[Gimena Sanchez]

http://www.citizenvox.org/2012/04/11/more-tumult-at-the-tpp/

April
11
By: Steven Knievel
Talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), which the U.S.  
is negotiating with Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand,  
Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, are continuing this week (April 9-13) in  
Santiago, Chile in the form of an “intersessional meeting” on  
intellectual property (IP) focusing on Internet policy. The last time  
such a meeting was convened on IP in January in Hollywood, CA a  
stakeholder event organized by public interest groups in the same  
hotel as the negotiations wascanceled after the hotel received  
pressure from the Office of the United States Trade Representative  
(USTR). Simultaneously, USTR made sure the Motion Picture Association  
of America (MPAA) had access to negotiators, as they were given an  
exclusive tour of 20th Century Fox Studios guided by a representative  
of the studio’s government relations office.

USTR is clamping down on public participation to minimize the spread  
of information which challenges their hard-line IP maximalist agenda  
that seeks to empower corporations at the expense of public health and  
knowledge. In addition to increasing reliance on intersessionals, like  
this week’s Santiago meeting, where stakeholders are not given a forum  
to participate, USTR has now effectively reduced stakeholder  
participation in the official negotiating rounds by eliminating their  
opportunity to give presentations to negotiators in an official forum.  
USTR’s response signals the substantial impact critics of the TPP are  
having. At the March negotiating round in Melbourne, one stakeholder  
presentation after another criticized USTR’s aggressive pro-Big Pharma  
patent proposal, filling most of the afternoon. Now TPP countries are  
resisting USTR demands that would imperil their access to medicines.

Cozy relationships with government aren’t the only way corporations  
are influencing these talks. This week, American University and the  
University of Chile arranged to host an event to present analyses  
critical of particular proposals in the TPP. These include leaked  
provisions that would greatly favor Big Pharma, expand drug monopolies  
and raise medicine prices. The keynote speaker was to be Senator  
Ricardo Lagos, a major political figure in Chile considered to be a  
possible candidate for the presidency. Nevertheless, the public  
University of Chile law school canceled the event with less than two  
days’ notice, evidently on the advice of a member of the faculty who  
is a paid advisor of the multinational pharmaceutical companies’  
association in Chile (the Cámara de Industria Farmacéutica, or CIF).

The cancellation sent organizers scrambling for a new venue, which  
they found in Chile’s Catholic University.

Stakeholders from a spectrum of communities concerned with the  
implications of the TPP are continuing to shine light on the  
negotiations. Criticism of the TPP process is mounting from members of  
both state and federal government in the United States. Internet  
activists in Chile are calling on their government to defend the  
rights of their citizens from what could be the next SOPA, while  
analyses from academic experts on IP show that the U.S.-proposed TPP  
provisions go beyond those seen in Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement  
(ACTA). Meanwhile, USTR claims that allowing 600 corporate advisors to  
examine the negotiating text, including representatives of the  
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Entertainment  
Software Association (ESA), while keeping it hidden from the general  
public justifies their claim of “unprecedented” transparency in the  
negotiations.

SOPA’s defeat proved that the netroots can beat IP maximalism and  
rulemakings from Washington designed to curb Internet freedom, while  
the populist response to ACTA has shown that policy laundering  
attempts by industry and their allies in government will face serious  
resistance. Ambitious, secret economic agreements have been defeated  
before through public awareness and organizing. Now it’s time to stand  
up and tell our governments we will not stand idly by while our rights  
are under siege.


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