Consumer Groups Criticize Proposed Copyright Plans in Letters to TPP Negotiators
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and its Our Fair Deal coalition (here) partners released two letters to Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiators highlighting how the TPP could strengthen the position of copyright holders, said Jeremy Malcolm, senior global policy analyst, and…
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Maira Sutton, global policy analyst, in an EFF blog post (here) July 9. The letters address TPP's "copyright term extension proposals" (here) and its "intermediary liability proposals" (here), they said. On liability proposals, "countries around the Pacific rim are being pressured to agree to proposed text for the TPP that would require them to adopt a facsimile" of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, said the blog post. "Industry lobbyists are pushing for an even stricter regime, dubbed 'notice and staydown,' that would make it harder than ever before for users and innovators to safely publish creative, transformational content online," it said. Concerning copyright term extensions, the TPP would extend the "rash 20 year extension of the term of copyright protection" to "all other TPP negotiating countries," it said. "This would be a senseless assault on the public domain and on those libraries, authors, educators, users and others who depend upon it," it said.