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Why should we not join TPP?

As

discussed

above,

the

Trans

Pacific

Partnership

agreement

spearheaded by the United States is an extensive agreement dealing with many


aspects of intellectual property law. This paper focused on the effects of the TPP
to copyright laws and whether or not the Philippines should join such agreement.
Based on copyright laws alone, it can be conluded that the Philippines would be
on the losing end of this agreement. TPP tends to rewrite our domestic laws as
well as extend previous copy right laws. There are two main reasons why the
Philippines should not join the TPP. One, the policies would only benefit
corporations by sacrificing the rights of the public. Two, TPP creates a cloud of
doubt by lacking transparency.1
One, the policies that would benefit big corporations at the expense of the public
is the first reason why the TPP should not be supported by the Philippines.
Provisions such as the possession of temporary copies of copyright material may
violate the law; and holders of copyright may now prohibit all forms of
reproductions if passed. This is extremely detrimental to the public especially
those who cannot afford the use of copyrighted materials. It would be possible
that some works would be impossible to be under fair use because the
copyright owner would ban all forms of reproductions of such work. Imagine that
even works that would be used for personal and educational use would be barred
from reproduction.
Big corporations would also benefit because of the controversial provision
of the TPP, which extends the period of copyright from lifetime plus 50 years into
lifetime plus 70 years. This would effectively set the maximum duration of
copyright holders' monopoly rights to an estimate of over 140 years 2. This
extension would prevent small time inventors or groups to create their own work
based on a copyrighted work.
1 https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp
2 https://www.eff.org/issues/tpps-copyright-trap

Last, the TPP is lacks transparency and is restrictive towards different measures
of penalties. There is a provision on TPP to adopt criminal sanctions for copyright
infringement that is done without commercial motivation 3. Users could be put into
prison or hit with fines over file sharing, and may have their property or domains
seized or destroyed even without any formal complaint from the holder of the
copyright. It may be possible for users of peer-to-peer and torrent sites to be
jailed for infringement of copyright. Criminal liabilities will be imposed.
TPP creates a major concern about the peoples freedom of speech, due
process, innovative spirit, and the future of the internet as well as the domestic
laws already in force in sovereign nations. To sum it up, the Trans Pacific
Partnership agreement challenges the fundamental intellectual property rights
and would restrict acces to copyrighted works for the citizens of the world.

3 https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/TPP-Final-Text-Intellectual-Property.pdf

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