[PythonicAlpha]

This alone is a strike against humanity: Now local patent laws that are widely criticized are even protected by international contracts (and thus have to be implemented by all signers -- and can not be changed, even the US can not change it's laws or regulations, when the top courts want to change patent ability regulations, they can't.).

Is this about "free trade" or about profit-maximizing and guaranteeing for some big corporations?

[cryoshon]

The latter, of course. Novartis and other pharma giants are heavily behind the TPP because it would send their profits through the roof relative to currently.

[PythonicAlpha]

That is, IMHO, just the opposite of a "free market". "Chained market" fits it better.

[kuschku]

Also, the drug market and ISP market in the US are explicitly exempt from the free market and ISDS policy – meaning, in the US, you can still have monopolies, but in the rest of the world, protectionism becomes impossible.

Very dangerous, and sounds more like "Empire – Colonies" than "Equal partners in trade"

[PythonicAlpha]

That is exactly the impression I got from the TTIP negotiations. The EU "partners" where supposed to sacrifice any of their positions, but the US (and US-corporation-) side always insisted in theirs.

Unbelievable, that the EU does really accept all this! Only explanation: Those politicians are already bought.

[kuschku]

To quote Obama:

> The TPP means that America will write the rules of the road in the 21st century.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/11/05/trade-tpp-idINKCN0S...

It very much sounds like they’re treating the rest of the world as colonies.

[deciplex]

What confuses the hell out of me regarding the TPP - and maybe it's just because I'm in the HN/Reddit echo chamber on this - but if the TPP is so damn important to reigning in China in the 21st century or whatever, then why did they load it up with a bunch of unrelated antagonizing bullshit?

It doesn't seem to me that the intellectual property provisions of the agreement are all that important to the overall stated goals of the TPP. Yet they are so fucking regressive and antagonistic that there is some chance (I guess? Again, echo chamber...) that they will sabotage the rest of the agreement. After SOPA, etc., if it were me and I wanted to be sure that the TPP passed in enough Pacific Rim countries to make it effective, I would keep anything remotely like SOPA as far away from my precious treaty as I possibly could.

Instead, the IP portions of the agreement are basically the language that was in SOPA all over again, which pissed a whole lot of people off last time. It's really hard to take seriously the claim that the TPP is so important, when the people drafting it are including language that is pretty much guaranteed to stoke vigorous opposition, for reasons that are mostly orthogonal to their goals.

[PythonicAlpha]

Only the rest of the worlds did not recognize it!

What happens to colonies can be seen in the plenty of former colonies that still struggle to get out of poverty.

[rhino369]

>Is this about "free trade" or about profit-maximizing and guaranteeing for some big corporations?

If the West is moving towards an information economy and is going to let the developing world take over manufacturing, the West wants to protect the information economy. The idea is we want to sell information for goods/services.

[PythonicAlpha]

Of course, some types of protection for own inventions is necessary ... but what here shall be protected, are the building blocks of life!

This is not about protecting own inventions, but about land-grabbing things that we did not invent, but nature!

The same thing, corporations try again and again. For example, once they copied cures of traditional Indian medicine, patented them in the USA and tried to forbid the free usage.

When this goes on this way, we all will soon have to pay a life-tax for having some type of DNA or bacteria in our bodies. Already, many cures are not invented, because to many patents on life building blocks make the creation to financially risky.

[hellbanner]

Can you support your claim that indian medicine cures were patented in the US?

[hellbanner]

Can't EDIT, so here is this:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/22/india-protect-t...

"In the first step by a developing country to stop multinational companies patenting traditional remedies from local plants and animals, the Indian government has effectively licensed 200,000 local treatments as "public property" free for anyone to use but no one to sell as a "brand"."

[PythonicAlpha]

Just use Google and you can yourself easily find enough references. Maybe I should add, that also European corporations did such things in Europe.