The Trans Pacific Partnership: it’s thousands of pages’ worth of dense bureaucratic language setting out the give-and-take of years’ worth of secret negotiations. Figuring out what it means for you is a transcendentally difficult process.
The EFF has analyzed the TPP’s impact on digital rights, closely reading the document’s many chapters, and has broken down the problems with TPP based on 13 categories:
General Audience; Innovators and Business Owners; Libraries, Archives, and Museums; Students; Online Privacy and Digital Security; Website Owners; Gamers; Artists; Journalists and Whistleblowers; People with Sensory Disabilites; Tinkerers and Repairers; Free Software; and Cosplayers and Fans of Anime, Cartoons, or Movies. Which one are you and how will TPP screw you over?
Cosplayers and Fans of Anime, Cartoons, or Movies
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Excessive copyright terms of life of the creator plus 70 years keep digital creative works, including anime, comic books, and movies, locked behind onerous restrictions for longer.*
Fans putting on a themed party or cosplay based on a character from a favorite show or movie could be forced to pay a penalty or have images from it removed from the Internet. If it happens to go viral they may be held criminally liable because it’s arguably available at a “commercial scale.”*
Fans could face a lawsuit or a criminal prosecution even if the author of the work they used or modified does not care about the activity in question. That means law enforcement can go after fans for derivative works on a “commercial scale” without the author of the original work filing charges.
How the TPP Will Affect You and Your Digital Rights
[Maira Sutton/EFF]
(Image: Roadside: TPP Leesburg, GlobalTradeWatch, CC-BY-SA)