OK, as I understand it, one of the big pieces of the TPP is a giveaway to the RIAA and MPAA studio types that Obama and the big-money (D) coalition have been milking for money the past six years (which is why there are choppers & traffic jams in my neighborhood every few months, when Obama comes for a dinner at some super-agent’s house).

Now this is coming out of a the Fight For the Future group - kinda associated with the EFF - which I tend to agree with a lot of issues. Trying hard to parse whether this is something to be concerned about - or if this is just a “well, this COULD happen” type deal.

[…] as of right now the Trans-Pacific Partnership will do all of the following:

Force sites to remove allegedly infringing content from the web without a court order - scarily similar to SOPA.

Create harsh criminal penalties for journalists and whistleblowers. Any disclosure of information with “commercial value” would be criminalized — and there would be absolutely no public interest of free speech exemption.

Punish Internet users who share copyrighted material, even without any personal gain. Here’s the proposed punishment from the leaked text: “sentences of imprisonment as well as monetary fines sufficiently high to provide a deterrent to future acts of infringement.” Again, that’s potential prison time for sharing something without any personal gain.

Limit Fair Use to make copyright even more restrictive on creative innovation. Last week, WikiLeaks revealed a series of emails surrounding the TPP where the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) explicitly argued against including any fair use provisions. And it looks pretty clear that if the TPP passes, they’ll have their way. That means remixes, sampling, and quoting of copyrighted material could become illegal outside the US.

Allow foreign corporations to sue the United States government if they think that our laws infringe on their profits. This is, quite simply, the most devastating part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It opens the door to undermining every good law we’ve ever passed to protect the Internet — the only thing corporations have to do is prove they could make more money if those laws didn’t exist.

In short, the TPP isn’t just bad — it’s zombie bad. It has parts of every misguided Internet policy we’ve killed over the last decade trying to become law by completely bypassing every part of our democratic process.