Yesterday, ETCentric reported that the office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced it would include a provision to recognize the “limitations and exceptions” to copyright, “consistent with the internationally recognized 3-part test” designed to identify what constitutes suitable limitations and exceptions in regards to intellectual property.
The announcement was made as part of the negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partners (TPP) trade agreement.
Harold Feld, senior VP of Washington, DC advocacy group Public Knowledge offers his take on the proposal through a post on Wetmachine, a group blog on telecom policy, software, science, technology and writing.
Feld suggests this provision was apparently made in response to an anticipated rejection by the European Parliament of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement largely due to objections “trying to force copyright maximalism on other countries” at the behest of the MPAA and RIAA.
“The Hollywood crazy train on intellectual property enforcement now very visibly threatens the ability to get future trade agreements ratified by Congress or by foreign governments,” he writes.
“The anti-SOPA campaign has genuinely changed the way in which IP policy gets negotiated, rather than fading away as memory of the legislation recedes,” notes Feld. “What the ACTA defeat in Europe and the pressure on USTR to shift position show is that the campaign to prevent the further erosion of free expression in the name of copyright maximalism has staying power. It now falls to all of us to ensure that we keep moving things in the right direction.”
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