US Proposals For Secret TPP ‘Son Of ACTA’ Treaty Leaked; Chock Full Of Awful Ideas
We've mentioned a couple of times that now that ACTA is “complete”, if not yet approved, USTR negotiators have moved on to what many are calling the son of ACTA in the form of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).
Context & Ripple Effects
The leak lands one year after the ACTA draft surfaced with its own enforcement provisions, and months after reporting on how the treaty would make Internet providers act as copyright cops. With ACTA negotiations complete but unapproved, USTR negotiators have carried the same playbook into a new venue — the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement — and the Ars Technica pickup shows the 'son of ACTA' framing traveling beyond Techdirt's usual audience.
First-order effects
- USTR's closed-door negotiating positions are now public before any official TPP text is released, giving trading partners and domestic critics alike a document to rally against during talks that were designed to stay quiet until completion.
Second-order effects
- If the leaked US proposals carry ACTA-style enforcement demands into TPP chapters, foreign delegations must decide whether to accept copyright terms bundled into a trade deal they cannot renegotiate piecemeal — while ISPs and rights holders in prospective member countries lobby their own governments over intermediary liability language.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward trade agreements becoming the delivery mechanism for copyright enforcement rules that stall in domestic legislatures, with each leaked draft training civil-society groups to monitor negotiation rounds rather than finished treaties.
The trend: Copyright enforcement is migrating from national lawmaking into secret plurilateral trade negotiations, where leaks have become the public's main window into the text.