Sunday, February 21, 2016

Regulation

Underhanded TPP change.
"A sneaky and underhanded change to the TPP, spotted by the EFF and summarized here by Jeremy Malcolm, means much stiffer penalties for copyright "infringement:" Under the TPP's original terms, a country could limit the exposure of the owner of such a website to prison time, or to the seizure and possible destruction of their server, on the grounds that by definition their infringement didn't cause any lost sales to the copyright owner. (Note that they would be liable for civil damages to the copyright owner in any case.) Although a country still has the option to limit criminal penalties to "commercial scale" infringements (which is so broadly defined that it could catch even a non-profit subtitles website), the new language compels TPP signatories to make these penalties available even where those infringements cause absolutely no impact on the copyright holder's ability to profit from the work. This is a massive extension of the provision's already expansive scope."
Of course.

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