[wplug] Full Text of TPP released!

John Lewis oflameo2 at gmail.com
Mon Nov 9 18:22:29 EST 2015



On 11/09/2015 02:36 PM, Brian Sammon wrote:
> On Sun, 08 Nov 2015 20:41:12 -0500
> John Lewis <oflameo2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Another TPP WTF!
>>
>> TPP Banning Copyleft!
>>
>> https://boingboing.net/2015/11/06/tpp-will-ban-rules-that-requir.html
> The part of the TPP quoted by boingboing says:
> 	No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of
> 	software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition for the
> 	import, distribution, sale or use of such software, or of
> 	products containing such software, in its territory. 
>
> Now I interpreted "Party" to mean specifically "country" or "nation".
> Based on that, I think this clause says something like:
> 	The US (or any country) may not pass a law that says "It is illegal to
> 	sell closed-source car-driving software to Americans"
> I don't think this clause prohibits
>   Foreign businesses selling open-source (or copyleft) software in America
>   An American company including in a contract with a foreign supplier, a clause
>     requiring the use of copyleft software.
>   Part of the American gov't (or an agency) having such a clause in a foreign
>     supplier contract.
>
> However I'm not a law geek, and I've made the (perhaps foolish) assumption that common sense could be used in reading this stuff.  I'd love to hear from any law geeks who read this list.
>
> If my reading is correct, it seems like while this is still a negative thing, it's nowhere near as bad as it may seem at first glance.
>
> This is (nearly?) the first time I've read any of of Cory Doctorow's writing, and the fact that I find myself disagreeing with him on the terribleness of this part of the treaty makes me wonder.
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That is true Brian, but we are dealing with law and you know how lawyers
love to twist things.

This is dangerously close to something that would invalidate copyleft
just like how Oracle make API's copy writable via the court case with
Google over Android and that was via appeal.



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