routinegrounds

What are your thoughts on the TPP?

Any treaty negotiated in secret is poison. Any treaty that treats citizens' interests as a priori secondary to the rights of mega-corporations is appalling.

Any treaty that in effect 'harmonises' local laws to the laws of the strongest is atrocious.

The TPP appears to fit those criteria. It reflects extremely poorly upon all involved. Other parties to the treaty, Canada and Vietnam for example, appear to hold their citizens' interests in more esteem than successive Australian governments.

Yes, countries need trade treaties and there may even be times for confidential discussion. Ultimately, however, opaque deals have historically not favoured the weak or the many.

In my quick EFA blog post about the leaked IP chapter I wrote that it was very unfortunate that "Fair Use" was mentioned only once, and Australia (and the US) were pushing for negative and restrictive version.

TL;DR: Noooope!

It would be disingenuous to claim that it was a total surprise as a concept, but the scales - billions of communications down to the micro scale - are mind-boggling and shocking. It has certainly become a media topic in Australia, but mainly because it fits with the most sensational news-values of many media organisations, not necessarily because everyone has suddenly started to care. Day-to-day on the street there are still far too many people taking the 'I've got nothing to hide' line, which I really disagree with.. I see the rhetorical problem of getting people to care about mass surveillance as akin to the problem of getting people to are about climate change. If we had listened to the scientists 40 years ago and made practical changes then, we wouldn't be in the dire situation we are now. Instead we're now arguing about what a 'theory' is and whether or not one should 'believe' it while global climate change wreaks increasingly problematic disasters upon the earth. Mass surveillance actions -- pushing for positive privacy rights, government and corporate transparency and oversight -- are at the same stage now. If we act now, as we see the tsunami, we have the chance to at least hold it all to account. If not, expect havok. But, interestingly, as I've noted recently about Indonesian hacking, as governments and corporations start to annoy netizens more, the nature of the Internet is such that non-state actors can leap in and create highly unpredictable trouble.

The lack of a set of online rights; guiding principles that would provide serious protections for citizens across a series of digital issues: surveillance, the TPP, infrastructure access etc.

That's one reason why EFA is having Scott Ludlam outline his vision for positive online rights at our first Speak Out.

Oh, and as you can see from another post, I really dislike the TPP.

Such wow. Where start. Amazing!

(1) The academic answer: What I love about memes is not any particular thing but rather the way they operate via templatability and how useful they are as methods of commenting on crisis. I thought it was very interesting that although memes were very important in the 2012 presidential election, memes turned out not to be as important in the recent Australian election.

Personal answer: Most recently Doge, obviously. I've really always been a fan of the early advice animal image macros and exploitables. I've most frequently used Suspicious Fry and The Most Interesting Man In The World.

Simon Hackett is almost Batman, so I'm going to provide an optimistic no. More seriously, recent citizen action to refuse to accept FTTN lying down is actually what we need more of. EFA was super-impressed by Nick Paine's amazing petition. More of it! Democracy does not end after an election period.