ALP and Liberals bent on another destructive US copyright agreement

When the ALP and the Liberals are determined to sign us up to another liberty-destroying, overbearing US “copyright” regime (in which we adopt the harshest aspects of their ludicrous laws – see here for the most recent absurd example – but without their Constitutional protections), thank God that one party in the Parliament will stand against it:

“Not content with supporting the ill-fated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which would endanger the legal status of generic medicines and was overwhelmingly rejected by the European Parliament, the Trade Minister is now pushing for an Agreement that offers no protection for copyright exceptions enshrined in Australian law.

“ACTA was an absolute dud, and the Government wanted to jump on board before the Australian Law Reform Commission’s inquiry had even warmed up.

“Now, information on the negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement revealed over the weekend show the US and Australia want to defeat a proposed clause protecting domestic intellectual property laws.

“New Zealand, with the support of Chile, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam, proposed this clause to permit a signatory to ‘carry forward and appropriately extend into the digital environment limitations and exceptions in its domestic laws’. Only the United States and our own government oppose this perfectly reasonable provision. Why is the Government promoting the erosion of our independence in this way?

“There are two inquiries currently underway into the future of Australian copyright laws in the digital age. Shackling our intellectual property laws to a Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement dominated by the United States would render them virtually worthless. The Australian Greens urge the Government to back New Zealand’s proposed protection for independence and to reject any Agreement that puts the civil liberty and welfare of Australians at risk.”

That’s Senator Ludlum, and I’m bloody glad we have him there to make the point. If only we had a few more Greens MPs whose votes could stand against any legislation associated with such a “treaty”.