Leaked TPP Chapter: 5 Scary Provisions In WikiLeaks' Trans-Pacific Partnership Release

Connor Adams Sheets | International Business Times | November 13, 2013

WikiLeaks broke the seal on key parts of the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership on Wednesday, when it released the agreement's intellectual property chapter online.

The document details proposals for "international obligations and enforcement mechanisms for copyright, trademark and patent law, and includes the combined positions of all of the parties as they were by the end of August 2013," according to WikiLeaks, but at 30,000 words it is a dense and complicated read.

As such, a number of advocacy groups and independent organizations have begun parsing the 95-page chapter for provisions that could prove detrimental to the public good, and they have already found quite a few problematic passages.

First some background. The TPP is a secretive agreement currently being negotiated behind closed doors by representatives of the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Vietnam, Brunei and Australia.

Only 700 representatives of various corporations have access to the text, which has been amended twice since the version WikiLeaks released Wednesday was drafted. The governments of the countries involved in the negotiations are not able to view the text while it is being discussed by the corporations, meaning that the public will have little to no input on what will be included in the final version.