The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) includes some things that make even less sense then the original secret ACTA pact.  Whatever happened to all of the pledges for transparency in government?

These secret intellectual property treaties serve only to stifle innovation and enrich the lawyers.

Some of the craziness in the new agreement include:

• Forbidding third party opposition to patent applications
• ISP’s would be required to identify users without a court order at the request of any intellectual property owner.
• TPP would impose a legal liability on ISP’s for actions taken by their users.
• TPP would require criminal enforcement against anyone circumventing DRM (digital rights management) or reverse engineering software or hardware even when there is no copyright infringement.
• Would prevent the personal import of legally purchased goods from another country.  If the item you are purchasing in another country costs less than it would if you had bought it in the US, you will not be allowed to import the item.

Our existing draconian and completely misunderstood copyright laws are more than sufficient.  These ACTA and TPP additions push intellectual and copyright issues into new dada-esque level of ridiculousness.  

Further, killing off the safe harbor provision of the DMCA (digital millenium copyright act) through the TPP will stifle all online innovation.  Say goodby to Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, any service that lets you publish content.