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The US Is Trying to Get 11 Countries to Enforce Its Draconian Copyright Laws

The Trans Pacific Partnership will rewrite international law.
Screengrab: VICE News

The last several years have been fraught with long extradition hearings for copyright mafiosos such as Kim Dotcom, to the endless frustration of the US government. But, under the terms of a controversial proposed trade agreement, America may soon be able to compel at least 11 countries to prosecute pirates.

The Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement between the United States, Australia, Canada, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam, has come under fire plenty of times already for its potential ability to rewrite global privacy and copyright laws. A newly leaked draft, however, suggests that certain types of pirates and counterfeiters will be a main target of the agreement.

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The draft, released by WikiLeaks today, suggests that the partnership would compel those countries to arrest and prosecute those who operate torrent, file locker, and streaming sites that share copyrighted content.

The partnership also criminalizes making cam copies of movies

"Each Party shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied at least in cases of willful trademark counterfeiting or copyright or related rights piracy on a commercial scale," the language reads.

That means that any site often used for privacy that has ads on it (such as The Pirate Bay, Mega, and any number of streaming sites) would be subject to its provisions.

Though The Pirate Bay was founded in Sweden and operates in an ever-shifting list of countries, other file sharing sites that operate out of, say, New Zealand (Mega), would all of a sudden be subject to American piracy laws.

The provision was unsurprisingly proposed by the United States, where most pirated copyrighted content originally comes from.

The new draft also criminalizes counterfeiting trademarked goods, which is particularly popular in developing nations and criminalizes the "knowing and unauthorized copying of a cinematographic work, or any part thereof making, from a performance in a movie theater." These "cam" copies are often how new movie releases originally leak on torrent sites.

No one is suggesting that piracy should be legal but, at the same time, this partnership would presumably change the laws in countries that don't have as strict copyright protections as the US, and would subject offenders to serious criminal proceedings for what often are minor, nonviolent crimes.