TPP the largest cross-national, non-military cooperation pact of our time. It's a huge power play with serious geopolitical consequences that go far beyond Google.
Nonetheless, Google benefits from TPP because it enables them to shift operations to areas with lower costs, and not having their services blocked or censored in participating countries. They clearly feel that the advantages of TPP outweigh the drawbacks. I don't expect a public corporation to oppose a trade agreement on grounds of protectionism or ideology.
Author cites expansion of copyright and corresponding limitation of free use as specific problems with TPP, but Google comes out in support of those points. Analysis of other problematic provisions of TPP would serve to make the article more persuasive, rather than stating that Google is wrong on those grounds.
> They clearly feel that the advantages of TPP outweigh the drawbacks.
The problem is that's always how this works. You take a thousand people who each want something that will help them a lot and hurt everybody else a little. If you only look at them, they come out ahead, because they get +1200 from the thing they wanted and -1000 from the sum of all the little harms everybody else wanted. But everybody who isn't a huge corporation with the ability to shovel the thing they wanted into the treaty only gets the -1000, which makes the treaty a huge net negative because there are a lot more mortal people taking the big hit than there are huge corporations eeking out a little at the margin.
> Author cites expansion of copyright and corresponding limitation of free use as specific problems with TPP, but Google comes out in support of those points. Analysis of other problematic provisions of TPP would serve to make the article more persuasive, rather than stating that Google is wrong on those grounds.
So even if it Google did manage to pass some small clause in there that's of great help to them, it doesn't mean that's a good trade deal overall.
Big Pharma could make the same argument, that TPP will be great for them! But terrible for citizens if it bans generics, and so on.
That's why overall you may get very little gains if at all with the TPP, but a few big corporations could see huge gains from this deal (to the expense of everyone else).
> A benefit not reflected straight in the gdp are increases in welfare due to decreases in prices from competition.
This is the same fallacy Google has. You like one thing in the treaty so you vote in favor of some omnibus heap of garbage.
The fundamental problem with this treaty is that there are too many unrelated things in it. Even if the treaty was net positive (which it probably isn't), we should never accept something which is +1001 and -1000 when the -1000 parts are entirely unrelated and are only tacked on by lobbyists because they would never pass on their own merits.
There is no reason we can't reject this treaty and then go back and sign one that has only the good parts in it -- we're the ones asking for the bad parts. We could have the version that only has the +1001. If we dumped the bad stuff then we could even use the negotiating leverage to get more good stuff.
I agree, unfortunately it seems like the political atmosphere for free trade is trending in the imo wrong direction. So if we have to pass this in order to get that then I think I support it.
The political atmosphere for free trade is trending in the wrong direction because of trade deals like this. Rejecting them is the only way to get back to any semblance of sanity.
Thanks for the link, but that's the same point about the reduction of fair-use of copyrighted works.
I meant the analysis of all the -other- things, besides copyright harmonization, that make TPP bad, which the author refers to briefly:
"There's so much in there that's about blatant protectionism and supporting certain business models over others."
and
"(...) other problems in the agreement (such as the corporate sovereignty provisions that will almost certainly come back to bite Google and others)."
These could be good points, but since the author mentions them only in passing, and does not expand on them. After reading both links it sounds as if the author's opposition of Google's stance is entirely predicated on the copyright/fair-use topic, despite implying that TPP is deeply flawed for other reasons that should warrant its abandonment.
I think you are right that the article is light on evidence for why the TPP is bad for consumers and could have used some links to sources to expand upon it more. But the article seems mainly geared to letting people who already care passionately about the issue know that Google is not on their side.
It doesn't matter if Google says they care about fair use or the expansion of copyright while throwing their support behind an agreement that does not.
Even if this is to be expected, it's worth making a fuss about it because that's really the only weapon the public has at this point.
Of course corporations care about their interests without taking only account negative externalities, but naming and shaming is a way consumers have to make them care about those externalities.
Google has come down on the right side of the TPP - for Google. The company is a major major major player for most of humanity outside of China. Even people who use exactly zero Google products or services are inextricably linked with those who do, by just a few degrees of separation. This deal would be a huge benefit to one of the most global corporations in history. I'm not defending Google by any means, but the company had every right to defend its own self-interest.
"The TPP requires the 12 participating countries to allow cross-border transfers of information and prohibits them from requiring local storage of data"
Yup, definitely the wrong side of this. I can't see how this will get passed in the EU when it directly contradicts all the previous data protection rulings, but presumably there will be some undemocratic process.
the TPP is good (great) for entities made out of humans and their tools, but it's pretty bad for entities comprised of (mostly) human cells, i.e. individual humans.
Does Schmidt have a day-to-day role at Google anymore? I was under the impression that he is essentially retired from Google's operations and serves only as a board member.
Anyway, it raises the question of whether a board member / former exec can do things on his own time and dime without it reflecting on Google. Does everything that Schmidt does imply that Google is doing it too?
They block all autocompletes of the form "firstname lastname liar" and other similar words.
For example they block "hillary clinton liar". They allow "hillary liar". They block "donald trump liar". They block "george bush liar", they allow "bush liar".
Your account has broken HN's guidelines in this thread and unfortunately in other comments you've posted. We ban accounts that do this, so please post civilly and substantively, or not at all, from now on.
Note that this holds regardless of how wrong or ridiculous someone else's views are.
This is what irrational looks like. "just wrong" Um. Ok. Why? `limiting exploration of fair use` Unless you're one of those empirical people and like human experimentation, which is rather unethical when people's livelihoods are at stake, you can literally theorize that right now. Go ahead. Everybody's listening.
Well, while you continue to think about that and have no answer, we'll continue using laws that protect content creators.
Many of these opinions are nonsensical anti-capitalist drivel.
TPP is consistency and compromise and if there's a real better way, you better believe countries will adapt to it.
Irrational and anti-capitalist these are not.
There is nothing free-market about a patent or copyright, they are exceptions to the free market meant to try and subsidize "innovation," and smart people are still arguing on whether or not that is working well today. There are other issues that the TPP forces the hand of the American legislative system to pass new restrictions where we had previously voted against doing so. It is an undemocratic, anti-free-market end run around the American legislative branch.
There are very good arguments in favor of the existence of patents and copyrights. Copyrights and and patent reward creators and innovators for their work. Of course giving these legal rights too much force (eg indefinite copyright, overly broad patent licenses) is harmful since it restricts further innovation and increases the price of consuming creative goods. But the question is not whether patents and copyright are pure good or pure evil, but how we should make use of these legal tools to improve society.
