Trade agreement cats and the digital technology mouse
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In the past three decades, the copyright industries and their supportive governments have aggressively pushed for introducing high intellectual property standards into trade agreements. This book chapter examines the uneasy case of using these agreements to provide copyright protection in the digital environment. It begins by discussing two widely discussed multilateral solutions: the TRIPS Agreement and the 1996 WIPO Internet Treaties. The chapter then explores the industries' increasing push for solutions outside multilateral fora. Non-multilateral solutions that have been advanced thus far range from the establishment of bilateral or regional trade agreements to the recent negotiation of plurilateral 'country club' agreements, including the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). This chapter concludes by identifying eight issues that domestic policymakers and international negotiators should seriously consider.
