Post Tagged with: "usmca"

Display Binary Bytes Code by Markus Spiske / ffcu.io  Creative Commons Zero – CC0 – Public Domain

Setting the Standard?: How the USMCA Quietly Reshapes Global Digital Trade Agreements

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is more than just an updated version of the North American Free Trade Agreement. With the inclusion of a digital trade chapter, the deal sets a new standard for e-commerce that seems likely to proliferate in similar agreements around the world. My Washington Post op-ed notes that negotiators have touted the benefits of addressing modern forms of commerce, but the reality is that the USMCA digital trade chapter raises many concerns, locking in rules that will hamstring online policies for decades by restricting privacy safeguards and hampering efforts to establish new regulation in the digital environment.

Read more ›

October 4, 2018 3 comments Columns
By Office of the President of the United States (@realDonaldTrump on Twitter) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADonald_Trump_Justin_Trudeau_2017-02-13_03.jpg

The USMCA and Copyright Reform: Who is Writing Canada’s Copyright Law Anyway?

Canada’s year-long copyright review has thus far featured dozens of witnesses from creators such as singer Bryan Adams to telecom giants Bell and Telus. While the review is designed to help Canadian policy makers craft a roadmap for future reforms, the release of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the successor to NAFTA, represents a significant detour as it contains a detailed intellectual property rights chapter that effectively cedes many key issues to U.S. trade negotiators.

My Globe and Mail op-ed notes that in the weeks leading up to the conclusion of the trade pact negotiations, most of the attention was focused on supply management and the dairy sector, the threat of tariffs on the automotive industry, and the future of dispute resolution provisions. Yet once the secret text was released just after midnight on Sunday, the mandated reform to Canadian copyright law became more readily apparent.

Read more ›

October 3, 2018 10 comments Columns
read the fine print by unreal estates https://flic.kr/p/bncbwt (CC BY-NC 2.0)

From Copyright Term to Super Bowl Commercials: Breaking Down the Digital NAFTA Deal

Canada and the U.S. reached agreement late yesterday on a new NAFTA (now renamed the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement or USMCA). While much of the focus is on the dairy industry, dispute resolution, and the auto sector, the agreement will have significant implications for intellectual property, digital policy, and broadcasting. It will take some time to examine all the provisions, but the short-hand version is that Canada has agreed to extend the term of copyright, saved the notice-and-notice system for copyright infringement claims, extended the term of protection for biologics at significant long-term cost to the health care, agreed that Internet companies are not liable for third party content, extended border measures on counterfeiting, and promised to drop the CRTC policy that permitted U.S. commercials to be aired during the Super Bowl broadcast.

Read more ›

October 1, 2018 48 comments News