What, exactly, is TPP?

By now everyone in Japan has heard the acronym TPP, and we know the ruling party (and not its coalition partner) wants Japan to join, but no one seems to know what membership in it involves. According to the following excerpt from a report by an organization called Public Knowldedge, the lack of transparency is deliberate. More alarming, not everyone is excluded from the discussion--only We the People.

Does anyone out there really like the sound of "special interests" in the same sentence as "privileged access"?


Here's the salient part of the Public Knowledge commentary:

"The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement ("TPP") is a free trade agreement currently being negotiated by nine countries: The United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Although the TPP covers a wide range of issues, this site focuses on the TPP's intellectual property (IP) chapter.


The TPP suffers from a serious lack of transparency, threatens to impose more stringent copyright without public input, and pressures foreign governments to adopt unbalanced laws.


Many of the same special interests that pushed for legislation like SOPA and PIPA have special access to this forum—including privileged access to the text as well as US negotiators."