Posts by Alfie
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A little more TPPA info dribbles out.
According to documents released on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website late Thursday afternoon, medicine safety regulator Medsafe must notify a drug company if a generic version of their product has been submitted for approval.
"New Zealand will also need to ensure there is sufficient time and opportunity for a patent owner to seek preliminary injunctions to resolve patent disputes prior to a generic version of its patented medicine entering the market," the documents said.
The term "sufficient time" doesn't appear to be defined. Could we be talking years? If so it's easy to imagine a scenario where drug companies keep Pharmac tied up in courts for so long that the generics issue becomes academic.
The Government... said it will also need to impose new "civil and criminal" sanctions against people breaking technological protection measures (TPMs), that are generally used to prevent unauthorised access to digital material in different markets.
TPMs are often used to help copyright owners charge different prices for their creations in different countries.
That should knock out several grey markets nicely.
It was unclear whether circumventing blocks on overseas websites, such as overseas internet television services, would need to become an offence, Carter said.
Damn... there goes the VPN.
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It looks like Hillary Clinton has flip-flopped on the TPPA and will no longer support Obama's trade agreement.
Her reversal could complicate the path to final ratification in Congress for a trade pact that President Obama has called central to cementing his domestic economic agenda and foreign policy strategy in Asia. Republican leaders, who have been more supportive of Obama’s trade agenda, have also raised concerns this week about the final pact.
Hope remains.
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to Alfie,
Snap!
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
this seems like a story that needs more eyes than just the twitteratis…
Matt Nippert has a slightly tamer version of the story in the Herald. Rather than Eyeworks being liable for fringe benefit tax as reported in the Spinoff, he correctly (IMO) suggests that Christie herself is responsible for tax on the capital gains.
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Bryan Gould has a good analysis of what the TPP means for New Zealand. In short, bugger all.
Such small gains as have been secured are so insignificant that Tim Groser, the Trade Minister, could not even remember what they were. The best he could come up with was a small reduction over time in the Japanese tariff on cheese.
The truth is that this much-touted goal (dairy) was never even on the agenda. We were deluding ourselves - or our government was deluding us. The dairy industries of these large countries were too powerful and too protectionist to allow it to happen. New Zealand was just too small, too insignificant, to be taken into account. The negotiators knew, because we had made it clear, that we would take what we were given, even if it was virtually nothing - so much for "tough negotiation".
He also mentions the major risks involved in the Investor/State Dispute Resolution provisions -- a subject which to my mind has been barely covered by our all-too compliant mainstream media.
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Juha Saarinen brings up an unexpected consequence of the TPP which once again favours international sellers.
The TPP also "preserves the free international movement of data", which the USTR tied up with individuals and families being able to do their online shopping "at low cost" among other things.
That sounds like the TPP will sink New Zealand's (and Australian) plans to add goods and services tax to digital goods which, if correct, will delight the likes of Amazon and Apple but local retailers not so much.
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It seems like nothing is going right for Mediaworks these days. Not only are Paul Henry and the Block crashing, but their flagship current affairs show 3D is also tanking. The move from Sunday primetime to a dismal Monday 9:30pm slot saw the average audience drop by three quarters. Attracting a mere 29,500 viewers in their key 25-54 demographic is unsustainable for a commercial channel.
You could get the impression that TV3 has pissed off the audience it once had for intelligent programming. Or should that be "pissed on"?
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Speaker: TPPA: It's Extreme, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
That’s interesting to know for future reference, that just the first bits of the url/address finds the rest, hmmm
Yep… with Stuff only, just tack the story number onto the end of the .co.nz/ and you can give it any name you like. It results in some very interesting links. ;-)
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Speaker: TPPA: It's Extreme, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Cutting and pasting my link does work, and it looks so much more appropriate in the browser address bar. ;-)
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Associated Press have modified their style guide. From now on the expressions "climate change denier" and "climate change skeptic" are verboten. The AP's new term for those who wilfully choose to ignore overwhelming scientific evidence is "Climate doubter" which is so much softer and fluffier, don't you think?