Talk:Trade in Services Agreement/Archive 1

Archive 1

Secrecy Comments

The article currently says: "Regarding the secrecy of the draft, Professor Kelsey commented: "The secrecy of negotiating documents exceeds even the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and runs counter to moves in the WTO towards greater openness."[5] Johnston adds, "It is impossible to obey a law or know how it affects you when the law is secret."[7]"

It is clear, however, on the face of the document that it is the leaked negotiation draft that is to be "classified" for five years, and that there are no provisions therein suggesting that the treaty itself will become a "secret law" (as though that was somehow possible). Nonetheless, the quoted expert did actually write those words--I checked. Apart from exposing Johnson's comical misunderstanding of the document he has supposedly studied in detail, does his quote belong in the article? JZH (talk) 22:57, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

@JZH: The Johnson comment doesn't add any extra understanding, and could potentially mislead. A couple of points, at what stage was the agreement to be made public? Is the agreement enforceable in retrospect? Jonpatterns (talk) 08:40, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea, but if it is like other trade agreements, the agreement will be made public when the negotiations have concluded. The article is titled "Trade Services Agreement", but most of the text relates to the leaked negotiation draft--which is not an agreement of any kind. At this point all we have seen is the negotiation draft and some strongly held speculation about what the resulting agreement might include--assuming the process continues to its conclusion and produces a final treaty document. JZH (talk) 19:10, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

@JZH: The proposed agreement should be put to the electorate, otherwise the negotiators could be asking for something they didn't want. I think a draft of the proposal gives a reasonable idea of what kind of things will be included.Jonpatterns (talk) 17:27, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Radical interpretation

This seems like a radical interpretation of the text

The agreement bans government mandates for use of open source software, stating "No Party may require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition of providing services related to such software in its territory."[12] The open source word processing application LibreOffice has been deployed by many local governments throughout the EU to save money.[13][14][15][16]

It seems more likely it says that they cannot compel the source code from closed sourced initiative in exchange (quid pro quo) for "providing services related to such software". And this one example, which has source code that is already out (and needs not be compelled) doe not require *four* references.

Thoughts? Kassorlae 16:50, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Source code of software

This part of the text:

"The open source word processing application LibreOffice has been deployed by many local governments throughout the EU to save money"

Cutting costs is unrelated to the rest of the section on open source software. Although some of the links are relevant. I edited the section accordingly. --Rougieux (talk) 14:35, 17 September 2015 (UTC)