Free Trade Agreements, and the future of Australian ideas and technology

Before you read on, a note about me, so that you won't simply dismiss what you read (should you be so inclined) as some "left wing" "anti-US" diatribe.
I am a real capitalist (that is someone who has risked and continues to risk their capital to build an Australian business that develops and sells software and other intellectual property. 95% of our sales are overseas.)

Despite this, I believe the recent US/Australian "free trade agreement" (which is not about free trade, and is no more an agreement than the schoolyard bully and the wimpy nerdy guy "agreeing" that the wimpy guy give all his pocket money to the bully) undermines Australia's ability to adapt to the profoundly changing legal, technical and business landscape created by the current revolutions in intellectual property (IP) thrown up by the increasing digitization of the processes of creation, distribution and use of IP, from software to music to cinema and beyond.

The effect of the IP provisions (patent, trademark, copyright) of this agreement is to "harmonise" Australian and US IP law.
OK, a quick question.
Does that mean the US will adopt Australian copyright, trademark and patent laws?
No
Does that mean that the US and Australia will adopt a negotiated middle ground approach?
No
Does that mean Australia will adopt US copyright, trademark and patent laws?
Now you are getting the picture.

See what I mean about the bully and the pocket money?

And by the way, does that mean if I have an Australian Trademark or Patent it will be recognized in the US? Do I have to even answer that? You should be getting it by now. If I want an extravagantly expensive US patent or trademark, my Australian one is of no good to me whatsoever.

Now, this is not simply a theoretical issue. US IP laws, both copyright, with the appalling DCMA, and the forthcoming truly Orwellian INDUCE act, as well as genuinely out of control US patent law, means that we will have laws foistered on us about which we have no right to debate or decide, laws framed in the interest of US companies, and the US government, laws which may very well be inimical to the interest of Australia and Australians. With essentially nothing we can do about it.

And you think whoever entered this agreement has the interests of Australian industry, consumers, and indeed Australia at heart? The most charitable thing you can say about Nick Minchin, and the rest of those who signed off on this travesty is that they are profoundly ignorant about technology and intellectual property issues. That's bad enough for me. In a profoundly technological age, technological ignorance alone should disqualify you from government.

The world is waking up to just how one sided, and economically damaging these IP laws can be.
The INDUCE act, now before US congress,

... will criminalize the act of inducing another to commit a copyright violation. This is a brand new theory of copyright liability, which, as this floor statement makes clear, is directed at overturning SONY [the 1984 US supreme court case that holds it is not illegal to sell a technology that allows copyright infringement provided it also enables a "substantial, non-infringing use", i.e. stuff that isn't illegal] with respect to p2p. [peer to peer copying]

Laurence Lessig, foremost US expert in IP law.

It has been persuasively argued that the INDUCE act would make the iPod and all such devices illegal.
And yet we want to sign on to this nonsense?

In Europe, a vigorous opposition to the extension of patents to software and business processes, that is simply out of control in the US, has emerged. But here? We meekly fall into line with the US, as we seem to do about so many other issues. With our IP laws "harmonised" with the US, we have no way of making decisions in the interests of Australia when it comes to this rapidly changing, unsettled aspect of culture, technology and law. We have simply abandoned our rights as a society to make decisions in our interests.

Much has been said of late about things being unAustralian, If anything qualifies as "unAustralian" it is this.

It deeply disappoints me the the Labour Party simply capitulated on this. Yes, I know it is kind of complex stuff, difficult to communicate in sound bites, but it is stuff that impacts daily on people's lives, from the price of medicines (which the ALP did touch on) to whether someone can legally buy a multi-region recording DVD player.
But it appalls me that the Liberal Australian Government has simply handed over to the US the right to make laws regarding copyright and patents to the US congress, a body which above all represents the interests of US business (often congressional bills are written by lawyers working for US corporations - the US economic sanctions of Cuba were introduced by the Helms-Burton Act, essentially written by lawyers for Bacardi Rum).

If you believe it is remotely important for Australia to be able to make its own decisions about the social and business implications of the changing nature of intellectual property and technology in our own country, then ask yourself, is that remotely possible with this present government?
And should there be a change of government, we have to get to work to make the next government reverse this wholesale sell-out of our national interest.