A group of scientists believe they’ve uncovered at least some of the genetic risk factors that can contribute to a common health concern among men: erectile dysfunction. Their findings, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, have possibly identified a specific place in our genome linked…
Australian scientists have discovered a previously unknown chain of volcanic seamounts near Tasmania. The area appears to be brimming with marine life, including a surprising number of whales who may be using the undersea volcanoes as a navigational tool.
On her way she met a copy. The copy warned the Little Blind Text, that where it came from it would have been rewritten a thousand times and everything that was left from its origin would be the word “and” and the Little Blind Text should turn around and return to its own, safe country.
A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn’t listen.
On the topic of alignment, it should be noted that users can choose from the options of None, Left, Right, and Center. In addition, they also get the options of Thumbnail, Medium, Large & Fullsize.
And if she hasn’t been rewritten, then they are still using her. Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia.
A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine. I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents.
But nothing the copy said could convince her and so it didn’t take long until a few insidious Copy Writers ambushed her, made her drunk with Longe and Parole and dragged her into their agency, where they abused her for their projects again and again.
The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.
Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth.
A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn’t listen.
Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull weather. Drops of rain could be heard hitting the pane, which made him feel quite sad. “How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense”, he thought, but that was something he was unable to do because he was used to sleeping on his right, and in his present state couldn’t get into that position. However hard he threw himself onto his right, he always rolled back to where he was.
One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked. “What’s happened to me? ” he thought. It wasn’t a dream.
Intro text we refine our methods of responsive web design, we’ve increasingly focused on measure and its relationship to how people read.
A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn’t listen.
On the topic of alignment, it should be noted that users can choose from the options of None, Left, Right, and Center. In addition, they also get the options of Thumbnail, Medium, Large & Fullsize.
And if she hasn’t been rewritten, then they are still using her. Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia.
A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul
On her way she met a copy. The copy warned the Little Blind Text, that where it came from it would have been rewritten a thousand times and everything that was left from its origin would be the word “and” and the Little Blind Text should turn around and return to its own, safe country.A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine. I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents.
But nothing the copy said could convince her and so it didn’t take long until a few insidious Copy Writers ambushed her, made her drunk with Longe and Parole and dragged her into their agency, where they abused her for their projects again and again.
Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth.
A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table – Samsa was a travelling salesman – and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer.
Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull weather. Drops of rain could be heard hitting the pane, which made him feel quite sad. “How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense”, he thought, but that was something he was unable to do because he was used to sleeping on his right, and in his present state couldn’t get into that position. However hard he threw himself onto his right, he always rolled back to where he was.
One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked. “What’s happened to me? ” he thought. It wasn’t a dream.
His room, a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table – Samsa was a travelling salesman – and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame.
Before you get started, please be sure to always search this Documentation, and also watch our Video Tutorials. If you have further questions beyond the scope of this Documentation, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’ll do our very best to reply as promptly as possible.
It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth. One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment.
It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer. Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull weather. Drops of rain could be heard hitting the pane, which made him feel quite sad.
Intro text we refine our methods of responsive web design, we’ve increasingly focused on measure and its relationship to how people read.
A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn’t listen.
On the topic of alignment, it should be noted that users can choose from the options of None, Left, Right, and Center. In addition, they also get the options of Thumbnail, Medium, Large & Fullsize.
And if she hasn’t been rewritten, then they are still using her. Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia.
A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul
On her way she met a copy. The copy warned the Little Blind Text, that where it came from it would have been rewritten a thousand times and everything that was left from its origin would be the word “and” and the Little Blind Text should turn around and return to its own, safe country.A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine. I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents.
But nothing the copy said could convince her and so it didn’t take long until a few insidious Copy Writers ambushed her, made her drunk with Longe and Parole and dragged her into their agency, where they abused her for their projects again and again.
Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth.
A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table – Samsa was a travelling salesman – and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer.
Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull weather. Drops of rain could be heard hitting the pane, which made him feel quite sad. “How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense”, he thought, but that was something he was unable to do because he was used to sleeping on his right, and in his present state couldn’t get into that position. However hard he threw himself onto his right, he always rolled back to where he was.
One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked. “What’s happened to me? ” he thought. It wasn’t a dream.
His room, a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table – Samsa was a travelling salesman – and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame.
Before you get started, please be sure to always search this Documentation, and also watch our Video Tutorials. If you have further questions beyond the scope of this Documentation, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’ll do our very best to reply as promptly as possible.
It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth. One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment.
It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer. Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull weather. Drops of rain could be heard hitting the pane, which made him feel quite sad.
Using an airborne laser mapping technique called lidar, an international team of archaeologists has uncovered an astounding number of previously undetected structures belonging to the ancient Maya civilization—a discovery that’s changing what we know of this remarkable society.
Attorney Michael Avenatti on Wednesday dropped a new bombshell in the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court case — a woman who claims she was the victim of a gang rape by Kavanaugh and others in his social circle.
In a sworn statement posted on Avenatti’s Twitter account, witness Julie Swetnick says that she saw Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge target women for sexual assault.
“During the years 1981-82, I became aware of efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to ‘spike’ the ‘punch’ at house parties I attended with drugs and/or grain alcohol so as to cause girls to lose their inhibitions and their ability to say ‘No,'” Swetnick says in her statement. “I also witnessed efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room.”
Swetnick also says that she herself became a victim of gang rape in 1982 — and she says that she told two other people what had happened “shortly after the incident.”
“During the incident, I was incapacitated without my consent and unable to fight off the boys raping me,” she says. “I believe I was drugged using Quaaludes or something similar placed in what I was drinking.”
“This is it,” Mark Zuckerberg said to a crowd of developers and press at Facebook’s annual VR developers conference, Oculus Connect. “This is the all-in-one VR experience that we have been waiting for. It’s wireless, its got hand presence, 6 degrees of freedom, and it runs Rift-quality experiences.”
These kids shared way too much, and we're very grateful for it.
Submitted by:
Update: We posted this 55" TV at $300 a few weeks ago, and it promptly sold out. It’s back in stock today at $320, but the 49" is also on sale for $250.
Sunglass Warehouse has some of the best pricing out there, but they’ve amped it up for Labor Day with 40% off sitewide with promo code LABORDAY40. A bunch of options, even polarized ones, are only about $15 before the discount, so we’re really talking about impulse pricing here.
Jabra’s Elite 65Ts might just be the best true-wireless headphones out there. In addition to their excellent five hours of battery (plus 15 with the charging case), they feature some of the best microphones in class for calls, compatibility with all the major voice assistants, and even a two year dust and water…
If you like a little Google on your wrist, it’s time to start obsessively checking for software updates. According to Google, Wear OS users are getting a big update within the next month that will add (and change) gesture controls on your smartwatch, beef up Google Assistant, and make it easier to track your fitness.
An entire industry—with its own spokespeople, podcasts, best-sellers, retreats, truisms, etc.—has sprung up around sleep. Give or take a contrarian or two, the message of most of this stuff seems to be that sleep is good, and that if you’re not sleeping seven or eight hours a night, you should be. And since you’re…
Camping hammocks are the ultimate chill out spot to sleep, nap, or simply take in the view. Although they seem pretty straightforward, there’s a forest of options in terms of weight, material, setup styles, and more. So we ask, which hammock is your favorite campsite companion?
Imagine that someone you care about is procrastinating in advance of a vital exam. If he fails the test, he will not be able to go to university, an eventuality of major consequence in his life. If positive encouragement doesn’t work, you might reverse strategy, making your friend feel so bad, so worried, so scared, that the only strategy left is that he starts studying like mad.
Sometimes, the only way to help someone seems to be a cruel or nasty approach – a strategy that may leave the ‘helper’ feeling guilty and wrong. Now researchfrom my team at the Liverpool Hope University in the UK sheds light on how the process works.
We typically equate positive emotions with positive consequences, and there’s research to back that up. Numerous studies of interpersonal emotion regulation – how one person can change or influence the emotions of another – emphasise the value of increasing positive emotions and decreasing negative ones. Other studies show that making someone feel badly can be useful: anger is helpful when confronting a cheater, and hurting another’s feelings can give them an edge in a game.
Now, my team has documented the routine use of cruelty for altruistic reasons. To validate the phenomenon, we hypothesised the need for three conditions: the motivation to worsen someone’s mood needs to be altruistic; the negative emotion inflicted on the other person should help them achieve a specific goal; and the person inflicting the pain must feel empathy for the recipient.
To test what we call altruistic affect-worsening, we recruited 140 adults and told them that they were being paired with another, anonymous participant to play a computer game for a possible prize of £50 in Amazon vouchers – though in reality, there was no ‘partner’. Prior to play, participants were asked to read a personal statement ostensibly written by their opponent about a painful romantic breakup. Some participants were told to put themselves in the opponent’s shoes; others were instructed to remain detached, thus manipulating the degree of empathy felt towards the presumed competitor. Participants played one of two video games: in one, Soldier of Fortune, players had to kill as many enemies as possible and the goal was confrontational; in the other, Escape Dead Island, players had to escape a roomful of zombies without being killed, and the goal was one of avoidance.
After practising alone for five minutes, participants were asked to decide how the game should be presented to their opponents. Those who empathised more strongly with their opponents asked the experimenters to make the opponent angry for the confrontational game and fearful for the escape game – both states of mind that would give the opponent a higher shot at winning the prize.
Our study shows that the tendency to make another feel bad to help him succeed is far more prevalent when the provocateur feels empathy. What’s more, and especially surprising, is the finding that use of the technique is not random. In the shoot-’em-up game, empathetic participants chose music and images meant to induce anger; in the zombie game, they chose music and images conducive to fear. In both cases, these effects gave the opponents a boost toward winning.
In short, humans intuitively have an excellent sense of which negative emotion will work best as a motivator. And the participants’ actions were absolutely altruistic: they chose to induce emotions that they knew would be beneficial for their opponents to perform well in the games, while reducing their own chance of a prize.
Many questions still remain: is this process present during childhood and adolescence? If not, what factors contribute to its development? What strategies do people use to worsen others’ moods in real interactions? Our study looked at the phenomenon between strangers, but what happens when the protagonist and the opponent are close friends or family members? Other research suggests that, in that circumstance, the motivation to use the strategy could be even more pronounced. Studies that make use of diaries or videos, meanwhile, can shed light on how altruistic interpersonal affect-worsening operates in real life.
Finally, what are the limits of affect-worsening – and can even the most well-meaning, altruistic person end up doing harm? It might be that being cruel is not necessary, and that we are mistaken to think that the other person needs to feel bad in order to achieve long-term wellbeing. Or it could be that the outcome we want will actually worsen the life of the other person. To return to our opening story, perhaps the friend gets into college after prodding, but finds that college is the wrong path for him. Or perhaps the friend is vulnerable, and the strategy that helps him to achieve a goal also lowers his happiness and self-esteem, and provokes a downward spiral nonetheless.
Even if cruelty is effective, is it really the most effective strategy of all? In our original study, participants did not have the option to induce positive emotions in the ostensible opponent. Thus, we were unable to test if participants who experienced higher empathic concern might have wanted to increase their opponents’ wellbeing by inducing positive or happy emotions instead. Our research continues, but one thing is clear: empathising with others leads not only to help and support but also to cruelty. Only further studies will determine how – and if – cruelty can be effective and non-risky for our loved ones and our friends.
This Idea was made possible through the support of a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust to Aeon. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton Religion Trust.
Funders to Aeon Magazine are not involved in editorial decision-making, including commissioning or content-approval.
Belén López-Pérez
This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.
Michael Kors is going back to its roots for the next model in its ever-expanding Access smartwatch line. It's reviving its long-serving Runway watch as a Wear OS smartwatch, giving it the familiar case and steel bracelet options while throwing in new...
I want to share two Chrome extensions that I have started using recently – and I like them!
ZAPinfo (formerly WebClipDrop) is a unique combination of a web scraper combined with data enrichment software. ZAPinfo:
You can find a (substantial) list of sites that ZAPinfo works with here.
Here is a screenshot of a ZAPinfo window with enriched information from a LinkedIn profile of my friend Jim Stroud (hope he doesn’t mind):
Instant Data Scraper by Webrobots.io is a scraper that works amazingly well out-of-the-box. It crawls “listing type” data from multiple pages. The tool uses AI to detect tabular or listing type data on web pages. All you have to do to start scraping is point it to the “Next” button. You can export the results in Excel format.
Here is a screenshot of a site and the Instant Data Scraper export:
You can find videos on both tools on the excellent UnTECH Youtube channel by Bret Feig.
Are you interested in an updated review and comparison of all the top Sourcing Tools available? Check out the webinar “Sourcing Productivity Tools” in our Training Library.
To search for a company employees on Facebook, we need to know the company ID (a long number). Here is how to obtain the ID for a company.
I will be using Google as an example; the hack will work for any company if you replace “google” with your company name in the following steps.
First, let’s look for the page corresponding to our company by searching for Employers named “Google” with this Graph Search link:
https://www.facebook.com/search/str/google/pages-named/employer/pages/intersect/
Here is what it looks like. The arrow in the screenshot points to the most popular result – that is the page for Google. We need to find that pages’ ID.
The URL for the Google company page is https://www.facebook.com/Google/; the ID is not part of it, but we will find it shortly.
To find the ID, let’s go to the company page https://www.facebook.com/Google/. Right-mouse-click on the logo and copy the link for the logo:
The copied link looks like this: https://www.facebook.com/104958162837/photos/10155724905022838/. The middle number on the link (104958162837 in this case) is the company ID! That’s it.
Now we can search for Google employees using the ID, like this:
https://www.facebook.com/search/104958162837/employees
Interested in more sourcing hacks? The webinar “Sourcing Hacks” was sold out in July and we are repeating it soon. Check it out at https://sourcingcertification.com/sourcinghacks/.
A draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership ‘s “Intellectual Property” chapter from May 11, 2015 has recently been leaked to journalists. This is the fourth leak of the chapter following earlier drafts of October 2014, August 2013, and February 2011. The latest leak is not available online and we don’t have a copy of it—but we have been briefed on its contents.
In most respects the chapter follows previous drafts pretty closely; for example, the text on DRM circumvention and copyright term are both largely unchanged. But there is one area in which significant progress has been made since the last draft, and this is in the text on intermediary liability rules . Specifically, the new change involves the immunity that Internet companies enjoy from copyright liability, provided that they satisfy certain safe harbor conditions.
Under the United States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), these safe harbor conditions require Internet intermediaries to comply with a “notice-and-takedown” process. This has seen legitimate content taken off the Internet in response to bogus claims of infringement, as in the famous dancing baby case , as well as being misused for political censorship . Until now, one point of contention among the TPP partners has been whether countries that don’t already have an equivalent to the DMCA’s broken notice-and-takedown rules would be forced to adopt one.
Several of the TPP countries already have systems that are significantly better than the DMCA. For example, Canada’s groundbreaking notice-and-notice regime , which only commenced this year, notifies users of copyright claims without requiring any content to be taken offline automatically. Similarly, Chile has a 2010 notice and judicial-takedown regime that requires a judge to review any takedown before it takes effect. And Japan has something of a hybrid—a judicial order is not required, but takedown requests are verified by a trusted self-regulatory authority before the intermediary acts on them.
The latest leak suggests that the U.S. is now likely to accommodate at least some of these existing intermediary liability regimes, rather than forcing a carbon-copy of the failed DMCA on its TPP partners. The text does enforce a more generalized model of limitation of liability for intermediaries for third party content, and imposes a range of conditions before they qualify for that protection. But those conditions are now broad enough to accommodate a Japanese-style system in which a self-regulatory authority, formed by intermediaries and rightsholders with government involvement, is required to verify notices of claimed infringement before they are acted on.
Chile (supported by Vietnam) has inserted a footnote to this ISP liability text, indicating its proposal that a judicial authority should be required to verify notices of claimed infringement, rather than the self-regulatory authority that Japan proposes. The U.S. has not explicitly noted its objection to that proposal, though this may simply be because as a minority proposal not yet reflected in the main text, it hasn’t yet advanced to the point where the U.S. feels it necessary to express its disagreement. Or perhaps negotiations are still ongoing on this question.
What about Canada? Interestingly, Canada’s system is not accommodated within the main text, but in a separate annex. The annex would exempt a country (such as Canada, implicitly) from the requirement to have a notice-and-takedown system provided that it already has a system in place requiring intermediaries to pass on notices of alleged infringement to their users.
But in exchange for this “leniency”, such a country has several superadded copyright enforcement obligations that other countries do not: most notably, they must also impose secondary liability on intermediaries for services that are primarily used to enable copyright infringement, and must require search engines to remove cached copies of copyright-infringing items after the originals have been removed.
Neither of these are good ideas. Imposing liability on intermediaries for services that can be used to infringe copyright inevitably also ensnares general purpose technologies such as cloud storage services and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). And as for the removal of infringing copies from search engines, the context in which copyright works are presented can raise a case of fair use (or fair dealing, Canada’s equivalent). That is, it may be fair use for a search engine to provide a point-in-time archive of material that it has indexed, even if in its original context that material may have been infringing.
More fundamentally, we worry about this horse-trading of one strict copyright enforcement measure for another. Canada’s notice-and-notice system is not a “second best” alternative to notice-and-takedown, and therefore there is no justification for the TPP to force Canadians to supplement it with additional enforcement measures that could have negative effects of their own.
There are some other notable changes to the draft that are positive, and follow recommendations from the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability . For example:
But despite these few concessions, welcome as they are, the text as a whole is not geared towards dealing adequately with the human rights of users. Why should we expect otherwise? It is, after all, drafted by trade experts, at the direction of trade ministries, informed by corporate-stacked advisory groups who are not interested in freedom of expression and the open Internet , but in greasing the wheels of commerce. These few improvements in the intermediary liability text are just that—grease to allow these intermediary standards to slip past the defenses of the countries that have been resisting the imposition of U.S.-style rules until now.
Intermediary liability rules are much more than a trade issue. It is indeed an issue that deeply impacts human rights—since it is only when they are shielded from liability that intermediaries are appropriately incentivized to foster users’ freedom of expression and freedom of association online. Such rules ought not to be crafted by small groups of trade negotiators behind close doors.
This latest leak indicates that the negotiating countries are coming closer to consensus on common intermediary liability rules. Although that text may be looking better than in previous drafts, the TPP members’ surrender of control over developing such rules to a closed, captured process is not good news. Taken together with the remaining threats from the IP chapter, such as enhanced protection for digital locks, trade secret rules that could be used against journalists and whistleblowers , criminal sanctions for even non-financially motivated but large scale infringement , and the extension of copyright term by 20 years, the case for us to fight the TPP has never been more compelling.
