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We welcome our US IP overlords... don't we?

The USA's days as "the world superpower" are likely coming to an end.

China's prowess as an economic mover and shaker continues to grow and other Asian nations are also seeing good growth figures -- while the USA continues to stagnate.

One only has to look at the changing size of NZ export markets to see that the USA, although still significant, is becoming less and less important compared to our Asian trading partners.

Never the less, we seem to be fixated on forging trade agreements with the USA that will never deliver what we hope but will involve foregoing our right to self-determination in many areas, especially that of intellectual property.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement holds out the promise of greatly increased trade between its partner nations (The USA, Australia, Chile, Singapore, Malaysia and Singapore -- but that comes at a significant price.

That price is effectively ceding a huge amount of control over our IP laws to the USA.

Should we be prepared to hand over this level of control and if we do, what will be the result?

Well first up, you can kiss goodbye to parallel importing.

No more cheap DVDs, TVs, appliances, jeans and other "brand name" items.

Local licensees will be able to have parallel imports banned. Perfectly genuine items for which the manufacturer has been paid in full, will no longer be able to be imported and sold here as they presently are.

Attempts to perform parallel importing will likely be policed by Customs officers and when detected. will be forfeit to the authorised NZ agent.

More worryingly perhaps will be the forced adoption of US copyright laws in ways that over-ride our own copyright legislation and which cold well affect Net users.

Many of the protections consumers currently have now will be removed and things as simple as format-shifting your CD collection to MP3 could (once again) become illegal.

Fortunately, in an uncharacteristic display of backbone, NZ's trade officials and negotiators have thus-far stood firm on retaining our own copyright laws but I fear that with the prospect of more open access to US markets for some of our exports, this resolve will weaken and we may find ourselves effectively just another state of the USA as it sinks from "sole superpower" status.

Mind you, the option of hooking up with China is not much more appealing -- their human rights record is every bit as bad as the USA's (Camp delta anyone?).

Maybe the best way to gain the upper hand in such negotiations is to ensure that we have the products these countries want. Perhaps it is finally time to get on with the business of harnessing the smarts of all these Kiwis and coming up with some ground-breaking new technologies and products that we can use as a tool for doing what the USA is trying to do to us... dictate the terms and conditions of a trade agreement.

Cue Tui's ad.

Nah... that's "too hard" and we all know that our politicians immediately shy away from anything that requires actually doing the hard things.

Let's just raise taxes, reduce spending and hike politician's salaries again. It's never worked before but, if it's done regularly enough, it has to work eventually - right?

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