A good piece by Al-Jazeera on the deal which will guarantee prosperity for everyone and yet cannot be seen by the public until such time it becomes impossible to oppose.

Seriously, it's hard to sympathise with people's current economic difficulties when so few are willing to do anything more than scrawl an X on some ballot paper once every four years.

A ton of whining and moaning achieves nothing in the face of a deal so stupendously inimical to the public interest they're cloaking it in secrecy. Unless folk get off their asses and make their voices heard they're forever destined to be victims. What's more - they deserve to be.

A good piece by Al-Jazeera on the deal which will guarantee prosperity for everyone and yet cannot be seen by the public until such time it becomes impossible to oppose.

Seriously, it's hard to sympathise with people's current economic difficulties when so few are willing to do anything more than scrawl an X on some ballot paper once every four years.

A ton of whining and moaning achieves nothing in the face of a deal so stupendously inimical to the public interest they're cloaking it in secrecy. Unless folk get off their asses and make their voices heard they're forever destined to be victims. What's more - they deserve to be.

It gets better than that, or maybe it goes hand in hand, but there is currently a prequel to a congressional hearing for a revision of copyright laws in visual media in the USA which will also affect international copyright in a way that there may as well be no copyright laws, its summarised here http://www.workbook.com/blog/31354.

Basically if you are an artist, graphic designer, illustrator or work in any form of creative artwork your copyright in any work is guaranteed from the day you create it until at least 70 years after your death, this happens without any need to record your work although of course you'd need to identify it and prove that you created it if challenged.

What they are pushing for in the USA is that you will have to register each work with an approved registrar (we're guessing here that you'll pay for the privilege) and if you do not then it becomes known as "orphan work" and orphan work can be used by anyone in any publication they choose without having to pay to do so, they simply have to claim "good faith" in using your work because it wasn't on a register.

Worse than that anyone who finds orphan work can alter it slightly and register it in their own name, very simple to do with digital images, so your work now belongs to someone else and they now have the only rights to license it.

Congress are currently gathering views on such legislation and the last time they pushed for this it was thrown out but if its ever approved then that is the end of copyright law as we know it for its proposed to apply retrospectively and internationally, so an advertising agency in America wants to use an image of yours and you haven't registered (and paid) for it on any American copyright database then tough, they'll use it free of charge and if the campaign is successful they'll register it in their own name.

Its free enterprise let loose on the world with no control or reins to pull in, driven by greed and money making opportunities it happens now in Russia and China for political reasons, in the USA its money driven and thats what talks.

It gets better than that, or maybe it goes hand in hand, but there is currently a prequel to a congressional hearing for a revision of copyright laws in visual media in the USA which will also affect international copyright in a way that there may as well be no copyright laws, its summarised here http://www.workbook.com/blog/31354.

Basically if you are an artist, graphic designer, illustrator or work in any form of creative artwork your copyright in any work is guaranteed from the day you create it until at least 70 years after your death, this happens without any need to record your work although of course you'd need to identify it and prove that you created it if challenged.

What they are pushing for in the USA is that you will have to register each work with an approved registrar (we're guessing here that you'll pay for the privilege) and if you do not then it becomes known as "orphan work" and orphan work can be used by anyone in any publication they choose without having to pay to do so, they simply have to claim "good faith" in using your work because it wasn't on a register.

Worse than that anyone who finds orphan work can alter it slightly and register it in their own name, very simple to do with digital images, so your work now belongs to someone else and they now have the only rights to license it.

Congress are currently gathering views on such legislation and the last time they pushed for this it was thrown out but if its ever approved then that is the end of copyright law as we know it for its proposed to apply retrospectively and internationally, so an advertising agency in America wants to use an image of yours and you haven't registered (and paid) for it on any American copyright database then tough, they'll use it free of charge and if the campaign is successful they'll register it in their own name.

Its free enterprise let loose on the world with no control or reins to pull in, driven by greed and money making opportunities it happens now in Russia and China for political reasons, in the USA its money driven and thats what talks.

We will have our chance to stop TTIP in June 2016 or some time next year when we have the referendum on membership of the EU. It will be interesting to see how many so called left-wingers vote to stay in the crony capitalist EU club - Jeremy Corbyn has already said that he will campaign to remain in an organisation that makes the poor poorer and the rich richer.

We will have our chance to stop TTIP in June 2016 or some time next year when we have the referendum on membership of the EU. It will be interesting to see how many so called left-wingers vote to stay in the crony capitalist EU club - Jeremy Corbyn has already said that he will campaign to remain in an organisation that makes the poor poorer and the rich richer.