Cultural heritage that they want to take from the public domain

MacArthur Lake, Yoho Park (1924). The work of James MacDonald, a Canadian artist, a member of the Group of Seven, one of the founders of national Canadian painting

Have you heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership? If it were not for Wikileaks, almost no one knew about this organization.

Trans-Pacific Partnership is an international trade and economic organization, which is planned to be established, whose goal is to create a free trade zone in the Asia-Pacific region. In November 2013, a draft of the TPP secret agreement was published on Wikileaks .

Among other things, TPP provides for new minimum terms for copyright protection: no less than 70 years after the death of the author (Mexico proposes 100 years). The United States pushes countries to set a copyright term of 95 years for corporate work and 120 years for unpublished work. The document provides for the unification of legislation to combat violations in the field of intellectual property, as well as rules to regulate the Internet.
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At the same time, the United States is preparing a similar Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement with the European Union.

As soon as the documents appeared on Wikileaks, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) made an official statement on this matter. He condemned the increase in copyright terms and the fact that the US Trade Representation is discussing them without consulting the public. Indeed, in this case, the interests of corporations, but not of society, will be taken into account.

Now the EFF has decided to pay attention to the problem again. He published a gallery of several artworks that will disappear from the public domain for 20 years if the TPP agreement enters into force.

Among the “lost” works for 20 years there will be very valuable things for the national cultures of their countries - Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei. For example, in Japan there is a project to digitize national literature. The project is called Aozora Bunko - Blue Sky Library. Over the past couple of years, they have solemnly listed writers, philosophers, and poets whose works have become free. All this work will have to be removed from online for decades.

It would seem, what do we care about Vietnam and Brunei? The problem is that international legislation will be unified, and the increased duration of the copyright will necessarily impose on other countries. In addition, media corporations, inspired by the success, will begin to prepare the ground for the next increase in deadlines, which they have done more than once.