WikiLeaks Releases Details Of 'One Of The Worst Global Threats To The Internet'

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, a highly secretive trade agreement that Internet advocates call "one of the worst global threats to the Internet," got a little less secret Wednesday.

WikiLeaks obtained and released what is allegedly the TPP's most recent draft of its most controversial section: the Intellectual Property chapter.

The TPP is negotiated in secret, like all major international trade deals. But what gets activists particularly riled up is that public advocates, activists, and journalists are barred from negotiations, but corporate lobbyists are given some access.

The reason that activists so fear the TPP's IP provisions is that it would force its 12 member nations—which include the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Oceania, and several Latin American and Asian countries—to abide by the same copyright standard, even if those countries don't actually have such tough laws on the books. In turn, that could mean that those countries more strictly police their own citizens' Internet use in service of corporations—a practice that, as veteran activists who fought the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) would tell you, would lead to Internet censorship.