A 14th round of Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade and investment negotiations begins in Virginia, U.S.A. this week as scorn for the agreement's proposed intellectual property chapter piles up. To be fair, that scorn is almost entirely aimed at the United States' positions on patent and other monopoly protections for pharmaceutical firms, as well as on copyright and Internet rules, which civil society observers and even other TPP negotiating countries see as regressive, unnecessary, dangerous to public health and harmful of online privacy and innovation.

According to the Toronto Star's Internet law columnist Michael Geist, Canada and the European Union are trying to ratify the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement through the backdoor, by including almost all its Internet and enforcement provisions in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).