One specific part I don't like is that it would require signatories to enforce a DMCA-like ban on circumvention of DRM mechanisms. The US already has such a ban, but putting it in a treaty makes it worse (harder to repeal), and it would create one in countries which don't already have one. In general the intellectual-property related provisions seem not good to me, almost exclusively in the direction of more restrictions on what regular people can do with their data and devices.
There's essentially no enforcement of copyright law in many of the signatory states. Yes DRM kind of sucks, but rampant piracy also kind of sucks. The way the US does it I think is closer to optimal than the way Vietnam does it. That's why Google calls the provisions "balanced copyright enforcement."
That is false. Vietnam does not count as "many". As far as enforcement goes, Japan could be said to have stricter enforcement than the US, recently non-commercial infringers actually being arrested by the police and facing imprisonment (I'm not aware of anyone being actually imprisoned yet) for downloading files on Share or Winny.
But this is all red herring since the TPP does not set any goals for measuring actual ENFORCEMENT, it only imposes new IP laws outside of the democratic process, with zero transparency, all while claiming to be a "free trade treaty".
Let's make it clear: Copyright laws have nothing to do with free trade. Let's suppose for a moment the US Copyright law is anywhere near "balanced" (and Canada is a caribbean pirate cove, as xxAA groups and the USTR love to claim). That still has nothing to do with Free Trade. If the Obama administration really wants to use TPP to fix all of the world's evils as they see them, why not push signatories to accept LGBT marriage for instance?
How exactly does putting a provision in a treaty make it harder to repeal? The same actions that ratify the treaty (for instance, passing an enabling domestic law) can be used to break it.
Because it's no longer as simple as repealing/passing a domestic law but in addition to that becomes an issue of reneging on an agreement with other nations. In practice maybe we don't respect treaties very much, but it does seem to be an additional barrier, at least in the public discourse about what laws to repeal/pass.
This is the theory that the EU tries to push on it's member states. They have accepted that international treaties carry greater weight than the local laws and even the constitution of the local countries :
As to whether it applies to all treaties or just the EU ones, ... good question. In practice courts haven't really followed it.
Also, just as a data point, I've been working in Brussels for close to 20 years now and seen the evolution. I work as a consultant, so it has been a mixed bag for me. However, for just about everyone else, workers, middle class, business owners, ... it has been a consistently worsening disaster.
Having regularly worked for the EU commission, let me tell you this : any idea you may have that this organization has anything but their own economic interests at heart can be cured by chatting with one of them for 5 minutes.
It's like how the US is slightly less likely to unilaterally legalize marijuana at the federal level, it is signatory to several UN treaties which forbid it from doing so.
The point is that something that is included as part and parcel of a treaty may involve breaking the treaty and suffering all kinds of other consequences.
