Mickey Mouse protection, the TPP and why America remains unequal

According to a new book called Saving Capitalism, what's wrong with the American economic system has a lot to do with the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act."

And rather than rescuing capitalism, the newly announced Trans-Pacific Partnership deal may simply perpetuate the problems identified by the book's author, public intellectual and former U.S. labour secretary Robert Reich.

Reich's Mickey Mouse act is actually called the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. Reich notes that unlike the original purpose of copyright rules, the law does nothing to encourage authors by protecting their efforts during their lifetime. It extends copyright so that a work's rights expire another lifetime after the author.

Instead, he says, the new law was created because under existing rules, Mickey would have gone into the public domain in 2003 at a huge cost to the giant Disney Corporation.

From the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which shields the firearms industry from lawsuits by bereft family members, to laws that let companies charge high rates for slow internet, Reich offers a depressing litany of rules made by governments for the sole purpose of protecting rich corporations at the expense of the American public.

"Contrary to the conventional view of an American economy bubbling with innovative small companies, the reality is quite different," Reich writes.

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http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/robert-reich-saving-capitalism-tpp-1.3256940