"..new draft gives some countries extra time to implement the agreement – meaning that current governments won’t necessarily have to carry the can for their decisions. “Developing countries are being asked to accept very restrictive standards for intellectual property in return for transition periods that defer the harm until current governments are no longer held accountable,”.."
Immediate disclosure of drafts also makes it harder to close on the deal. You enable compromise by letting each government save face over its defeats. Releasing the draft versions after four years is already heavily tilted toward transparency.
That's an interesting point. But I don't think the EFF, for example, really feels that strongly about whether negotiations are conducted publicly or not. They're worried about the intellectual property provisions that are expected to be part of the deal. Secret negotiations is just another line of attack. That kind of mentality doesn't even have to be conscious; it's pretty widespread in politics.
In a world of near-instant feedback channels, should the public (who may become criminals under the proposed agreement) have any opportunity to comment on the proposals?
In which institutions can society debate where to draw the line between the benefits of negotiating "secretly" vs. the benefits of legitimizing the agreement in the eyes of the public?
Given that some details of the agreements are already public, i.e. they no longer have negotiating value, can a democratic society avail itself of the benefits of debating the already-public subset?
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/387elg/wikileaks_...
As you can see, there is a huge range.