Sen. Ron Wyden’s town hall meetings over the weekend included an expected guest: a blimp floating outside urging him to “Save the Internet. Stop Fast Track.”
It was the latest effort by liberal opponents of President Obama’s trade agenda to sway key undecided Democrats such as Wyden. The activists picked an issue the Oregon senator has passionately advocated: Internet freedom. It’s one that even some free-trade advocates concede is a problem for the president’s trade push.
“Sen. Wyden is currently engaged in negotiations with key Republicans like Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, to produce a ‘fast track,’ a.k.a. Trade Promotion Authority, bill,” said Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future, the advocacy group that crashed the senator’s events. “Without fast track approval, it’s very likely that the [Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama’s other top trade agenda item] will stall. If Senator Wyden does the right thing and refuses to cut a deal with Republicans to fast track the TPP, the Internet will be a better place.”
The senator’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Wyden is the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, where Hatch is chairman. The committee has jurisdiction over international trade deals.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a proposed 12-nation trade pact involving Pacific Rim countries, including the U.S. The international negotiations are winding down and President Obama is expected to submit the deal to Congress for approval in the spring, though he is widely expected to request a renewed version of fast track — which prohibits Congress from amending the deals, limiting it to an up or down vote on trade — first. The White House has said fast track is necessary to give the White House leverage in future trade negotiations by assuring foreign countries that the deals they agree to won’t be tinkered with by Congress.
The claim that the Pacific Rim deal is bad for the Internet is based primarily on the deal, based on documents posted to Wikileaks, including stringent intellectual property and copyright protection laws sought by business, particularly the entertainment industry.
“Leaked texts have confirmed again and again that the TPP contains Hollywood’s wish list of anti-user policies — the result of years of lobbying and schmoozing with trade delegates. What they want is the most restrictive interpretation of U.S. policy to become the international ‘norm’ by which all other TPP countries will be forced to conform their national laws,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a liberal “digital civil liberties” group.
The supposed provisions mainly involve making various U.S. intellectual property laws the norm in the among the trade signatories. These include adopting the U.S. copyright length — the life of the author plus 70 years — and copyright infringement standards. The trade pact reportedly also would require adopting U.S. legal standards for digital rights management, i.e., the ability of companies to control the availability of online content. All this would limit the freedom of information on the Internet, critics argue.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Scott Lincicome, trade policy analyst with the free market Cato Institute, said the potential impact to the Internet from the trade deal’s intellectual property provisions was a legitimate cause for concern, but not enough in his opinion to scuttle the whole deal. He cautioned that the final version has not been made public so it is not clear what it actually includes, adding that if there is anybody who does know what is really in the deal, it’s Wyden, the famously wonky Oregon senator.
Even if the Trans-Pacific Partnership were found to have objectionable provisions, Lincicome adds, that would not be a reason to reject fast track, which is a separate matter.
“Maybe there are provisions in TPP that a guy like Ron Wyden is simply not going to be able to support. That shouldn’t have an impact on TPA,” Lincicome said, adding that while passing fast track would likely ease passage of the Pacific pact, it doesn’t guarantee it. So, there’s no reason why Wyden cannot still support the former if he opposes the latter, he argued.
This is not the first time that Internet freedom proponents have appealed to Wyden on trade issues. Last year, a coalition of 25 Internet companies including Reddit, Imgur and Fark sent him a letter urging him to oppose the Pacific deal.
“Based on what we’ve seen in leaked copies of the proposed text, we are particularly concerned about the U.S. Trade Representative’s proposals around copyright enforcement. Dozens of digital rights organizations and tens of thousands of individuals have raised alarm over provisions that would bind treaty signatories to inflexible digital regulations that undermine free speech,” the letter said.
