We made something for you

Imagine you could speak out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) threat to Internet freedom, and have your comments projected on the walls in front of TPP officials. That’s exactly what we at OpenMedia are working overtime to accomplish. Closed-door TPP meetings take place this week in Leesburg, Virginia, where officials will continue developing a plan to impose new Internet restrictions, including consumer fines and website blocking.1 It’s not just unfair, it’s undemocratic.

Imagine you could speak out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) threat to Internet freedom, and have your comments projected on the walls in front of TPP officials. That’s exactly what we at OpenMedia are working overtime to accomplish.

Closed-door TPP meetings take place this week in Leesburg, Virginia, where officials will continue developing a plan to impose new Internet restrictions, including consumer fines and website blocking.¹ It’s not just unfair, it’s undemocratic.

In response to their attempts to shut out citizens,² we’ve created an easy-to-use tool to get your views in front of TPP officials. I hope you’ll use it today: http://OpenTheTPP.net

Supporters of our StopTheTrap.net Coalition have a space in the TPP’s “stakeholder engagement” session this Sunday, September 9th. There, they’ll project citizen comments—including tweets and pictures—on the walls inside the TPP negotiations.

Enter your comments using our online tool, and we’ll put them on display inside the TPP meeting space.

Recent expert analysis³ shows that the TPP’s Internet trap would let Big Media push your ISP to “filter all Internet communications” and “block access to websites”, including those that host our content and our daily communications.

Yet thanks to people like you who are speaking out, politicians are beginning to take notice. Recently, the Green Parties of New Zealand, Australia, and our own Green Party of Canada, released a firm joint statement calling the TPP the “end of a free Internet”.

If we speak up, we can stop this extreme agreement from passing—in fact, the TPP was only created because citizens have so successfully stopped similar schemes at national levels.⁴

Let’s open the TPP together. Add your comment now >>>

- Steve, on behalf of your OpenMedia team

P.S. OpenMedia is a unique non-profit organization working to amplify citizen voices to safeguard Internet freedom. Please consider chipping in today so we can continue standing up for your digital rights.

Footnotes

[1] Public interest groups have obtained the February 2011 draft of the TPP's Intellectual Property Rights Chapter and the TPP text on copyright Limitations and Exceptions. The text shows that the TPP would criminalize many everyday uses of the Internet, and give Big Media more Internet lockdown powers.

[2] The TPP suffers from a lack of transparency, public participation, and democratic accountability. In this letter, a number of U.S. civil society organizations detail and decry the opacity of the process. More recently, in this post, the Electronic Frontier Foundation decried further restrictions to public participation in the coming round of negotiations.

[3] See analysis from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, or infojustice.org.

[4] In Canada, for example, OpenMedia worked with citizens across the country to lead the biggest online campaign in Canadian history, Stop The Meter, which took steps toward Internet affordability. Additionally, public outcry in Canada has thus far stopped online spying bill C-30. Other examples include the SOPA fight in the US, and the successful campaign for Internet openness (Net Neutrality) rules in Chile.