TPP breathes life into SOPA as Obama appoints Holleyman as chief negotiator

Remember the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)? It was a reckless piece of U.S. legislation that aimed to censor the Internet through extreme copyright enforcement mechanisms. Let’s refresh our memory about SOPA's extreme provisions: Give the U.S. government the power to cripple any website they allege made use of copyrighted materials - Check. Force ISPs to block access to certain websites? - Check. Ban online companies from conducting businesses with "blacklisted" websites? - Check. Further criminalize "alleged" copyright infringement? - Unfortunately, check. SOPA sparked a huge uproar from Internet users and businesses across the U.S. and the world. The response from the Internet was unequivocal - over 7,000 websites including Wikipedia and Google blacked out their pages with hundreds of millions being reached by a day of action against SOPA.

There was a deep, collective sigh of relief among Internet users when SOPA was eventually nixed due to the uproar from Internet advocates and businesses alike. Unfortunately, while the bill itself may have died in Congress, the lobbyists behind it are still milling around Washington, trying to push forward their extreme copyright schemes through whatever avenues are available. And this time, they're trying to piggyback their extreme copyright measures onto the TPP while selling it to the world as a pivotal international trade deal.

At this point, you might be thinking, "so what?" Some observers may think there are just too many issues at stake in the TPP for copyright lobbyists to be able to hold up a deal of this magnitude. Surely there's no way decision-makers would let copyright enforcement block a deal supposedly intended to stimulate our global economy. After all, President Obama did claim that the TPP would "boost exports, create more goods available for our consumers, create new jobs and compete and win in the markets of the future."

But as the Wikileaks documents prove, extreme copyright rules really are a big part of what’s holding up this deal. This speaks volumes about the money, power, and control of the old media conglomerates pushing for these extreme rules. This time the battleground really is the free and open Internet. When you control the way people communicate and interact with one another, you control freedom of speech. Forcing ISPs to monitor our online behaviour and ban entire families from the Internet for alleged copyright violations may seem Orwellian - but these provisions actually exist in the TPP.

For the skeptical, this all may seem hard to believe, but just a few weeks ago President Obama named Robert Holleyman - SOPA's lead lobbyist - as deputy to the USTR to help shepherd the TPP talks towards an end deal. Coincidental? I think not.

What this means is the same people who tried to push SOPA through Congress are back at it again and this time, they’re more determined than ever to finish what SOPA couldn’t. These powerful forces never want to advance their unpopular proposals through democratic debate - instead they try to smuggle them in through secretive trade negotiations. And the man who led the lobbying for SOPA is now conveniently leading the TPP negotiations for the U.S.

The TPP is the perfect example of the lengths these lobbyists will go to in order to censor the Internet. What’s even worse than their greed for power and control is that they actually think they’re doing the rest of us a favor. Their patronizing belief that we can’t govern ourselves nor can we learn how to share with one another is more dangerous than any amount of money these media gatekeepers funnel through to Washington.

And that’s a belief that we, as a society, must fight to dispel by taking back the open Internet

EXTRA

Shocking revelations about online spying and secretive trade deals have served as a wake up call to many that the Internet isn't as safe or open as we thought.