This is being sent to the Advocacy List and to Law-Lib; please excuse the
duplication.
We sent you an action alert on June 18 (reproduced, in the main, below)
regarding Congressional hearings being held on the US-Chile and US-Singapore
Free Trade Agreements. The House Ways & Means Committee is expected to have
a "mark-up" (not a mark-up in the usual sense due to fast-track authority)
tomorrow and then vote on the agreements immediately or soon after.
Please call the following Ways and Means Committee Members ASAP and tell
them to vote NO on the Chile and Singapore FTAs:
Charlie Rangel (D-NY-15), 202-225-4365
Pete Stark (D-CA-13), 202-225-5065
Bob Matsui (D-CA-05), 202-225-7163
Sander Levin (D-MI-12), 202-225-4961
Ben Cardin (D-MD-03), 202-225-4061
Jim McDermott (D-WA-07), 202-225-3106
Gerald Kleczka (D-WI-04), 202-225-4572
John Lewis (D-GA-05), 202-225-3801
Richard Neal (D-MA-02), 202-225-5601
Mike McNulty (D-NY-21), 202-225-5076
William Jefferson (D-LA-02), 202-225-6636
John Tanner (D-TN-08), 202-225-4714
Xavier Becerra (D-CA-31), 202-225-6235
Lloyd Doggett (D-TX-10), 202-225-4865
Earl Pomeroy (D-ND-), 202-225-2611
Max Sandlin (D-TX-01), 202-225-3035
Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH-11), 202-225-7032
BACKGROUND:
In 2002, Congress passed the Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority Act,
thereby restoring the President's fast-track trade negotiation authority.
This authorization includes intellectual property within its scope, and over
the past year, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR)
has been negotiating a series of multilateral and bilateral trade agreements
that contain extensive intellectual property chapters. While several rounds
of negotiations are ongoing (the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and
the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)), two important
bilateral agreements, with Chile and Singapore, have been concluded and are
awaiting Congressional approval.
Over the past few years, AALL has worked closely with the American Library
Association and other educational, research, and consumer-oriented groups to
oppose these types of expansionary copyright policies because they threaten
to limit access to information and because they unduly tilt the traditional
balance that has existed in copyright law towards the rights of the content
community at the expense of consumers as well as the library and educational
communities.
Copyright Provisions in the Agreements
The AALL Copyright Committee has studied the copyright sections of these
agreements and has concluded they contain several provisions that require
our strong opposition to the intellectual property provisions. Both the
Chile and Singapore agreements require:
* that the duration of the copyright term reflect the U.S.
rule of life + 70 years instead of the international standard of life + 50;
* that anti-circumvention rules be adopted which reflect the
expansive provisions of section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act, including strong device prohibitions; and
* that the reproduction right expressly include temporary
copies. Under current standards, temporary copies in RAM do not necessarily
implicate the reproduction right. These agreements actually extend the scope
of copyright protection well beyond what exists even under current U.S. law.
This extension of the reproduction right to temporary copies would have
negative implications for reading and browsing, and has consistently been
strongly opposed by the user community. A similar provision was proposed and
rejected as part of the WIPO Copyright Treaty.
The inclusion of the life + 70 copyright term and the strong version
of the anti-circumvention rules not only impose a U.S.-centric version of
copyright policy on our trading partners in the developing world, but also
"locks-in" bad copyright policies at the domestic level. If these provisions
are included in international trade agreements, it will be very difficult to
convince Congress to revisit these policies or provide needed relief to the
user community from some of their harshest applications.
Limiting Fast-Track Authority
Beyond the U.S.-Chile and U.S.-Singapore Agreements, there are
several other agreements on the horizon that will raise many of the same
problems. The USTR has stated that the Chile and Singapore Agreements are
models for future agreements including CAFTA and ultimately the FTAA.
AALL believes that there are already a sufficient number of
international copyright treaties and conventions that provide adequate
standards for the protection of intellectual property. We are deeply
concerned that the expansive language in the FTAs seeks to raise the level
of copyright protection in several instances above and beyond the
international standards under the Berne Convention for the Protection of
Literary and Artistic Works (Berne) and the Agreement on Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) annexed to the agreement
establishing the World Trade Organization. We are also concerned that any
unnecessary institutional duplication of this framework will only increase
complexity and uncertainty. At the same time, any departures from the
Berne-TRIPS standards in terms of particular provisions, especially as part
of an international trading agreement with independent enforcement
mechanisms, should be viewed with extreme caution.
ACTION NEEDED:
Unfortunately, Congress does not have the ability to amend trade
agreements negotiated by the USTR under fast track authority. Each
agreement must be adopted or rejected in whole. For this reason, AALL
opposes the ratification and implementation of the U.S.-Chile and
U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreements.
The House Ways & Means and Senate Finance Committees have held
hearings on these trade agreements, and Congress will soon vote on them.
Please contact your member of Congress and your Senators and urge them to:
* reject the ratification and implementation of the U.S.-Chile
and U.S. Singapore Free Trade Agreements when they are presented for an up
or down vote; and
* remove intellectual property matters from fast-track
authority at the earliest opportunity.
Thanks for your help,
Keith Ann Stiverson, Chair Mary Alice Baish
AALL Copyright Comm. Associate Washington Affairs
Rep.
kstivers@kentlaw.edu <mailto:kstivers@kentlaw.edu>
baish@law.georgetown.edu <mailto:baish@law.georgetown.edu>
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