EFF has joined with partners including MoveOn, CREDO, Daily Kos, and Demand Progress to call on Democratic Party Leader Nancy Pelosi to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) from going to a vote during the "lame duck" session of Congress following the November election.
As we explained in a press conference yesterday, the TPP is simply bad for tech users and innovators: it exports the most onerous parts of U.S. copyright law and prevents the U.S. from improving them in the future, while failing to include the balancing provisions that work for users and innovators, such as fair use. Outside of these copyright provisions, it does nothing to safeguard the free and open Internet, by including phony provisions on net neutrality and encryption, trade secrets provisions that carry no exceptions for journalism or whistleblowing, and a simplistic ban on data localization that enabled the USTR to buy off big tech.
The participants at the press conference, who covered a wide range of other impacted sectors aside from those represented by EFF, presented a petition to Leader Pelosi with an incredible 210,000 signatures that we had collected together, stating:
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is an unprecedented threat to many of the goals we share and for which we appreciate your leadership: good jobs, higher wages, strong climate policies and a livable environment, affordable medicines, safe food, human rights and an open Internet.
Given the broad public opposition on display this election cycle to trade agreements that expand corporate power to the detriment of most of us, holding a vote during the lame-duck session—when members of Congress are the least accountable—would be unfair and undemocratic. Yet that is precisely what GOP congressional leaders are suggesting.
Please join presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and publicly oppose any lame duck vote on the TPP. We are counting on you to lead the fight against a TPP lame duck vote and deliver this message loud & clear to all House Democrats.
If you didn't sign that letter, it's not too late. EFF will be following up with Leader Pelosi's District Office in San Francisco on July 21, when we present hard copies of the petition and ask for her response. We're hoping that she will heed the concerns of the thousands of Americans who have spoken up about their concerns about the TPP, and you can add your name to theirs if you act within the next two weeks.
