The Trans Pacific Partnership trade talks risk reigniting a battle between Hollywood and Silicon Valley over internet freedom, after WikiLeaks released a secret negotiating draft that showed the US pushing for stringent intellectual property protections.
The document was from August, so it may not reflect the current state of negotiations, but it evoked memories of last year’s Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa), which was on its way to becoming law until a campaign by Silicon Valley technology companies helped mobilise support against it.
“Huge chunks of Sopa are pushed through the backdoor of this IP chapter” said Lori Wallach of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, speaking to Democracy Now, a liberal news programme. Michael Froman, the US trade representative, had to address the connection between TPP and Sopa in a visit to Hollywood on Friday. “As I understand it, I wasn’t around for it, [Sopa] was about blocking rogue internet sites from accessing the internet from the United States. There is nothing in the TPP, zero, that has anything to do with that,” Mr Froman told Variety, the entertainment industry publication.