Lofgren Legislation To Assist Federal Agencies With Internet Policy Enforcement, Copyright Experts Say
A bill introduced Wednesday by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., would help preserve open Internet policies by identifying and coordinating efforts to thwart legislation like the failed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), copyright experts told us. Lofgren’s Global Free Internet Act would create a Commerce Department task force to review and report on potentially problematic Internet issues, both domestic and international, the bill’s draft text said. The bill would require the U.S. Trade Representative to investigate, and if necessary, to take enforcement actions against international bodies whose Internet policies negatively affect trade or market access, said Jonathan Band of the law firm policybandwidth.
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The legislation is “a framework for preserving Internet freedom internationally,” Lofgren told us. “We’re just beginning.” Other backers of the bill include California Democrats Anna Eshoo, ranking member of the House Communications Subcommittee, and Mike Honda, she said.
The bill’s task force would review policies that might threaten Internet users and any online services. Four of the task force's members would be selected through a public recommendation period, followed by presidential appointments. House and Senate majority and minority leaders would each select a member of the task force. Several other agency heads would serve on the task force, including the Department of Homeland Security secretary.
The bill’s proposed task force would “better enable the U.S. government to coordinate and respond to threats to internet security like SOPA, which would have broken secure DNS [domain name servers],” said a House aide with knowledge of the bill. He said China’s present “attempts to build security backdoors into financial products” would be another area the task force would seek to curb.
Lofgren’s legislation has “real teeth!” Band emailed us. It requires “more than the usual report and recommendations,” he said. Band said Section 5 of the bill requires USTR to “initiate an investigation and take necessary actions with respect to foreign policies or practices that have been identified in the report as priority concerns.” Section 6 requires the FTC and Justice Department to “investigate each problem identified in the report and determine whether it violates US antitrust laws,” he said.
“The bill, which is similar to other versions she has introduced in the past, should be very useful,” said Sherwin Siy, Public Knowledge vice president-legal affairs. “Sometimes it's hard to understate the lack of coordination between different sectors on global internet issues -- both between government, industry, and civil society, between government agencies, and even between different aspects of technology policy,” he said. The “censorship implications of a copyright-based bill like SOPA might not have occurred to people who are focused purely upon copyright enforcement, and may not have appeared on the radar of those dealing with censorship issues in China,” Siy said.