Music Coalition Urges USTR's Lighthizer to Reject Tech Sector's NAFTA Copyright Agenda

A coalition of nearly two dozen music organizations wrote U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer that the tech community is "working for a backward-looking agenda" for the North American Free Trade Agreement at the expense of U.S. cultural, economic and employment interests. In the Tuesday letter, the coalition, including ASCAP, BMI and RIAA, cited an Aug. 31 letter to him from CTA, Internet Association and other industry groups that want a "strong and balanced copyright framework," which includes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbors. That tech letter said DMCA safe harbors and the Copyright Act exceptions are essential to the internet's commercial growth and any modernization of NAFTA that omits portions of a copyright framework that the tech sector relies on "will cause serious harm" to part of the economy and risk jobs. But the music coalition said the tech sector wants the U.S. to insert "vast loopholes" in the copyright system "such as broad copyright exceptions and sweeping immunities for those committing content theft." The music coalition said it would permit trading partners to be havens for piracy for those who illegally infringe on American content. "Beyond the U.S. experience, our trading partners are simply not in a position to implement U.S. safe harbor law in their own domestic systems, which lack fundamental aspects of the U.S. legal system, including our high-standard intellectual property protections, our case law and our Constitution," the music coalition said. It said adding safe harbors would put U.S. creative industries at a "competitive disadvantage."