Internet
freedom is certainly a human rights imperative, but it is also an economic
one. Last week,
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren introduced legislation to combat trade barriers that
threaten the global open Internet. Along with other Congressional representatives from California, Reps
Eshoo, Honda and Matsui, Lofgren proposes to create a Task Force on the Global
Internet that identifies, prioritizes and develops responses to policies and
practices of any government or international governing body that deny fair
market access to online goods and services or that threaten the technical
operation, security and free flow of global Internet communications. The Global Free Internet Act of 2013,
HR 889 provides that members of the Task Force would include heads of U.S.
executive branch agencies, people nominated by Congressional leadership and
other individuals to be crowd sourced from the Internet itself.
CCIA
fully supports and endorses HR 889 and recommends that legislators all across
the U.S. consider making it a priority to update our trade policy for the
digital age. We not only
export a vast volume and diversity of information services, our hard goods industry sectors depend
increasingly on the Internet for global supply chain management and
distribution channels.
In
a recent statement on digital trade and global economics, submitted to the U.S.
International Trade Commission (ITC) as part of its investigation, CCIA
highlighted broad categories of trade barriers to a robust global Internet
economy. These barriers include
content filtering, blocking and censorship, market access preconditions such as
local data hosting requirements and technology sharing and standards, “sending
party pays” telecom charges by Internet access networks, and intermediary
liability. These roadblocks
to cross-border Internet data flows and global trade are every bit as real and
pernicious as tariffs and other restrictions on hard goods. To maintain our economic
competitiveness in the world of electronic commerce and digital trade, these
novel impediments must be understood and squarely addressed.
