In the EU, the reaction has been much stronger, with the European Parliament's special rapporteur for ACTA quitting in protest, Poland suspending ratification of the agreement, and a Slovenian diplomat publicly disowning it.

ACTA is not the whole story, and may not even be the most pertinent at this point. American negotiators are hard at work on the smaller but potentially more draconian Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), negotiated between ten countries, again with no transparency and no public input. A leaked draft of the U.S. proposal from earlier this fall shows that that our trade representatives are again aiming at Internet intermediaries, without a number of user-protecting provisions from U.S. law.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is refusing to let the public participate in the conversation. There are no public drafts of TPP being circulated for comment by the public interest groups that stopped SOPA, or the innovative companies whose interests the agreement might harm. When a group of public interest representatives from universities and civil liberties organizations tried to hold a briefing at the TPP negotiation venue last week, they were told by the hotel that they had been asked to cancel the reservation. But not all those who wanted input were rejected. All negotiators were later invited by the host-the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative-to a private tour of 20th Century Fox studios, led by a member of Fox's government relations staff.

I'd like to think that in the wake of SOPA, the practice of negotiating trade policy behind closed doors will change. I'd like to think that our trade representatives will become responsive to public opinion, and as protective of our new industries as they are of the old. But in the meantime, our trade representatives are creating an international standard that is in many ways more draconian than U.S. law. New legislation targeting foreign websites is not necessary, as long as copyright policy is part of our policy on "free trade."

The only argument for legislation like SOPA is that China, Russia, India, and Brazil-countries where a lot of copyright infringement occurs-have not yet signed free trade agreements such as ACTA. Our trade representatives deliberately chose not to include these countries in negotiations, for fear that they might push back against our policies. It does not mean that we will be incapable of negotiating more reasonable trade agreements with these countries in the future. In fact, Russia seems to be in the process of significantly bolstering its copyright enforcement infrastructure, using government pursuit of file sharing as justification for state control of the Internet.

If we want to go after foreign websites, the answer is international law, but not the way we're currently using it. We should listen to the standards presented by other countries, and take public input-rather than secretly break the Internet in an effort to rush to results desired by one sector of the economy. We certainly don't need more domestic legislation.

If the United States continues its dalliance with censorship as copyright enforcement, it will be the laughingstock of other countries, which see how disproportionate our enforcement of copyright has been, relative to our protection of other freedoms. As one Chinese man commented, "I've come up with a perfect solution: You can come to China to download all your pirated media, and we'll go to America to discuss politically sensitive subjects."

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