News

Today, 20+ music organizations encompassing the entire music community sent this letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in response to a recent letter to the Ambassador from some tech giants who had claimed to be the “new faces of the American content industry.”  The USTR is currently renegotiating the NAFTA treaty with Mexico and Canada, and important copyright and intellectual property provisions are under discussion.  An excerpt of the music community’s letter is below:

In effect, those few tech associations are asking you to use trade agreements to prevent our Congress from legislating for the future. Just as some tech companies have changed from startups to global incumbents, the digital marketplace has also changed. Our trade agreements should also adapt, while not preventing our Congress from clarifying the original intent of U.S. law to the benefit of U.S. creators. It would be profoundly ironic, let alone fundamentally detrimental, to modernize NAFTA to include an outdated law that reflects a distant digital past, i.e., when NAFTA first entered into force.