Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who pushed to save the nation’s biggest and richest media companies through the Journalism Contest and Protection Act (JCPA), faces opposition from both her own party and Republicans at the Senate hearing. Justice Commission today.
Joyful. said. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the committee’s former chairman, said he believes the bill should be “finished”.
“It could break the Internet,” Leahy said. Opponents of the bill argue that it sets a precedent for taxing Internet connections.
Patrick Leahy (D-VT) (Andrew Harnick – Pool/Getty Images)
Alex Padilla (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“I’m also concerned that it might unintentionally violate copyright laws in unexpected ways…there are other issues as well.”
Leahy said he would support removing the bill from committee, but said more changes to the bill would likely be needed before he could support its passage.
Senator Alex Padilla (R-Calif) has expressed concerns for the “future of the open internet”, including the threat of unintended consequences and whether the bill will actually help journalists.
“We need to make sure that workers really benefit, not just hedge funds and other wealthy owners who buy and rob a lot of local newspapers. Yes, local newspapers around the country are owned by hedge funds.”
Padilla warned that the bill could result in a huge transfer of wealth to “unscrupulous media owners”.
The California senator quoted a letter from leaders and local representatives of the NewsGuild-CWA journalists association warning that wealthy media and corporate executives would likely benefit from the bill.
From a letter:
We don’t trust these heavily consolidated publishers to use their JCPA revenue to invest in journalists, not new mergers, share buybacks, overpayments to union-disrupting executives and lawyers, because that’s how these companies spend their revenue. We get it from the press of our members.
“If workers dealing with conglomerates suspect that any money from this bill will actually go to the workers, then this committee should doubt it,” Padilla said. Said.
Padilla also expressed concern that the JCPA would undermine social media platforms’ “content moderation” efforts – which is more dubious because the law gives legacy media companies ample opportunity to exclude independent competitors from the media cartel that created the law.
Finally, Padilla addressed Leahy’s concerns, warning that the law affects how sites can be linked together. Padilla said he would support changes to the bill before it becomes law.
Source: Breitbart
