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Transparency group petitions USTR to file a complaint with the World Trade Trade Organization

SAN RAFAEL – 12/12/07 – A California-based government transparency group has petitioned the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) charging that China is censoring the Internet and restricting US companies supplying goods and services to the Chinese market via the Internet.

The document, drafted by the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC), states that China’s censorship of the Internet “violates China's obligations under agreements that it signed when it joined the WTO" in 2001.

"Think of this as the biggest access-to-information and free speech case in history," wrote CFAC Executive Director Peter Scheer on the group's website last week.

"China's censorship of the Internet, while fundamentally an issue of free speech and individual liberty, is also a significant barrier to US-China commerce and, therefore, very much a trade issue," Scheer said later.

"In infringing the rights of its 1.2 billion citizens, China,” he said, “is also infringing the rights of American companies to sell goods and services to consumers in China, via the Internet.''

China, he added, “is the second biggest Internet market, and will soon be the biggest. While US-based Internet companies have a strong interest in dismantling censorship as a barrier to that huge market, they can't risk taking on the Chinese government. The likelihood of reprisals is too high."

Among the agreements that the group says China has breached are the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), covering trade in goods, and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

The WTO has the authority to decide claims brought by member-nations alleging violations of the GATT and GATS agreements and to impose trade sanctions to enforce compliance.

The CFAC petition, said Scheer, is in effect, ''an effort to persuade USTR to file such a claim with the WTO, targeting China's censorship of the Internet and corresponding market access barriers.''

US-based Internet service companies and US companies that sell goods over the internet ''should have full access to the Chinese economy,'' said Gilbert Kaplan, an international trade partner at the law firm of King & Spalding, which represents the group.

Whether the Internet is covered by the GATT and GATS agreements hasn’t been addressed by the WTO.

The idea of using the agreements to curb sovereign governments' censorship of the Internet was first floated in a 2006 law review article by Timothy Wu, a law professor at Columbia Law School, who acted as a consultant in the drafting of the CFAC petition.

The CFAC’s petition is supported by a consortium of organizations, including the University of California - Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, the National Freedom of Information Coalition, and the China Internet Project at UC Berkeley, among others.

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