Democrats Waver on JCPA: Sens. Patrick Leahy, Alex Padilla Raise Concerns

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who is pushing to bail out the nation’s largest and wealthiest media companies through the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), faced opposition from her own party as well as Republicans at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee today.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the former chairman of the committee, said he believed the bill needs “some additional work.”

“It may interfere with the way the internet works,” said Leahy. Opponents of the bill have argued it sets a precedent for taxing links on the web.

“I am also concerned that it could inadvertently contort copyright laws in unpredictable ways… there are a few other concerns as well.”

Leahy said he would support moving the bill moving out of committee, but said there would likely need to be additional changes to the bill on the floor before he could support its passage.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) also raised concerns, including the threat of unintended consequences on the “future of the open internet,” and whether the bill would actually help journalists.

“We need to ensure that workers actually benefit, and not just the hedge funds and other wealthy owners that have bought up so many local newspapers and are stripping them bare. Yes, local newspapers across the country, owned by hedge funds.”

Padilla warned that the bill could cause a “massive wealth transfer” to “unscrupulous media owners.”

The California senator cited a letter from leaders and local representatives of the NewsGuild-CWA journalists’ union, which warned that wealthy media executives and companies were the likely beneficiaries of the bill.

From the letter:

We have no confidence that these massively consolidated publishers will use whatever revenues they collect from JCPA to invest in journalists rather than more mergers, stock buybacks, overpaid executives and union-busting lawyers – because that’s how these companies spend the revenues that they already extract from our members’ journalism.

“If the workers who deal with these conglomerates are skeptical that any money gained from this bill will actually go towards employees, then this committee should be skeptical too,” said Padilla.

Padilla also expressed concern that the JCPA would harm efforts to “content moderate” social media platforms — a more dubious concern, as the bill creates wide leeway for legacy media companies to shut out independent competitors from the media cartel the bill creates.

Finally, Padilla echoed the concerns of Leahy, warning that the bill impacts how sites can link to each other. Padilla said he would support amendments to the bill before it goes to the floor.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.