Protect IP Act
Encyclopedia
The PROTECT IP Act is a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the U.S. The bill was introduced on May 12, 2011 by Senator Patrick Leahy
(D-VT) and 11 initial bipartisan co-sponsors. The Congressional Budget Office
estimated that implementation of the bill would cost the federal government $47 million through 2016, to cover enforcement costs and the hiring and training of 22 new special agents and 26 support staff. The Senate Judiciary Committee
passed the bill, but Senator Ron Wyden
(D-OR) placed a hold on it.
The PROTECT IP Act is a re-write of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act
(COICA), which failed to pass in 2010. A similar House version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act
(SOPA) was introduced on October 26, 2011.
technology, and infringement exists if "facts or circumstances suggest [the site] is used, primarily as a means for engaging in, enabling, or facilitating the activities described". The bill says it does not alter existing substantive trademark or copyright law.
The bill provides for "enhancing enforcement against rogue websites operated and registered overseas", and authorizes the United States Department of Justice to seek a court order in rem
against websites dedicated to infringing activities themselves, if through due diligence an individual owner or operator cannot be located. The bill requires the Attorney General to serve notice to the defendant. Once the court issues an order, it could then be served on financial transaction providers, Internet advertising services, Internet service providers, and information location tools to require them to stop financial transactions with the rogue site and stop linking to it. The term "information location tool" is borrowed from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and is understood to refer to search engines, but could cover other sites that link to content.
Nonauthoritative domain name servers would be ordered to take technically feasible and reasonable steps to prevent the domain name from resolving to the IP address
of a website that had been found by the court to be “dedicated to infringing activities.” The website could still be reached by its IP address, but links or users that used the website’s domain name would not reach it. Also search engines—such as the already protesting Google—would be ordered to “(i) remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the [court] order; or (ii) not serve a hypertext link to such Internet site.” Furthermore, trademark and copyright holders who have been harmed by the activities of a website dedicated to infringing activities would be able to apply for a court injunction against the domain name to compel financial transaction providers and Internet advertising services to stop processing transactions to and placing ads on the website, but would not be able to obtain the domain name remedies available to the Attorney General.
(D-VT), and co-sponsorship by 39 Senators. The bill is supported by copyright and trademark owners in business, industry and labor groups, spanning all sectors of the economy. It is opposed by numerous businesses and individuals, pro bono, civil, human rights and consumer rights groups, and education and library institutions.
Supporters include the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the Independent Film & Television Alliance, the National Association of Theatre Owners, the Motion Picture Association of America
, the Directors Guild of America, the American Federation of Musicians, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the Screen Actors Guild, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Nashville Songwriters Association International, Songwriters Guild of America, Viacom, Institute for Policy Innovation, Macmillan Publishers, Acushnet, Recording Industry Association of America
, Copyright Alliance and NBCUniversal.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO
have come together in support of the bill. In May and September of 2011, two letters signed by 170 and 359 businesses and organizations, respectively—including names such as National Association of Manufactures (NAM), the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, Nike, 1-800 Pet Meds, L’Oreal, Rosetta Stone, Pfizer, Ford Motor Company, Revlon, NBA, and Sony—were sent to Congress endorsing the Act and encouraging the passage of legislation to protect intellectual property and shut down rogue websites. Support for the bill has also come from noted constitutional expert Floyd Abrams
, who issued a letter to Congress asserting that the PROTECT IP Act is constitutionally sound.
, Yahoo!
, eBay
, American Express
, Google
, Reporters Without Borders
, and Human Rights Watch
. Internet entrepreneurs including Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn
, Twitter
co-founder Evan Williams, and Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley signed a letter to Congress expressing their opposition to the legislation. The Tea Party Patriots
have argued that the bill "is bad for consumers". A letter of opposition was signed by 130 technology entrepreneurs and executives and sent to Congress to express their concern that the law in its present form would "hurt economic growth and chill innovation in legitimate services that help people create, communicate, and make money online". Oregon
Senator Ron Wyden
has publicly voiced opposition to the legislation, and placed a Senate hold on it in May 2011, citing concerns over possible damage to freedom of speech, innovation, and Internet integrity.
, past attempts to limit copyright infringement online by way of blocking domains have always generated criticism that blocking domains would fracture the Domain Name System
(DNS) and threaten global functioning of the Internet, with this bill being no different. By design, all domain name servers world-wide should contain identical lists; with the changes proposed, servers inside the United States would have records different from their global counterparts, making URLs less universal.
Five Internet engineers, Steve Crocker
, David Dagon, Dan Kaminsky
, Danny McPherson and Paul Vixie
have prepared a whitepaper suggesting that the DNS filtering provisions in the bill "raise serious technical and security concerns" and would "break the Internet", while other engineers and proponents of the act have called those concerns groundless and without merit. One particular concern expressed by network experts is that hackers would offer workarounds to private users to allow access to government-seized sites, but these workarounds might also jeopardize security by redirecting unsuspecting users to scam websites. Supporters of the bill, such as the MPAA, have argued that widespread circumvention of the filtering would be unlikely. The CEO of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
compared the DNS provisions to car door locks, noting that while they aren't foolproof against thieves, we should still use them. A browser plugin called MAFIAAFire Redirector
already exists that redirects visitors to an alternative domain when a site's primary domain has been seized. The Mozilla Foundation says that United States Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) requested by phone that Mozilla
remove the plugin, a request with which they have not yet complied. Instead, Mozilla's legal counsel has asked for further information from the DHS, including legal justification for the request.
The bill has been described by critics as effectively creating a blacklist
. However, only a court order specifically addressing a particular domain name triggers the requirement to cut off activity with it (once multiple court orders are in effect a list will form).
The bill has been criticized by Abigail Phillips of Electronic Frontier Foundation for not being specific about what constitutes an infringing web site. For example, if WikiLeaks
were accused of distributing copyrighted content, U.S. search engines could be served a court order to block search results pointing to Wikileaks. Requiring search engines to remove links to an entire website altogether due to an infringing page would raise free speech concerns regarding lawful content hosted elsewhere on the site.
Google
chairman Eric Schmidt has stated that the measures called for in the PROTECT IP Act are overly simple solutions to a complex problem, and that the precedent set by pruning DNS entries is bad from the viewpoint of free speech and would be a step toward less permissive Internet environments, such as China's. As chairman of the company that owns the world's largest search engine, Schmidt has declared "if there is a law that requires DNSs to do X and it's passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President of the United States and we disagree with it then we would still fight it."
(CRS) notes concerns by opponents such as American Express
and Google
that the inclusion of a private cause of action would result in stifled Internet innovation, protect outdated business models and at the cost of an overwhelming number of suits from content producers. "Legislation should not include a private right of action that would invite suits by 'trolls' to extort settlements from intermediaries or sites who are making good faith efforts to comply with the law," Google vice-president and Chief Counsel Kent Walker has said in Congressional testimony.
"Rogue sites jeopardize jobs for film and TV workers," according to the Motion Picture Association of America, which cites several government and independent industry studies on the effects of online piracy, including a report by Envisional Ltd. that concluded one quarter of the content on the internet infringes copyright. The Recording Industry Association of America points to a 2007 study by the Institute for Policy Innovation that found that online piracy caused $12.5 billion dollars in losses to the U.S. economy as well as more than 70,000 lost jobs.
"If we need to amend the DMCA, let's do it with a negotiation between the interested parties, not with a bill written by the content industry's lobbyists and jammed through Congress on a fast track," urged venture capitalist and Business Insider
columnist Fred Wilson
in an October 29th editorial on the changes that the current House and Senate versions of the proposed legislation would make to the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA
. "Companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, and startups like Dropbox, Kickstarter, and Twilio are the leading exporters and job creators of this time. They are the golden goose of the economy and we cannot kill the golden goose to protect industries in decline," he said.
Patrick Leahy
Patrick Joseph Leahy is the senior United States Senator from Vermont and member of the Democratic Party. He is the first and only elected Democratic United States Senator in Vermont's history. He is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Leahy is the second most senior U.S. Senator,...
(D-VT) and 11 initial bipartisan co-sponsors. The Congressional Budget Office
Congressional Budget Office
The Congressional Budget Office is a federal agency within the legislative branch of the United States government that provides economic data to Congress....
estimated that implementation of the bill would cost the federal government $47 million through 2016, to cover enforcement costs and the hiring and training of 22 new special agents and 26 support staff. The Senate Judiciary Committee
United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary is a standing committee of the United States Senate, of the United States Congress. The Judiciary Committee, with 18 members, is charged with conducting hearings prior to the Senate votes on confirmation of federal judges nominated by the...
passed the bill, but Senator Ron Wyden
Ron Wyden
Ronald Lee "Ron" Wyden is the senior U.S. Senator for Oregon, serving since 1996, and a member of the Democratic Party. He previously served in the United States House of Representatives from 1981 to 1996....
(D-OR) placed a hold on it.
The PROTECT IP Act is a re-write of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act
Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act
United States Senate Bill S.3804, known as the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act was a bill introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy on September 20, 2010...
(COICA), which failed to pass in 2010. A similar House version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act
Stop Online Piracy Act
The Stop Online Piracy Act , also known as H.R.3261, is a bill that was introduced to the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by Representative Lamar Smith and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill expands the ability of U.S...
(SOPA) was introduced on October 26, 2011.
Contents
The PROTECT IP Act defines infringement as distribution of illegal copies, counterfeit goods or anti-DRMDigital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
technology, and infringement exists if "facts or circumstances suggest [the site] is used, primarily as a means for engaging in, enabling, or facilitating the activities described". The bill says it does not alter existing substantive trademark or copyright law.
The bill provides for "enhancing enforcement against rogue websites operated and registered overseas", and authorizes the United States Department of Justice to seek a court order in rem
In rem
In rem is Latin for "against a thing." In a lawsuit, an action in rem is directed towards a piece of property rather than against a person . The action disputes or seeks to transfer title to property. When title to real estate In rem is Latin for "against a thing." In a lawsuit, an action in rem...
against websites dedicated to infringing activities themselves, if through due diligence an individual owner or operator cannot be located. The bill requires the Attorney General to serve notice to the defendant. Once the court issues an order, it could then be served on financial transaction providers, Internet advertising services, Internet service providers, and information location tools to require them to stop financial transactions with the rogue site and stop linking to it. The term "information location tool" is borrowed from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and is understood to refer to search engines, but could cover other sites that link to content.
Nonauthoritative domain name servers would be ordered to take technically feasible and reasonable steps to prevent the domain name from resolving to the IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
of a website that had been found by the court to be “dedicated to infringing activities.” The website could still be reached by its IP address, but links or users that used the website’s domain name would not reach it. Also search engines—such as the already protesting Google—would be ordered to “(i) remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the [court] order; or (ii) not serve a hypertext link to such Internet site.” Furthermore, trademark and copyright holders who have been harmed by the activities of a website dedicated to infringing activities would be able to apply for a court injunction against the domain name to compel financial transaction providers and Internet advertising services to stop processing transactions to and placing ads on the website, but would not be able to obtain the domain name remedies available to the Attorney General.
Supporters
The PROTECT IP Act has received bipartisan support in the Senate, with introduction sponsorship by Patrick LeahyPatrick Leahy
Patrick Joseph Leahy is the senior United States Senator from Vermont and member of the Democratic Party. He is the first and only elected Democratic United States Senator in Vermont's history. He is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Leahy is the second most senior U.S. Senator,...
(D-VT), and co-sponsorship by 39 Senators. The bill is supported by copyright and trademark owners in business, industry and labor groups, spanning all sectors of the economy. It is opposed by numerous businesses and individuals, pro bono, civil, human rights and consumer rights groups, and education and library institutions.
Supporters include the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the Independent Film & Television Alliance, the National Association of Theatre Owners, the Motion Picture Association of America
Motion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
, the Directors Guild of America, the American Federation of Musicians, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the Screen Actors Guild, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Nashville Songwriters Association International, Songwriters Guild of America, Viacom, Institute for Policy Innovation, Macmillan Publishers, Acushnet, Recording Industry Association of America
Recording Industry Association of America
The Recording Industry Association of America is a trade organization that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States...
, Copyright Alliance and NBCUniversal.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...
have come together in support of the bill. In May and September of 2011, two letters signed by 170 and 359 businesses and organizations, respectively—including names such as National Association of Manufactures (NAM), the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, Nike, 1-800 Pet Meds, L’Oreal, Rosetta Stone, Pfizer, Ford Motor Company, Revlon, NBA, and Sony—were sent to Congress endorsing the Act and encouraging the passage of legislation to protect intellectual property and shut down rogue websites. Support for the bill has also come from noted constitutional expert Floyd Abrams
Floyd Abrams
Floyd Abrams is an American attorney at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. He is an expert on constitutional law, and many arguments in the briefs he has written before the United States Supreme Court have been adopted as United States Constitutional interpretative law as it relates to the First Amendment...
, who issued a letter to Congress asserting that the PROTECT IP Act is constitutionally sound.
Opponents
The legislation is opposed by the Electronic Frontier FoundationElectronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
, Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
, eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
, American Express
American Express
American Express Company or AmEx, is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Three World Financial Center, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Founded in 1850, it is one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is best...
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
, Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
, and Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
. Internet entrepreneurs including Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
co-founder Evan Williams, and Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley signed a letter to Congress expressing their opposition to the legislation. The Tea Party Patriots
Tea Party Patriots
Tea Party Patriots is an American political organization that promotes "fiscally responsible" activism as part of the Tea Party movement. It claims to have over 1,000 local chapters...
have argued that the bill "is bad for consumers". A letter of opposition was signed by 130 technology entrepreneurs and executives and sent to Congress to express their concern that the law in its present form would "hurt economic growth and chill innovation in legitimate services that help people create, communicate, and make money online". Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
Senator Ron Wyden
Ron Wyden
Ronald Lee "Ron" Wyden is the senior U.S. Senator for Oregon, serving since 1996, and a member of the Democratic Party. He previously served in the United States House of Representatives from 1981 to 1996....
has publicly voiced opposition to the legislation, and placed a Senate hold on it in May 2011, citing concerns over possible damage to freedom of speech, innovation, and Internet integrity.
Technical issues
According to Sherwin Siy of Public KnowledgePublic Knowledge
Public Knowledge is a non-profit Washington, D.C.-based public interest group that is involved in intellectual property law, competition, and choice in the digital marketplace, and an open standards/end-to-end internet....
, past attempts to limit copyright infringement online by way of blocking domains have always generated criticism that blocking domains would fracture the Domain Name System
Domain name system
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities...
(DNS) and threaten global functioning of the Internet, with this bill being no different. By design, all domain name servers world-wide should contain identical lists; with the changes proposed, servers inside the United States would have records different from their global counterparts, making URLs less universal.
Five Internet engineers, Steve Crocker
Steve Crocker
Stephen D. Crocker is the inventor of the Request for Comments series, authoring the very first RFC and many more. He received his bachelor's degree and PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. Crocker is chair of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers,...
, David Dagon, Dan Kaminsky
Dan Kaminsky
Dan Kaminsky is an American security researcher. He formerly worked for Cisco, Avaya, and IOActive, where he was the Director of Penetration Testing...
, Danny McPherson and Paul Vixie
Paul Vixie
Paul Vixie is an American Internet pioneer, the author of several RFCs and well-known Unix software.Vixie attended George Washington High School in San Francisco, California. He received a Ph.D in computer science from Keio University in 2011....
have prepared a whitepaper suggesting that the DNS filtering provisions in the bill "raise serious technical and security concerns" and would "break the Internet", while other engineers and proponents of the act have called those concerns groundless and without merit. One particular concern expressed by network experts is that hackers would offer workarounds to private users to allow access to government-seized sites, but these workarounds might also jeopardize security by redirecting unsuspecting users to scam websites. Supporters of the bill, such as the MPAA, have argued that widespread circumvention of the filtering would be unlikely. The CEO of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation is a U.S. non-profit public policy think tank based out of Washington, D.C. The organization focuses on public policies that spur technology innovation. Robert D...
compared the DNS provisions to car door locks, noting that while they aren't foolproof against thieves, we should still use them. A browser plugin called MAFIAAFire Redirector
MafiaaFire Redirector
MAFIAAFire Redirector is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers. The software redirects links from domains that have been seized by governments to backup sites...
already exists that redirects visitors to an alternative domain when a site's primary domain has been seized. The Mozilla Foundation says that United States Department of Homeland Security
United States Department of Homeland Security
The United States Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet department of the United States federal government, created in response to the September 11 attacks, and with the primary responsibilities of protecting the territory of the United States and protectorates from and responding to...
(DHS) requested by phone that Mozilla
Mozilla
Mozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....
remove the plugin, a request with which they have not yet complied. Instead, Mozilla's legal counsel has asked for further information from the DHS, including legal justification for the request.
The bill has been described by critics as effectively creating a blacklist
Blacklist
A blacklist is a list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a verb, to blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to ostracize a person from a certain social circle...
. However, only a court order specifically addressing a particular domain name triggers the requirement to cut off activity with it (once multiple court orders are in effect a list will form).
Civil liberties issues
Floyd Abrams said “The Protect IP Act neither compels nor prohibits free speech or communication… the bill sets a high bar in defining when a website or domain is eligible for potential actions by the Attorney General…”. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation likewise supports the PROTECT IP Act and has said that concerns about the domain name remedy in the legislation are undercut by the already ongoing use of that approach to counter spam and malware.The bill has been criticized by Abigail Phillips of Electronic Frontier Foundation for not being specific about what constitutes an infringing web site. For example, if WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
were accused of distributing copyrighted content, U.S. search engines could be served a court order to block search results pointing to Wikileaks. Requiring search engines to remove links to an entire website altogether due to an infringing page would raise free speech concerns regarding lawful content hosted elsewhere on the site.
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
chairman Eric Schmidt has stated that the measures called for in the PROTECT IP Act are overly simple solutions to a complex problem, and that the precedent set by pruning DNS entries is bad from the viewpoint of free speech and would be a step toward less permissive Internet environments, such as China's. As chairman of the company that owns the world's largest search engine, Schmidt has declared "if there is a law that requires DNSs to do X and it's passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President of the United States and we disagree with it then we would still fight it."
Business and innovation issues
A legal analysis by the Congressional Research ServiceCongressional Research Service
The Congressional Research Service , known as "Congress's think tank", is the public policy research arm of the United States Congress. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS works exclusively and directly for Members of Congress, their Committees and staff on a...
(CRS) notes concerns by opponents such as American Express
American Express
American Express Company or AmEx, is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Three World Financial Center, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Founded in 1850, it is one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is best...
and Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
that the inclusion of a private cause of action would result in stifled Internet innovation, protect outdated business models and at the cost of an overwhelming number of suits from content producers. "Legislation should not include a private right of action that would invite suits by 'trolls' to extort settlements from intermediaries or sites who are making good faith efforts to comply with the law," Google vice-president and Chief Counsel Kent Walker has said in Congressional testimony.
"Rogue sites jeopardize jobs for film and TV workers," according to the Motion Picture Association of America, which cites several government and independent industry studies on the effects of online piracy, including a report by Envisional Ltd. that concluded one quarter of the content on the internet infringes copyright. The Recording Industry Association of America points to a 2007 study by the Institute for Policy Innovation that found that online piracy caused $12.5 billion dollars in losses to the U.S. economy as well as more than 70,000 lost jobs.
"If we need to amend the DMCA, let's do it with a negotiation between the interested parties, not with a bill written by the content industry's lobbyists and jammed through Congress on a fast track," urged venture capitalist and Business Insider
Business Insider
Business Insider is a U.S. business/entertainment news website launched in February 2009. Founded by DoubleClick Founder and former C.E.O. Kevin P. Ryan it is the overarching brand beneath which fall the Silicon Alley Insider and Clusterstock verticals...
columnist Fred Wilson
Fred Wilson (financier)
Fred Wilson is a New York-based venture capitalist and a prominent blogger. Due to his successful investment track record and community involvement, he is recognized as a leading voice of the venture capital finance community in New York...
in an October 29th editorial on the changes that the current House and Senate versions of the proposed legislation would make to the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...
. "Companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, and startups like Dropbox, Kickstarter, and Twilio are the leading exporters and job creators of this time. They are the golden goose of the economy and we cannot kill the golden goose to protect industries in decline," he said.
See also
- Stop Online Piracy ActStop Online Piracy ActThe Stop Online Piracy Act , also known as H.R.3261, is a bill that was introduced to the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by Representative Lamar Smith and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill expands the ability of U.S...
- Anti-Counterfeiting Trade AgreementAnti-Counterfeiting Trade AgreementThe Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a proposed plurilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement...
- Bill S.978Bill S.978Bill S.978 or the Commercial Felony Streaming Act is a bill that is pending introduction to the United States Senate floor. It was proposed by Amy Klobuchar, Chris Coons, and John Cornyn on May 12, 2011...
- Communications Decency ActCommunications Decency ActThe Communications Decency Act of 1996 was the first notable attempt by the United States Congress to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In 1997, in the landmark cyberlaw case of Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court struck the anti-indecency provisions of the Act.The Act was...
, contains pertinent definition of "interactive computer service" - Copyright Term Extension ActCopyright Term Extension ActThe Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended copyright terms in the United States by 20 years. Since the Copyright Act of 1976, copyright would last for the life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship...
, increased the length of copyright to as much as 120 years in some cases - Digital Millennium Copyright ActDigital Millennium Copyright ActThe Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...
, amended US copyright law to comply with treaties. - PRO-IP ActPRO-IP ActThe Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 , is a United States law that increases both civil and criminal penalties for trademark, patent and copyright infringement...
,a 2008 law cited as a legal basis for Operation In Our SitesOperation In Our Sites v. 2.0Operation In Our Sites v. 2.0 refers to an ongoing effort by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to shut down "commercial websites engaged in the illegal sale and distribution of counterfeit goods and copyrighted works." The operation has seized at least 82 domains. V. 1.0 of the operation... - Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic PartnershipTrans-Pacific Strategic Economic PartnershipThe Trans-Pacific Partnership , also known as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, is a multilateral free trade agreement that aims to further liberalise the economies of the Asia-Pacific region; specifically, Article 1.1.3 notes: “The Parties seek to support the wider...
- Trade group efforts against file sharingTrade group efforts against file sharingImpact of illegal downloading on the film industryArts and media industry trade groups such as the Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America strongly oppose and attempt to prevent copyright infringement through file sharing...