Stop Online Piracy Act
Encyclopedia
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), 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
(R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property
and counterfeit goods. Now before the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act
of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the Protect IP Act
.
The bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal
from doing business with the infringing website; barring search engines from linking to such sites and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming
of copyrighted content a felony. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.
Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market, including the resultant revenue and jobs, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws especially against foreign websites. Opponents say it is Internet censorship, that it will cripple the Internet, and will threaten whistleblowing and other free speech.
The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on SOPA on November 16, 2011. A House aide said the Committee chairman is scheduling the bill for markup
on December 15, and that he is still in discussions and is "open for changes" to the bill.
and payment processors such as Paypal
or Visa
to suspend doing business with sites found to infringe on federal criminal intellectual property laws and take "technically feasible and reasonable measures" to prevent access to the infringing site. The AG could also bar search engines
from displaying links to the sites.
The bill also establishes a two-step process for intellectual property rights holders to seek relief if they have been harmed by a site dedicated to infringement. The rights holder must first notify, in writing, related payment facilitators and ad networks of the identity of the website, who, in turn, must then forward that notification and suspend services to that identified website, unless that site provides a counter notification explaining how it is not in violation. The rights holder can then sue for limited injunctive relief against the site operator, if such a counter notification is provided, or if the payment or advertising services fail to suspend service in the absence of a counter notification.
The bill provides immunity from liability to the ad and payment networks that comply with this Act or that take voluntary action to cut ties to such sites. Any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement would be liable for damages.
The second section increases the penalties for streaming video and for selling counterfeit drugs, military materials or consumer goods. The bill would make unauthorized streaming
of copyrighted content a felony.
. "It would undo the legal safe harbors that have allowed a world-leading Internet industry to flourish over the last decade. It would expose legitimate American businesses and innovators to broad and open-ended liability. The result will be more lawsuits, decreased venture capital investment, and fewer new jobs."
"The definitions written in the bill are so broad that any US consumer who uses a website overseas immediately gives the US jurisdiction the power to potentially take action against it," said Art Bordsky of Public Knowledge
.
According to co-sponsor Representative Bob Goodlatte
(R-VA), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee
's Intellectual Property sub-panel
, SOPA represents a rewrite of the PROTECT IP Act to address tech industry concerns. Goodlatte told The Hill
that the new version requires court approval for action against search engines. The Senate version, PROTECT IP, does not.
"The language of SOPA is so broad, the rules so unconnected to the reality of Internet technology and the penalties so disconnected from the alleged crimes that this bill could effectively kill e-commerce or even normal Internet use. The bill also has grave implications for existing U.S., foreign and international laws and is sure to spend decades in court challenges. Fortunately, this is the House version of a Senate bill called the Protect IP Act (S. 968) that is very different. As a result, both bills if passed in something resembling their current states will have to be considered by a conference committee," said a news analysis in the information technology magazine eWeek
.
believes targets Mozilla
, the browser used for about a quarter of all web searches. Mozilla refused in early 2011 to pull the Mafiaafire
add-on from its website, asking "Have any courts determined that the Mafiaafire add-on is unlawful or illegal in any way?"
"It would cover IP blocking. I think it contemplates deep packet inspection" said Markham C. Erikson, head of NetCoalition, a group that includes Google
, Yahoo and eBay
. An aide to sponsor Lamar Smith said that the judge would decide what sort of blocking to order. Cary Sherman
, Chairman and CEO of the RIAA
wrote in a guest editorial for CNET
that the proposed law targeted "only the illegal subdomain or Internet protocol address rather than taking action against the entire domain." (sic)
Americans may simply switch to offshore DNS providers such as CloudFloor who offer encrypted links, said David Ulevitch
, the San Francisco-based head of OpenDNS
. U.S. entrepreneurs might also move offshore. "We can reincorporate as a Cayman Islands
company and offer the same great service and not be a U.S. company anymore", he said.
Andrew Lee, CEO of ESET
North America, has expressed concerns that since the bill would require internet service providers to filter DNS queries for the sites, this would undermine the integrity of the Domain Name System
. Ars Technica
on Nov 17 2011 reported the appearance of a new anonymous top-level domain
outside of ICANN
control.
, which may in turn not correspond to the physical or virtual network devices. Individual pages of a website are files or, more usually, folders containing many files, located on a server which may belong to the domain holder or be rented from a cloud computing
provider such as Amazon or Rackspace
.
A Center for Democracy and Technology paper says that the bill "targets an entire website even if only a small portion hosts or links to some infringing content." Answering similar criticism in a CNET editorial, RIAA head Cary Sherman wrote:"Actually, it's quite the opposite. By focusing on specific sites rather than entire domains, action can be targeted against only the illegal subdomain or Internet protocol address rather than taking action against the entire domain."
An IP address usually corresponds to a physical interface on a device. That device may be a firewall
or a web server or some other hardware. Web hosts
may assign many low-traffic web sites to a single address, distributing their traffic internally. Large domains and wide area networks may have multiple IP addresses, usually for load balancing
. Such large systems would probably have a dedicated server
for incoming web traffic in a DMZ outside the firewall.
High-traffic web sites like Wikipedia.org or Amazon.com have multiple servers and may use several IP addresses to spread traffic between them. Most networks also use network address translation
or port address translation, so the IP address seen outside the domain probably is for a firewall
interface, not the computer that initiated the traffic.
assigned to that computer or network. Most often compared to a phone directory, which does describe its behavior as seen from a browser, DNS uses a hierarchical system of zones and authoritative and non-authoritative servers to keep track of changes to the name assignments. The root zone lists only the authoritative servers for the top-level domains, for example. The authoritative server for .com domains does not know about .co.ok domains, and so on.
Most web traffic is handled by the thousands of non-authoritative servers which may not list the domain requested but can refer requests to another server. The bill requires these servers to stop referring requests for domains found infringing to their assigned IP addresses. Operation In Our Sites
, a current DoJ program, redirects web requests to a warning page. In Cuba, an error message appears: "This programme will close down in a few seconds for state security reasons", according to Reporters Without Borders. The Chinese DNS filters simply drop the request, making it look like the site is offline or out of business.
In March 2010, misconfigured Chinese DNS servers prevented certain users in Chile and the United States from accessing Twitter, YouTube or Facebook among other sites, illustrating "the implications of China’s effort to impose ‘‘localized’’ restrictions to something as inherently global in scope as the Internet." In February 2008 Pakistan Telecom's attempt to block a YouTube video briefly blocked the site for an estimated two thirds of the internet.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren
(D-CA), whose district includes part of Silicon Valley
, and who has called the bill "the end of the internet as we know it", on Nov 17 released and posted to her website a technical assessment she requested from Sandia National Laboratories
of the House and Senate bills. Neither would effectively control piracy and they would delay implementation of DNSSEC
, her statement said, summarizing Sandia's response. Sandia National Laboratories is an agency of the US Department of Energy that does nuclear, computer, and military research.
The Sandia letter mostly agrees with a white paper criticizing the DNS provisions of the Senate bill. It disagrees with the contention of harm to DNSSEC implementation because, it says, DNSSEC remains so far mostly unimplemented although the need for it is clear.
"And no, that is not excessive hyperbole," said the San Jose Mercury-News. "Imagine the resources required to parse through the millions of Google and Facebook offerings every day looking for pirates who, if found, can just toss up another site in no time."
"In addition to domain-name filtering, SOPA would impose an open-ended obligation on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to prevent access to infringing sites...Preventing access to specific sites would require ISPs to inspect all the Internet traffic of its entire user base—the kind of privacy-invasive monitoring that has come under fire in the context of 'deep packet inspection
' for advertising purposes", said Center for Democracy and Technology
lawyers David Sohn and Andrew McDiarmid in an article written for The Atlantic.
"From an operational standpoint, a resolution failure from a nameserver subject to a court order and from a hacked nameserver would be indistinguishable. Users running secure applications have a need to distinguish between policy-based failures and failures caused, for example, by the presence of an attack or a hostile network, or else downgrade attacks would likely be prolific," says a white paper written about the provisions in the Senate's PROTECT IP bill. On Nov 9 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) announced that Operation Ghost Click had resulted in arrests in Estonia of the operators of a DNSChanger malware
scheme that redirected users, in this case to counterfeit websites. It had affected about four million computers, including many in large enterprises and at government agencies like NASA.
Although most people find domain names easier to remember than IP addresses, removing a website from the DNS system does not prevent determined users from reaching it. Users that know the site's IP address can substitute that for the domain name. Since "DNS Server" is an easily-changed operating system setting, most users would be able to select a non-US server if they chose to circumvent DNS redirection. Several groups like Citizen Lab
have developed web proxies to circumvent web filters in China
, Belarus
and Myanmar
and other countries where the internet is currently censored.
white paper, adding that the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF) developed the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) to prevent malicious redirection of DNS traffic, and "other forms of redirection will break the assurances from this security tool."
House cybersecurity subcommittee chairman Dan Lungren
told Politico's Morning Tech that he had "very serious concerns" about SOPA's impact on the Internet security protocol, DNSSEC, adding "we don't have enough information, and if this is a serious problem as was suggested by some of the technical experts that got in touch with me, we have to address it. I can't afford to let that go by without dealing with it."
Web filtering software has gotten more intelligent, but can still remove innocuous results, even when properly configured. Even techniques involving skin tone can still give 14 to 18% false positives, roughly half the rate of commercial software.
's (DMCA) process requiring copyright owners to submit notices of infringement to websites and ask for the infringing material to be taken down, legal observers say. "If any website sets itself up in a way that does not actively log or monitor user behavior, a rights holder can always allege that the site is "avoiding confirming" the use of the site for infringement. That rights holder allegation is sufficient to put the website at major risk of losing access to payment and ad networks," said CDT lawyer David Sohn.
Provider suspensions will likely target entire accounts, said the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the bill's provisions "grant them immunity for choking off a site if they have a 'reasonable' belief that a portion of a site enable(s) infringement, (and) give the payment processors a strong incentive to cut them off anyway."
"The defaults matter here, a lot," said law professor Derek Bambauer, "payment providers and advertisers must cease doing business with such sites unless the site owner counter-notifies, and even then, the IP owner can obtain an injunction to the same effect. Moreover, to counter-notify, a site owner must concede jurisdiction, which foreign sites will undoubtedly be reluctant to do. (Litigating in the U.S. is expensive, and the courts tend to be friendly towards local IP owners. See, for example, Judge Crotty's slipshod opinion in the Rojadirecta case.)"
"Damages are also not available to the site owner unless a claimant 'knowingly materially' misrepresented that the law covers the targeted site, a difficult legal test to meet. The owner of the site can issue a counter-notice to restore payment processing and advertising but services need not comply with the counter-notice", noted a law professor.
blogger James Allworth, concluding that the bill would "give America its very own version of the Great Firewall of China."
The legislation would lead to many cloud computing and Web hosting services moving out of the U.S. to avoid lawsuits, predicted Christian Dawson, COO of Virginia-based hosting company ServInt. "I see SOPA as a stimulus package for Asia and Europe and their Internet economies," he said.
At least 16 countries block websites, and the internet still functions in those countries, said Michael O'Leary
of the MPAA at the November 16th Judiciary Committee hearing. Denmark, Finland and Italy block The Pirate Bay
after courts ruled in favor of music and film industry litigation, and coalition of film and record companies has threatened to sue British Telecom if it does not follow suit. Maria Pallante
of the US Copyright Office said that Congress has updated the Copyright Act
before and should again, or "the U.S. copyright system will ultimately fail." Asked for clarification, she said that the US currently lacks jurisdiction over websites in other countries.
Rights-holders see intermediaries as the only accessible defendants. “This is the last stand—the guys who have the pipes,” says Peter Mensch of Q Prime, which represents bands such as Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
"Much of what will happen under SOPA will occur out of the public eye and without the possibility of holding anyone accountable. For when copyright law is made and enforced privately, it is hard for the public to know the shape that the law takes and harder still to complain about its operation," warned Brooklyn Law School
professor Jason Mazzone.
, have expressed concern about the bill's effect on provisions of the existing Digital Millennium Copyright Act
which protect Internet companies that act in good faith to remove user-uploaded infringing content from their sites.
Goodlatte added, "We're open to working with them on language to narrow [the bill's provisions], but I think it is unrealistic to think we're going to continue to rely on the DMCA
notice-and-takedown provision
. Anybody who is involved in providing services on the Internet would be expected to do some things. But we are very open to tweaking the language to ensure we don't impose extraordinary burdens on legitimate companies as long as they aren't the primary purveyors [of pirated content]". The DMCA provision known as safe harbor
protects YouTube
and other sites such as social networks hosting uploaded user material from liability, provided the sites promptly remove infringing material brought to their attention, removing "the risk that the few users among millions who post copyrighted material, libelous statements or counterfeit goods would subject the site to business-crushing legal liabilities."
The MPAA's O'Leary submitted written testimony in favor of the bill that expressed guarded support of current DMCA provisions. "Where these sites are legitimate and make good faith efforts to respond to our requests, this model works with varying degrees of effectiveness," O'Leary wrote. "It does not, however, always work quickly, and it is not perfect, but it works."
Etsy
, Flickr
and Vimeo
all seem likely to shut down if the bill becomes law, the EFF warned. YouTube is online today because it adheres to precisely the takedown provisions that the bill would alter. According to critics, the bill would ban linking to sites deemed offending, even in search results and on services such as Twitter
.
Sponsor Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said, "Millions of American jobs hang in the balance, and our efforts to protect America's intellectual property are critical to our economy's long-term success." Smith added, "The Stop Online Piracy Act helps stop the flow of revenue to rogue websites and ensures that the profits from American innovations go to American innovators."
The MPAA representative who testified before the committee said that the motion picture and film industry supports two million jobs and 95,000 small businesses. A study in early 2011 found that the internet created 2.6 jobs for every job lost to it and that "in the mature countries we studied, the Internet accounted for 10% of GDP growth over the past 15 years. And its influence is expanding. Over the past five years, the Internet's contribution to GDP growth has doubled to 21 percent."
"Total U.S. commerce in 2008 (the latest year reported on) was about $22 trillion. Of this about $3.7 trillion was in the form of e-commerce, mostly over the Internet. Most of this (92%) was business-to-business," said Harvard University
's Technology Security Officer Scott Bradner, citing census date in a discussion of the economic effects of net neutrality. US Department of Commerce figures for the third quarter of 2011 show a 13.7 percent increase for e-commerce from the third quarter of 2010 and a total retail sales increase of 8.2 percent for the same period. E-commerce sales in the third quarter of 2011 accounted for 4.6 percent of total sales, according to the Commerce announcement.
, founder of Crowdflower. "The venture capitalists have been pretty vociferous opponents of this bill. If it's making investors nervous, that's bad for me and other startup founders. No one would invest because of the legal liability."
Booz & Company on Nov 16 released a study finding that almost all of the 200 venture capitalists and angel investors interviewed would stop funding digital media intermediaries if the House bill becomes law. More than 80 percent said they would rather invest in a risky, weak economy with the current laws than a strong economy with the proposed law in effect. If legal ambiguities were removed and good faith provisions in place, investing would increase by nearly 115 percent. The study was funded by Google and researched and written by Booz.
, testified at the committee hearing that patients couldn't always detect cleverly forged websites selling drugs that were either misbranded or simply counterfeit. An indignant RxRights, a patients' rights group, issued a statement saying that Clark failed "to acknowledge that there are Canadian and other international pharmacies that do disclose where they are located, require a valid doctor's prescription and sell safe, brand-name medications produced by the same leading manufacturers as prescription medications sold in the U.S." They had earlier said that SOPA "fails to distinguish between counterfeit and genuine pharmacies" and would prevent American patients from ordering their medications from Canadian pharmacies online.
Bill sponsor Lamar Smith (R-TX) accused Google of obstructing the bill, citing its $500 million settlement with the DOJ of charges that it allowed ads from Canadian pharmacies, leading to illegal imports of prescription drugs. "Given Google's record, their objection to authorizing a court to order a search engine to not steer consumers to foreign rogue websites is more easily understood," Smith said at the hearing. "Unfortunately, the theft of America's IP costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs." Shipment of prescription drugs from foreign pharmacies to customers in the US typically violates the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and the Controlled Substances Act, whether or not the drugs or the pharmacies are legitimate.
, can also be used to thwart copyright enforcement and therefore may be made illegal by this law. Some US-funded "internet in a suitcase" projects allow users in China to circumvent the Chinese government's control of DNS. The Chinese program is technically very similar to SOPA provisions. Communication problems during Hurricane Katrina, the Fukushima earthquake and the Arab Spring have led to proposals technology changes to enable ad-hoc emergency networks.
"Imagine if the U.K. created a blacklist of American newspapers that its courts found violated celebrities' privacy?" asked Jerry Brito on Time
's Techland blog, calling the bill a bad example. "Or what if France blocked American sites it believed contained hate speech? We forget, but those countries don't have a First Amendment." "If SOPA and PIPA
are enacted, the US government must be prepared for other governments to follow suit, in service to whatever social policies they believe are important—whether restricting hate speech, insults to public officials, or political dissent." warned the Center for Democracy and Technology.
"The First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks," the AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida said in his testimony to the committee.
On November 18, 2011 the European parliament adopted by a large majority a resolution that "stresses the need to protect the integrity of the global Internet and freedom of communication by refraining from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names."
Whistleblowers already risk punitive copyright lawsuits, no less ruinous because they are eventually decided in favor of the whistleblowers. Microsoft
in 2010 served Cryptome
with a DMCA takedown notice for a non-commercial handbook for law enforcement showing how to subpoena Microsoft user records. Network Solutions
shut down the site when its owner refused to remove the material. Microsoft eventually backed down. Web hosts served with takedown notices by Diebold
in 2003 generally removed material about problems with the company's voting machines rather than argue its constitutional protections. Diebold eventually lost a precedent-setting case
in court but this required more than a year of litigation.
"A bill that was to target only the 'worst of the worst' foreign Web sites committing blatant and systemic copyright and trademark infringement has morphed inexplicably into an unrestricted hunting license for media companies to harass anyone foreign or domestic—who questions their timetable for digital transformation", wrote CNET correspondent Larry Downes.
"Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the bill is that the conduct it would criminalize is so poorly defined. While on its face the bill seems to attempt to distinguish between commercial and non-commercial conduct...in actuality the bill not only fails to accomplish this but, because of its lack of concrete definitions, it potentially criminalizes conduct that is currently permitted under the law."
Mtima continued, "The Senate version requires that a video has more than '10 performances', which legal experts say is equivalent to 'views'. In the House version, only 1 view is required. In the House version, the market value of licensing the work only needs to be $1,000 (a merely nominal licensing fee for any popular music) or greater to qualify as a criminal offense."
(R-TX) and was initially co-sponsored by Howard Berman
(D-CA), Marsha Blackburn
(R-TN), Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), Steve Chabot
(R-OH), John Conyers
(D-MI), Ted Deutch
(D-FL), Elton Gallegly
(R-CA), Bob Goodlatte
(R-VA), Timothy Griffin
(R-AR), Dennis A. Ross
(R-FL), Adam Schiff
(D-CA) and Lee Terry
[R-NE]. As of November 15, 2011, there were 24 sponsors.
The legislation has broad support from organizations that rely on copyright, including the Motion Picture Association of America
, the Recording Industry Association of America
, Macmillan Publishers
, Viacom
, and various other companies and unions in the cable, movie, and music industries. Supporters also include trademark-dependent companies such as Nike
, L'Oréal
, and Acushnet Company
.
Both the AFL-CIO
and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce support H.R. 3261, and many industries have also publicly praised the legislation. On September 22, 2011, a letter signed by over 350 businesses and organizations—including NBCUniversal, Pfizer
, Ford Motor Company
, Revlon
, NBA, and Macmillan—was sent to Congress encouraging the passage of the legislation this year.
On November 22 the CEO of the Business Software Alliance
(BSA) expressed concerns about the bill, saying that "valid and important questions have been raised about the bill". He said that definitions and remedies needed to be tightened and narrowed, but "BSA stands ready to work with Chairman Smith and his colleagues on the Judiciary Committee to resolve these issues."
In June, 2011, former Bill Clinton
press secretary Mike McCurry
and former George W. Bush
advisor Mark McKinnon
, business partners in Public Strategies, Inc., were in a campaign which echoed McCurry's earlier work in the network neutrality
legislative fight. McCurry represented SOPA/Protect IP in Politico as a way to combat theft on-line, drawing a favorable comment from the MPAA. On the 15th, McCurry and Arts + Labs co-chair McKinnon sponsored the "CREATE -- A Forum on Creativity, Commerce, Copyright, Counterfeiting and Policy" conference with members of Congress, artists and information-business executives.
, Yahoo!
, Facebook
, Twitter
, AOL
, LinkedIn
, eBay
, Mozilla Corporation
, the Brookings Institution
and human rights organizations such as Reporters Without Borders
, the Electronic Frontier Foundation
, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch
.
The Library Copyright Alliance (including the American Library Association
) objects to the broadened definition of "willful infringement" and the introduction of felony penalties for noncommercial streaming infringement, stating that these changes could encourage criminal prosecution of libraries.
On November 16, Tumblr
, Mozilla, Techdirt
, the Center for Democracy and Technology
were among many other Internet companies that protested the Stop Online Piracy Act by participating in a so-called "American Censorship Day". They displayed black banners over their site logos with the words "STOP CENSORSHIP".
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi
has expressed opposition to the bill, as well as Representatives Darrell Issa
(R-CA) and presidential candidate Ron Paul
(R-TX), who joined nine Democrats to sign a letter to other House members warning that the bill would cause "an explosion of innovation-killing lawsuits and litigation." "Issa said the legislation is beyond repair and must be rewritten from scratch," reported The Hill. Issa and Lofgren have announced plans for legislation offering "a copyright enforcement process modeled after the U.S. International Trade Commission's (ITC) patent infringement investigations."
In mid-November, Washington Post blogger Dominic Basulto, of Electric Artists and formerly Fortune
and Corante.com, drew parallels between SOPA and efforts by China
, North Korea and Iran
to limit internet access and saw an attempt "to push through new anti-piracy legislation by year-end that would benefit Hollywood at the expense of Silicon Valley".
. "One by one, each witness—including a lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America—said they weren't qualified to discuss...DNSSEC", technology news site CNET
reported.
'“I don’t think this is a balanced story,” Lofgren said. “We have no technical expertise on this panel today.” Lofgren also said: “It hasn’t generally been the policy of this committee to dismiss the views of those we are going to regulate. Impugning the motives of the critics instead of the substance is a mistake.”
House cybersecurity subcommittee chairman Dan Lungren
told Politico's Morning Tech that he had "very serious concerns" about SOPA's impact on DNSSEC, adding "we don't have enough information, and if this is a serious problem as was suggested by some of the technical experts that got in touch with me, we have to address it. I can't afford to let that go by without dealing with it."
"The significant potential harms of this bill are reflected by the extraordinary coalition arrayed against it. Concerns about SOPA have been raised by Tea Partiers, progressives, computer scientists, human rights advocates, venture capitalists, law professors, independent musicians, and many more. Unfortunately, these voices were not heard at today's hearing," said Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, who had wanted to testify but was not invited.
"This is just another case of Congress doing the bidding of powerful lobbyists—in this case, Hollywood and the music industry, among others. It would be downright mundane if the legislation weren't so draconian and the rhetoric surrounding it weren't so transparently pandering", said a Fortune
editorial.
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
on October 26, 2011, by Representative Lamar Smith
Lamar S. Smith
Lamar Seeligson Smith is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1987. The district includes most of the wealthier sections of San Antonio and Austin, as well as nearly all of the Texas Hill Country...
(R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
and counterfeit goods. Now before the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act
PRO-IP Act
The 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...
of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the Protect IP Act
Protect IP Act
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...
.
The bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
from doing business with the infringing website; barring search engines from linking to such sites and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming
Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
of copyrighted content a felony. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.
Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market, including the resultant revenue and jobs, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws especially against foreign websites. Opponents say it is Internet censorship, that it will cripple the Internet, and will threaten whistleblowing and other free speech.
The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on SOPA on November 16, 2011. A House aide said the Committee chairman is scheduling the bill for markup
Markup (legislation)
For the business term see Markup Markup refers to the process by which a U.S. congressional committee or state legislative session debates, amends, and rewrites proposed legislation....
on December 15, and that he is still in discussions and is "open for changes" to the bill.
Contents
The bill would authorize the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. After delivering a court order, the U.S. Attorney-General (AG) could require US-directed Internet service providers, ad networks such as GoogleGoogle
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...
and payment processors such as Paypal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
or Visa
Visa
Visa or VISA may refer to:* Visa , a document issued by a country's government allowing the holder to enter or to leave that country...
to suspend doing business with sites found to infringe on federal criminal intellectual property laws and take "technically feasible and reasonable measures" to prevent access to the infringing site. The AG could also bar search engines
Web search engine
A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web and FTP servers. The search results are generally presented in a list of results often referred to as SERPS, or "search engine results pages". The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other...
from displaying links to the sites.
The bill also establishes a two-step process for intellectual property rights holders to seek relief if they have been harmed by a site dedicated to infringement. The rights holder must first notify, in writing, related payment facilitators and ad networks of the identity of the website, who, in turn, must then forward that notification and suspend services to that identified website, unless that site provides a counter notification explaining how it is not in violation. The rights holder can then sue for limited injunctive relief against the site operator, if such a counter notification is provided, or if the payment or advertising services fail to suspend service in the absence of a counter notification.
The bill provides immunity from liability to the ad and payment networks that comply with this Act or that take voluntary action to cut ties to such sites. Any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement would be liable for damages.
The second section increases the penalties for streaming video and for selling counterfeit drugs, military materials or consumer goods. The bill would make unauthorized streaming
Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
of copyrighted content a felony.
Ramifications
"The bill attempts a radical restructuring of the laws governing the Internet," Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics AssociationConsumer Electronics Association
The Consumer Electronics Association is a standards and trade organization for the consumer electronics industry in the United States. The Consumer Electronics Association is the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the $173 billion U.S...
. "It would undo the legal safe harbors that have allowed a world-leading Internet industry to flourish over the last decade. It would expose legitimate American businesses and innovators to broad and open-ended liability. The result will be more lawsuits, decreased venture capital investment, and fewer new jobs."
"The definitions written in the bill are so broad that any US consumer who uses a website overseas immediately gives the US jurisdiction the power to potentially take action against it," said Art Bordsky of Public Knowledge
Public 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....
.
According to co-sponsor Representative Bob Goodlatte
Bob Goodlatte
Robert William "Bob" Goodlatte is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1993. He is a member of the Republican Party. The district is based in Roanoke and also includes Lynchburg, Harrisonburg and Staunton.-Early life, education and career:...
(R-VA), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee
United States House Committee on the Judiciary
The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, also called the House Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. It is charged with overseeing the administration of justice within the federal courts, administrative agencies and Federal law enforcement...
's Intellectual Property sub-panel
United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet is a subcommittee within the House Judiciary Committee. It was established in 2011.-Jurisdiction:...
, SOPA represents a rewrite of the PROTECT IP Act to address tech industry concerns. Goodlatte told The Hill
The Hill (newspaper)
The Hill, a subsidiary of News Communications Inc., is a newspaper published in Washington, D.C. since 1994.Its first editor was Martin Tolchin, a veteran correspondent in the Washington bureau of The New York Times....
that the new version requires court approval for action against search engines. The Senate version, PROTECT IP, does not.
"The language of SOPA is so broad, the rules so unconnected to the reality of Internet technology and the penalties so disconnected from the alleged crimes that this bill could effectively kill e-commerce or even normal Internet use. The bill also has grave implications for existing U.S., foreign and international laws and is sure to spend decades in court challenges. Fortunately, this is the House version of a Senate bill called the Protect IP Act (S. 968) that is very different. As a result, both bills if passed in something resembling their current states will have to be considered by a conference committee," said a news analysis in the information technology magazine eWeek
EWeek
eWeek is a weekly computing business magazine published by Ziff Davis Enterprise.The magazine consists of a print publication and web site covering enterprise topics and is targeted at IT professionals rather than hobbyists.-Audience:The eWeek audience is actively involved in buying enterprise...
.
Technical concerns
Open source software projects may shut down under this bill, under a provision which the EFFElectronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
believes targets 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....
, the browser used for about a quarter of all web searches. Mozilla refused in early 2011 to pull the Mafiaafire
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...
add-on from its website, asking "Have any courts determined that the Mafiaafire add-on is unlawful or illegal in any way?"
"It would cover IP blocking. I think it contemplates deep packet inspection" said Markham C. Erikson, head of NetCoalition, a group that includes 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...
, Yahoo and 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...
. An aide to sponsor Lamar Smith said that the judge would decide what sort of blocking to order. Cary Sherman
Cary Sherman
Cary H. Sherman is currently the President of the Recording Industry Association of America as has been for the past 13 years.-Education:Sherman graduated from Cornell University in 1968, and Harvard Law School in 1971.-Career:...
, Chairman and CEO of the RIAA
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...
wrote in a guest editorial for CNET
CNET
CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...
that the proposed law targeted "only the illegal subdomain or Internet protocol address rather than taking action against the entire domain." (sic)
Americans may simply switch to offshore DNS providers such as CloudFloor who offer encrypted links, said David Ulevitch
David Ulevitch
David A. Ulevitch is founder and current CEO of OpenDNS and founder of EveryDNS.Ulevitch, the youngest child of Susan and Richard Ulevitch, was born and raised in Del Mar, California. Ulevitch's technology career started at an early age when he began working for ElectriCiti, a small regional ISP...
, the San Francisco-based head of OpenDNS
OpenDNS
OpenDNS is a DNS resolution service. OpenDNS extends DNS adding features such as misspelling correction, phishing protection, and optional content filtering...
. U.S. entrepreneurs might also move offshore. "We can reincorporate as a Cayman Islands
Cayman Islands
The Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory and overseas territory of the European Union located in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman, located south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica...
company and offer the same great service and not be a U.S. company anymore", he said.
Andrew Lee, CEO of ESET
Eset
ESET is an IT security company head-quartered in Bratislava, Slovakia that was founded in 1992 by the merger of two private companies. The company was awarded as the most successful Slovak company in 2008, 2009 and 2010...
North America, has expressed concerns that since the bill would require internet service providers to filter DNS queries for the sites, this would undermine the integrity of 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...
. Ars Technica
Ars Technica
Ars Technica is a technology news and information website created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games. Ars Technica is known for its features, long articles that go...
on Nov 17 2011 reported the appearance of a new anonymous top-level domain
Top-level domain
A top-level domain is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last label of a...
outside of ICANN
ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a non-profit corporation headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, United States, that was created on September 18, 1998, and incorporated on September 30, 1998 to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly...
control.
Bill mandates at odds with internet structure
The structure of a web site is distinct from domain structure or enterprise architectureEnterprise architecture
An enterprise architecture is a rigorous description of the structure of an enterprise, which comprises enterprise components , the externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships between them...
, which may in turn not correspond to the physical or virtual network devices. Individual pages of a website are files or, more usually, folders containing many files, located on a server which may belong to the domain holder or be rented from a cloud computing
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....
provider such as Amazon or Rackspace
Rackspace
Rackspace US, Inc. is an IT hosting company based in San Antonio, Texas. The company also has offices in Australia, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Hong Kong, and data centers operating in Texas, Illinois, Virginia, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong in late 2008...
.
A Center for Democracy and Technology paper says that the bill "targets an entire website even if only a small portion hosts or links to some infringing content." Answering similar criticism in a CNET editorial, RIAA head Cary Sherman wrote:"Actually, it's quite the opposite. By focusing on specific sites rather than entire domains, action can be targeted against only the illegal subdomain or Internet protocol address rather than taking action against the entire domain."
An IP address usually corresponds to a physical interface on a device. That device may be a firewall
Firewall
Firewall may refer to:* Firewall , a barrier inside a building or vehicle, designed to limit the spread of fire, heat and structural collapse...
or a web server or some other hardware. Web hosts
Shared web hosting service
A shared web hosting service or virtual hosting service or derive host refers to a web hosting service where many websites reside on one web server connected to the Internet. Each site "sits" on its own partition, or section/place on the server, to keep it separate from other sites...
may assign many low-traffic web sites to a single address, distributing their traffic internally. Large domains and wide area networks may have multiple IP addresses, usually for load balancing
Load balancing (computing)
Load balancing is a computer networking methodology to distribute workload across multiple computers or a computer cluster, network links, central processing units, disk drives, or other resources, to achieve optimal resource utilization, maximize throughput, minimize response time, and avoid...
. Such large systems would probably have a dedicated server
Web server
Web server can refer to either the hardware or the software that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet....
for incoming web traffic in a DMZ outside the firewall.
High-traffic web sites like Wikipedia.org or Amazon.com have multiple servers and may use several IP addresses to spread traffic between them. Most networks also use network address translation
Network address translation
In computer networking, network address translation is the process of modifying IP address information in IP packet headers while in transit across a traffic routing device....
or port address translation, so the IP address seen outside the domain probably is for a firewall
Firewall
Firewall may refer to:* Firewall , a barrier inside a building or vehicle, designed to limit the spread of fire, heat and structural collapse...
interface, not the computer that initiated the traffic.
DNS blocking and filtering
Domain Name System (DNS) servers translate browser requests for domain names into the IP addressIP 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...
assigned to that computer or network. Most often compared to a phone directory, which does describe its behavior as seen from a browser, DNS uses a hierarchical system of zones and authoritative and non-authoritative servers to keep track of changes to the name assignments. The root zone lists only the authoritative servers for the top-level domains, for example. The authoritative server for .com domains does not know about .co.ok domains, and so on.
Most web traffic is handled by the thousands of non-authoritative servers which may not list the domain requested but can refer requests to another server. The bill requires these servers to stop referring requests for domains found infringing to their assigned IP addresses. Operation In Our Sites
Operation In Our Sites v. 2.0
Operation 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...
, a current DoJ program, redirects web requests to a warning page. In Cuba, an error message appears: "This programme will close down in a few seconds for state security reasons", according to Reporters Without Borders. The Chinese DNS filters simply drop the request, making it look like the site is offline or out of business.
In March 2010, misconfigured Chinese DNS servers prevented certain users in Chile and the United States from accessing Twitter, YouTube or Facebook among other sites, illustrating "the implications of China’s effort to impose ‘‘localized’’ restrictions to something as inherently global in scope as the Internet." In February 2008 Pakistan Telecom's attempt to block a YouTube video briefly blocked the site for an estimated two thirds of the internet.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren
Zoe Lofgren
Zoe Lofgren is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1995. She is a member of the Democratic Party. The district is based in San Jose.-Early life, education, and early career:...
(D-CA), whose district includes part of Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
, and who has called the bill "the end of the internet as we know it", on Nov 17 released and posted to her website a technical assessment she requested from Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia National Laboratories
The Sandia National Laboratories, managed and operated by the Sandia Corporation , are two major United States Department of Energy research and development national laboratories....
of the House and Senate bills. Neither would effectively control piracy and they would delay implementation of DNSSEC
DNSSEC
The Domain Name System Security Extensions is a suite of Internet Engineering Task Force specifications for securing certain kinds of information provided by the Domain Name System as used on Internet Protocol networks...
, her statement said, summarizing Sandia's response. Sandia National Laboratories is an agency of the US Department of Energy that does nuclear, computer, and military research.
The Sandia letter mostly agrees with a white paper criticizing the DNS provisions of the Senate bill. It disagrees with the contention of harm to DNSSEC implementation because, it says, DNSSEC remains so far mostly unimplemented although the need for it is clear.
"And no, that is not excessive hyperbole," said the San Jose Mercury-News. "Imagine the resources required to parse through the millions of Google and Facebook offerings every day looking for pirates who, if found, can just toss up another site in no time."
"In addition to domain-name filtering, SOPA would impose an open-ended obligation on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to prevent access to infringing sites...Preventing access to specific sites would require ISPs to inspect all the Internet traffic of its entire user base—the kind of privacy-invasive monitoring that has come under fire in the context of 'deep packet inspection
Deep packet inspection
Deep Packet Inspection is a form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data part of a packet as it passes an inspection point, searching for protocol non-compliance, viruses, spam, intrusions or predefined criteria to decide if the packet can...
' for advertising purposes", said Center for Democracy and Technology
Center for Democracy and Technology
The Center for Democracy & Technology is a Washington, D.C. based 501 non-profit public-interest group that works to promote an open, innovative and free Internet....
lawyers David Sohn and Andrew McDiarmid in an article written for The Atlantic.
"From an operational standpoint, a resolution failure from a nameserver subject to a court order and from a hacked nameserver would be indistinguishable. Users running secure applications have a need to distinguish between policy-based failures and failures caused, for example, by the presence of an attack or a hostile network, or else downgrade attacks would likely be prolific," says a white paper written about the provisions in the Senate's PROTECT IP bill. On Nov 9 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
(FBI) announced that Operation Ghost Click had resulted in arrests in Estonia of the operators of a DNSChanger malware
Malware
Malware, short for malicious software, consists of programming that is designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, or gain unauthorized access to system resources, or that otherwise exhibits abusive behavior...
scheme that redirected users, in this case to counterfeit websites. It had affected about four million computers, including many in large enterprises and at government agencies like NASA.
Although most people find domain names easier to remember than IP addresses, removing a website from the DNS system does not prevent determined users from reaching it. Users that know the site's IP address can substitute that for the domain name. Since "DNS Server" is an easily-changed operating system setting, most users would be able to select a non-US server if they chose to circumvent DNS redirection. Several groups like Citizen Lab
Citizen Lab
The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, Canada. Founded Professor Ronald Deibert, the Citizen Lab focuses on advanced research and development at the intersection of digital media, global security, and human...
have developed web proxies to circumvent web filters in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
and Myanmar
Myanmar
Burma , officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar , is a country in Southeast Asia. Burma is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southwest, and the Andaman Sea on the south....
and other countries where the internet is currently censored.
DNSSEC
"The DNS system is based on trust," says a Brookings InstitutionBrookings Institution
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., in the United States. One of Washington's oldest think tanks, Brookings conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in economics, metropolitan policy, governance, foreign policy, and...
white paper, adding that the Internet Engineering Task Force
Internet Engineering Task Force
The Internet Engineering Task Force develops and promotes Internet standards, cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite...
(IETF) developed the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) to prevent malicious redirection of DNS traffic, and "other forms of redirection will break the assurances from this security tool."
House cybersecurity subcommittee chairman Dan Lungren
Dan Lungren
Daniel Edward "Dan" Lungren is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2005. The district covers most of Sacramento County and part of Solano County, as well as all of Alpine, Amador and Calaveras counties...
told Politico's Morning Tech that he had "very serious concerns" about SOPA's impact on the Internet security protocol, DNSSEC, adding "we don't have enough information, and if this is a serious problem as was suggested by some of the technical experts that got in touch with me, we have to address it. I can't afford to let that go by without dealing with it."
Detection considerations
Google voluntarily blocks child pornography using methods that begin by detecting skin tones, said a representative at the Nov 16th hearing, but does not know how to detect copyright infringement. Under current law, it can rely on copyright holders to bring offending material to its attention. China reportedly requires an Internet police force of 30,000 for its censorship efforts, which meet with only partial success.Web filtering software has gotten more intelligent, but can still remove innocuous results, even when properly configured. Even techniques involving skin tone can still give 14 to 18% false positives, roughly half the rate of commercial software.
Legal concerns
According to some opponents, its requirements would overturn the Digital Millennium Copyright ActDigital 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...
's (DMCA) process requiring copyright owners to submit notices of infringement to websites and ask for the infringing material to be taken down, legal observers say. "If any website sets itself up in a way that does not actively log or monitor user behavior, a rights holder can always allege that the site is "avoiding confirming" the use of the site for infringement. That rights holder allegation is sufficient to put the website at major risk of losing access to payment and ad networks," said CDT lawyer David Sohn.
Provider suspensions will likely target entire accounts, said the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the bill's provisions "grant them immunity for choking off a site if they have a 'reasonable' belief that a portion of a site enable(s) infringement, (and) give the payment processors a strong incentive to cut them off anyway."
"The defaults matter here, a lot," said law professor Derek Bambauer, "payment providers and advertisers must cease doing business with such sites unless the site owner counter-notifies, and even then, the IP owner can obtain an injunction to the same effect. Moreover, to counter-notify, a site owner must concede jurisdiction, which foreign sites will undoubtedly be reluctant to do. (Litigating in the U.S. is expensive, and the courts tend to be friendly towards local IP owners. See, for example, Judge Crotty's slipshod opinion in the Rojadirecta case.)"
"Damages are also not available to the site owner unless a claimant 'knowingly materially' misrepresented that the law covers the targeted site, a difficult legal test to meet. The owner of the site can issue a counter-notice to restore payment processing and advertising but services need not comply with the counter-notice", noted a law professor.
Business concerns
"Is this really what we want to do to the internet? Shut it down every time it doesn't fit someone's business model?" asks Harvard Business ReviewHarvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review is a general management magazine published since 1922 by Harvard Business School Publishing, owned by the Harvard Business School. A monthly research-based magazine written for business practitioners, it claims a high ranking business readership among academics, executives,...
blogger James Allworth, concluding that the bill would "give America its very own version of the Great Firewall of China."
The legislation would lead to many cloud computing and Web hosting services moving out of the U.S. to avoid lawsuits, predicted Christian Dawson, COO of Virginia-based hosting company ServInt. "I see SOPA as a stimulus package for Asia and Europe and their Internet economies," he said.
At least 16 countries block websites, and the internet still functions in those countries, said Michael O'Leary
Michael O'Leary
Michael O'Leary is the name of:*Michael O'Leary , Irish-Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross*Michael O'Leary , Irish politician and leader of the Irish Labour Party...
of the MPAA at the November 16th Judiciary Committee hearing. Denmark, Finland and Italy block The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...
after courts ruled in favor of music and film industry litigation, and coalition of film and record companies has threatened to sue British Telecom if it does not follow suit. Maria Pallante
Maria Pallante
Maria A. Pallante is the 12th United States Register of Copyrights. She was appointed Acting Register effective January 1, 2011, succeeding Marybeth Peters, who had retired effective December 31, 2010...
of the US Copyright Office said that Congress has updated the Copyright Act
Copyright Act
Copyright Act may refer to:Canada* Copyright Act of CanadaHong Kong*Copyright Ordinance 1997India*New Zealand* Copyright Act 1994United Kingdom...
before and should again, or "the U.S. copyright system will ultimately fail." Asked for clarification, she said that the US currently lacks jurisdiction over websites in other countries.
Copyright
"Intellectual property is one of America's chief job creators and competitive advantages in the global marketplace," said Goodlatte, "yet American inventors, authors, and entrepreneurs have been forced to stand by and watch as their works are stolen by foreign infringers beyond the reach of current U.S. laws. This legislation will update the laws to ensure that the economic incentives our Framers enshrined in the Constitution over 220 years ago - to encourage new writings, research, products and services - remain effective in the 21st Century's global marketplace, which will create more American jobs. The bill will also protect consumers from dangerous counterfeit products, such as fake drugs, automobile parts and infant formula."Rights-holders see intermediaries as the only accessible defendants. “This is the last stand—the guys who have the pipes,” says Peter Mensch of Q Prime, which represents bands such as Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
"Much of what will happen under SOPA will occur out of the public eye and without the possibility of holding anyone accountable. For when copyright law is made and enforced privately, it is hard for the public to know the shape that the law takes and harder still to complain about its operation," warned Brooklyn Law School
Brooklyn Law School
Brooklyn Law School is a law school located in Brooklyn Heights, in Downtown Brooklyn, New York.-History:Founded in 1901 by William Payson Richardson and Norman P. Heffley, Brooklyn Law School was the first law school on Long Island. Using space provided by Heffley’s business school, the law...
professor Jason Mazzone.
DMCA
Critics of the bill, including GoogleGoogle
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...
, have expressed concern about the bill's effect on provisions of the existing Digital Millennium Copyright Act
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...
which protect Internet companies that act in good faith to remove user-uploaded infringing content from their sites.
Goodlatte added, "We're open to working with them on language to narrow [the bill's provisions], but I think it is unrealistic to think we're going to continue to rely on 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...
notice-and-takedown provision
Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act
The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act is United States federal law that creates a conditional safe harbor for online service providers and other Internet intermediaries by shielding them for their own acts of direct copyright infringement as well as...
. Anybody who is involved in providing services on the Internet would be expected to do some things. But we are very open to tweaking the language to ensure we don't impose extraordinary burdens on legitimate companies as long as they aren't the primary purveyors [of pirated content]". The DMCA provision known as safe harbor
Safe harbor
The term safe harbor has several special usages, in an analogy with its literal meaning, that of a harbor or haven which provides safety from weather or attack.-Legal definition:...
protects YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
and other sites such as social networks hosting uploaded user material from liability, provided the sites promptly remove infringing material brought to their attention, removing "the risk that the few users among millions who post copyrighted material, libelous statements or counterfeit goods would subject the site to business-crushing legal liabilities."
The MPAA's O'Leary submitted written testimony in favor of the bill that expressed guarded support of current DMCA provisions. "Where these sites are legitimate and make good faith efforts to respond to our requests, this model works with varying degrees of effectiveness," O'Leary wrote. "It does not, however, always work quickly, and it is not perfect, but it works."
Etsy
Etsy
Etsy is an e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items as well as art and craft supplies. These items cover a wide range including art, photography, clothing, jewelry, edibles, bath & beauty products, quilts, knick-knacks and toys. Many individuals also sell craft supplies like beads,...
, Flickr
Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
and Vimeo
Vimeo
Vimeo is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. It was founded by Zach Klein and Jake Lodwick in November 2004...
all seem likely to shut down if the bill becomes law, the EFF warned. YouTube is online today because it adheres to precisely the takedown provisions that the bill would alter. According to critics, the bill would ban linking to sites deemed offending, even in search results and on services such as Twitter
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...
.
Jobs and the economy
"This bill cannot be fixed; it must be killed," the EFF said on October 28 2011, calling the bill a "massive piece of job-killing Internet regulation."Sponsor Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said, "Millions of American jobs hang in the balance, and our efforts to protect America's intellectual property are critical to our economy's long-term success." Smith added, "The Stop Online Piracy Act helps stop the flow of revenue to rogue websites and ensures that the profits from American innovations go to American innovators."
The MPAA representative who testified before the committee said that the motion picture and film industry supports two million jobs and 95,000 small businesses. A study in early 2011 found that the internet created 2.6 jobs for every job lost to it and that "in the mature countries we studied, the Internet accounted for 10% of GDP growth over the past 15 years. And its influence is expanding. Over the past five years, the Internet's contribution to GDP growth has doubled to 21 percent."
"Total U.S. commerce in 2008 (the latest year reported on) was about $22 trillion. Of this about $3.7 trillion was in the form of e-commerce, mostly over the Internet. Most of this (92%) was business-to-business," said Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
's Technology Security Officer Scott Bradner, citing census date in a discussion of the economic effects of net neutrality. US Department of Commerce figures for the third quarter of 2011 show a 13.7 percent increase for e-commerce from the third quarter of 2010 and a total retail sales increase of 8.2 percent for the same period. E-commerce sales in the third quarter of 2011 accounted for 4.6 percent of total sales, according to the Commerce announcement.
Startups and venture capital
"It'll have a stifling effect on venture capital," said internet entrepreneur Lukas BiewaldLukas Biewald
Lukas Biewald is an entrepreneur living in San Francisco, California. Biewald is CEO of CrowdFlower — an Internet company that breaks large digital projects into small tasks and distributes them to workers around the world — which he co-founded in December 2007 with Chris Van Pelt.- Background...
, founder of Crowdflower. "The venture capitalists have been pretty vociferous opponents of this bill. If it's making investors nervous, that's bad for me and other startup founders. No one would invest because of the legal liability."
Booz & Company on Nov 16 released a study finding that almost all of the 200 venture capitalists and angel investors interviewed would stop funding digital media intermediaries if the House bill becomes law. More than 80 percent said they would rather invest in a risky, weak economy with the current laws than a strong economy with the proposed law in effect. If legal ambiguities were removed and good faith provisions in place, investing would increase by nearly 115 percent. The study was funded by Google and researched and written by Booz.
Drug industry
John Clark, spokesman for PfizerPfizer
Pfizer, Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, United States...
, testified at the committee hearing that patients couldn't always detect cleverly forged websites selling drugs that were either misbranded or simply counterfeit. An indignant RxRights, a patients' rights group, issued a statement saying that Clark failed "to acknowledge that there are Canadian and other international pharmacies that do disclose where they are located, require a valid doctor's prescription and sell safe, brand-name medications produced by the same leading manufacturers as prescription medications sold in the U.S." They had earlier said that SOPA "fails to distinguish between counterfeit and genuine pharmacies" and would prevent American patients from ordering their medications from Canadian pharmacies online.
Bill sponsor Lamar Smith (R-TX) accused Google of obstructing the bill, citing its $500 million settlement with the DOJ of charges that it allowed ads from Canadian pharmacies, leading to illegal imports of prescription drugs. "Given Google's record, their objection to authorizing a court to order a search engine to not steer consumers to foreign rogue websites is more easily understood," Smith said at the hearing. "Unfortunately, the theft of America's IP costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs." Shipment of prescription drugs from foreign pharmacies to customers in the US typically violates the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and the Controlled Substances Act, whether or not the drugs or the pharmacies are legitimate.
Free speech concerns
Many proxy servers, such as those used during the Arab SpringArab Spring
The Arab Spring , otherwise known as the Arab Awakening, is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began on Saturday, 18 December 2010...
, can also be used to thwart copyright enforcement and therefore may be made illegal by this law. Some US-funded "internet in a suitcase" projects allow users in China to circumvent the Chinese government's control of DNS. The Chinese program is technically very similar to SOPA provisions. Communication problems during Hurricane Katrina, the Fukushima earthquake and the Arab Spring have led to proposals technology changes to enable ad-hoc emergency networks.
"Imagine if the U.K. created a blacklist of American newspapers that its courts found violated celebrities' privacy?" asked Jerry Brito on Time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
's Techland blog, calling the bill a bad example. "Or what if France blocked American sites it believed contained hate speech? We forget, but those countries don't have a First Amendment." "If SOPA and PIPA
Protect IP Act
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...
are enacted, the US government must be prepared for other governments to follow suit, in service to whatever social policies they believe are important—whether restricting hate speech, insults to public officials, or political dissent." warned the Center for Democracy and Technology.
"The First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks," the AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida said in his testimony to the committee.
On November 18, 2011 the European parliament adopted by a large majority a resolution that "stresses the need to protect the integrity of the global Internet and freedom of communication by refraining from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names."
Whistleblowers already risk punitive copyright lawsuits, no less ruinous because they are eventually decided in favor of the whistleblowers. Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
in 2010 served Cryptome
Cryptome
Cryptome is a website hosted in the United States since 1996 by independent scholars and architects John Young and Deborah Natsios that functions as a repository for information about freedom of speech, cryptography, spying, and surveillance...
with a DMCA takedown notice for a non-commercial handbook for law enforcement showing how to subpoena Microsoft user records. Network Solutions
Network Solutions
Network Solutions, LLC is a technology company founded in 1979. The domain name registration business has become the most important division of the company. As of January 2009, Network Solutions managed more than 6.6 million domain names.-History:...
shut down the site when its owner refused to remove the material. Microsoft eventually backed down. Web hosts served with takedown notices by Diebold
Diebold
Diebold, Inc. is a United States-based security systems corporation that is engaged primarily in the sale, manufacture, installation and service of self-service transaction systems , electronic and physical security products , and software and integrated systems for global financial and...
in 2003 generally removed material about problems with the company's voting machines rather than argue its constitutional protections. Diebold eventually lost a precedent-setting case
OPG v. Diebold
OPG v. Diebold, 337 F. Supp. 2d 1195 , more officially known as Online Policy Group , Nelson Chu Pavlosky, and Luke Thomas Smith v. Diebold, Incorporated and Diebold Election Systems, Incorporated , was a lawsuit involving an archive of Diebold's internal company e-mails and Diebold's contested...
in court but this required more than a year of litigation.
"A bill that was to target only the 'worst of the worst' foreign Web sites committing blatant and systemic copyright and trademark infringement has morphed inexplicably into an unrestricted hunting license for media companies to harass anyone foreign or domestic—who questions their timetable for digital transformation", wrote CNET correspondent Larry Downes.
Penalties for streaming
An aide to bill sponsor Lamar Smith has said that "Sites that host user content—like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter—have nothing to be concerned about under this legislation", but many disagree. Lateef Mtima, Director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice at the Howard University School of Law, says:"Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the bill is that the conduct it would criminalize is so poorly defined. While on its face the bill seems to attempt to distinguish between commercial and non-commercial conduct...in actuality the bill not only fails to accomplish this but, because of its lack of concrete definitions, it potentially criminalizes conduct that is currently permitted under the law."
Mtima continued, "The Senate version requires that a video has more than '10 performances', which legal experts say is equivalent to 'views'. In the House version, only 1 view is required. In the House version, the market value of licensing the work only needs to be $1,000 (a merely nominal licensing fee for any popular music) or greater to qualify as a criminal offense."
Supporters
The Stop Online Piracy Act was introduced by Representative Lamar SmithLamar S. Smith
Lamar Seeligson Smith is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1987. The district includes most of the wealthier sections of San Antonio and Austin, as well as nearly all of the Texas Hill Country...
(R-TX) and was initially co-sponsored by Howard Berman
Howard Berman
Howard Lawrence Berman is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2003. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He earlier served in the California State Assembly from 1974 to 1982, and as the U.S...
(D-CA), Marsha Blackburn
Marsha Blackburn
Marsha Wedgeworth Blackburn is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2003. She is a member of the Republican Party. The district stretches from the suburbs of Nashville to the suburbs of Memphis.-Early life, education and career:...
(R-TN), Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), Steve Chabot
Steve Chabot
Steven Joseph "Steve" Chabot is the U.S. Representative for . He is a member of the Republican Party. He previously represented the district from 1995 to 2009.-Early life, education and career:...
(R-OH), John Conyers
John Conyers
John Conyers, Jr. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1965 . He is a member of the Democratic Party...
(D-MI), Ted Deutch
Ted Deutch
Theodore E. "Ted" Deutch is the U.S. Representative for , serving since April 15, 2010. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He previously served in the Florida Senate.- Early life, education, and law career:...
(D-FL), Elton Gallegly
Elton Gallegly
Elton William Gallegly is the U.S. Representative for , and previously the 23rd and 21st, serving in Congress since 1993. He is a member of the Republican Party.-Early life, education, and pre-congressional career:...
(R-CA), Bob Goodlatte
Bob Goodlatte
Robert William "Bob" Goodlatte is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1993. He is a member of the Republican Party. The district is based in Roanoke and also includes Lynchburg, Harrisonburg and Staunton.-Early life, education and career:...
(R-VA), Timothy Griffin
Timothy Griffin
John Timothy Griffin is the U.S. Representative for . He is a member of the Republican Party. He was a United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas from December 2006 to June 2007, appointed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.-Early life and education:Griffin was born in...
(R-AR), Dennis A. Ross
Dennis A. Ross
Dennis Alan Ross is the U.S. Representative for . He is a member of the Republican Party. The seat was left open as the incumbent Adam Putnam ran for Florida Commissioner of Agriculture.- Early life, education, and business career :...
(R-FL), Adam Schiff
Adam Schiff
Adam Bennett Schiff is the U.S. Representative for . He has served in Congress since 2001. He is a member of the Democratic Party...
(D-CA) and Lee Terry
Lee Terry
Lee Raymond Terry is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1999. He is a member of the Republican Party.A lifelong Nebraskan, Congressman Lee Terry has worked continually to empower the people of the Second District. Terry has been a leader for Nebraska, advocating American energy...
[R-NE]. As of November 15, 2011, there were 24 sponsors.
The legislation has broad support from organizations that rely on copyright, including 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 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...
, Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
, Viacom
Viacom
Viacom Inc. , short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in, but not limited to, cinema and cable television...
, and various other companies and unions in the cable, movie, and music industries. Supporters also include trademark-dependent companies such as Nike
Nike
Nike may refer to:* Nike , Greek goddess who personifies victory**The Nike of Samothrace, an ancient statue of the goddess Nike* Nike, Inc., major U.S. manufacturer of athletic shoes, apparel, and sports equipment...
, L'Oréal
L'Oréal
The L'Oréal Group is the world's largest cosmetics and beauty company. With its registered office in Paris and head office in the Paris suburb of Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France, it has developed activities in the field of cosmetics...
, and Acushnet Company
Acushnet Company
The Acushnet Company is a subsidiary of the Fortune Brands Corporation that makes golf equipment and golfing apparel.However, Fortune Brands announced on December 8, 2010, that it planned to focus on its liquor business, and would spin off or sell other parts of the company — including home...
.
Both the 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...
and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce support H.R. 3261, and many industries have also publicly praised the legislation. On September 22, 2011, a letter signed by over 350 businesses and organizations—including NBCUniversal, Pfizer
Pfizer
Pfizer, Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, United States...
, Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...
, Revlon
Revlon
Revlon is an American cosmetics, skin care, fragrance, and personal care company founded in 1932.-History:Revlon was founded in the midst of the Great Depression, 1932, by Charles Revson and his brother Joseph, along with a chemist, Charles Lachman, who contributed the "L" in the Revlon name...
, NBA, and Macmillan—was sent to Congress encouraging the passage of the legislation this year.
On November 22 the CEO of the Business Software Alliance
Business Software Alliance
The Business Software Alliance is a trade group established in 1988 and representing a number of the world's largest software makers and is a member of the International Intellectual Property Alliance...
(BSA) expressed concerns about the bill, saying that "valid and important questions have been raised about the bill". He said that definitions and remedies needed to be tightened and narrowed, but "BSA stands ready to work with Chairman Smith and his colleagues on the Judiciary Committee to resolve these issues."
In June, 2011, former Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
press secretary Mike McCurry
Mike McCurry
Mike McCurry is best known as the former press secretary for Bill Clinton's administration. He is a Washington-based communications consultant and is associated with the firm Public Strategies Washington, Inc...
and former George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
advisor Mark McKinnon
Mark McKinnon
Mark McKinnon is a Republican political advisor in the United States, Global Vice-Chairman of Hill & Knowlton, Inc., a leading international communications consultancy, providing services to local, multinational and global clients, and the President of Maverick Media. Originally a Democrat,...
, business partners in Public Strategies, Inc., were in a campaign which echoed McCurry's earlier work in the network neutrality
Network neutrality
Network neutrality is a principle that advocates no restrictions by Internet service providers or governments on consumers' access to networks that participate in the Internet...
legislative fight. McCurry represented SOPA/Protect IP in Politico as a way to combat theft on-line, drawing a favorable comment from the MPAA. On the 15th, McCurry and Arts + Labs co-chair McKinnon sponsored the "CREATE -- A Forum on Creativity, Commerce, Copyright, Counterfeiting and Policy" conference with members of Congress, artists and information-business executives.
Opposition
Opponents of the bill include GoogleGoogle
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...
, 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 ,...
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
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...
, AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
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,...
, 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...
, Mozilla Corporation
Mozilla Corporation
The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey Navigator web browsers and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client by a growing global community of...
, the Brookings Institution
Brookings Institution
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., in the United States. One of Washington's oldest think tanks, Brookings conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in economics, metropolitan policy, governance, foreign policy, and...
and human rights organizations such as 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...
, the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
, the ACLU 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,...
.
The Library Copyright Alliance (including the American Library Association
American Library Association
The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....
) objects to the broadened definition of "willful infringement" and the introduction of felony penalties for noncommercial streaming infringement, stating that these changes could encourage criminal prosecution of libraries.
On November 16, Tumblr
Tumblr
Tumblr is a website and microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users can follow other users, or choose to make their tumblelog private. The service emphasizes ease of use. The site ranks as the 10th...
, Mozilla, Techdirt
Techdirt
Techdirt is a weblog that reports on technology trends, and related business and economic policy issues, often focusing on copyright and patent reform. The website was started in 1997 by Mike Masnick and it was originally based on the weblog Slash. Techdirt has been named among the favorite blogs...
, the Center for Democracy and Technology
Center for Democracy and Technology
The Center for Democracy & Technology is a Washington, D.C. based 501 non-profit public-interest group that works to promote an open, innovative and free Internet....
were among many other Internet companies that protested the Stop Online Piracy Act by participating in a so-called "American Censorship Day". They displayed black banners over their site logos with the words "STOP CENSORSHIP".
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi
Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi is the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives and served as the 60th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011...
has expressed opposition to the bill, as well as Representatives Darrell Issa
Darrell Issa
Darrell Edward Issa is the U.S. Representative for , and previously the 48th, serving since 2001. He is a member of the Republican Party. He was formerly a CEO of Directed Electronics, the Vista, California-based manufacturer of automobile security and convenience products...
(R-CA) and presidential candidate Ron Paul
Ron Paul
Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul is an American physician, author and United States Congressman who is seeking to be the Republican Party candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Paul represents Texas's 14th congressional district, which covers an area south and southwest of Houston that includes...
(R-TX), who joined nine Democrats to sign a letter to other House members warning that the bill would cause "an explosion of innovation-killing lawsuits and litigation." "Issa said the legislation is beyond repair and must be rewritten from scratch," reported The Hill. Issa and Lofgren have announced plans for legislation offering "a copyright enforcement process modeled after the U.S. International Trade Commission's (ITC) patent infringement investigations."
In mid-November, Washington Post blogger Dominic Basulto, of Electric Artists and formerly Fortune
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...
and Corante.com, drew parallels between SOPA and efforts by China
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. There are no specific laws or regulations which the censorship follows...
, North Korea and Iran
Internet censorship in Iran
In the first few years of the 21st century, Iran experienced a great surge in Internet usage, and, with 20 million people on the Internet, currently has the second highest percentage of its population online in the Middle East, after Israel. When initially introduced, the Internet services...
to limit internet access and saw an attempt "to push through new anti-piracy legislation by year-end that would benefit Hollywood at the expense of Silicon Valley".
Criticism of the committee hearing
"The techno-ignorance of Congress was on full display. Member after member admitted that they really didn't have any idea what impact SOPA's regulatory provisions would have on the DNS, online security, or much of anything else", said Adam Thierer, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus CenterMercatus Center
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University in the United States is a non-profit market-oriented research, education, and outreach think tank affiliated with the Koch family. It works with policy experts, lobbyists, and government officials to connect academic learning and real-world practice...
. "One by one, each witness—including a lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America—said they weren't qualified to discuss...DNSSEC", technology news site CNET
CNET
CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...
reported.
'“I don’t think this is a balanced story,” Lofgren said. “We have no technical expertise on this panel today.” Lofgren also said: “It hasn’t generally been the policy of this committee to dismiss the views of those we are going to regulate. Impugning the motives of the critics instead of the substance is a mistake.”
House cybersecurity subcommittee chairman Dan Lungren
Dan Lungren
Daniel Edward "Dan" Lungren is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2005. The district covers most of Sacramento County and part of Solano County, as well as all of Alpine, Amador and Calaveras counties...
told Politico's Morning Tech that he had "very serious concerns" about SOPA's impact on DNSSEC, adding "we don't have enough information, and if this is a serious problem as was suggested by some of the technical experts that got in touch with me, we have to address it. I can't afford to let that go by without dealing with it."
"The significant potential harms of this bill are reflected by the extraordinary coalition arrayed against it. Concerns about SOPA have been raised by Tea Partiers, progressives, computer scientists, human rights advocates, venture capitalists, law professors, independent musicians, and many more. Unfortunately, these voices were not heard at today's hearing," said Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, who had wanted to testify but was not invited.
"This is just another case of Congress doing the bidding of powerful lobbyists—in this case, Hollywood and the music industry, among others. It would be downright mundane if the legislation weren't so draconian and the rhetoric surrounding it weren't so transparently pandering", said a Fortune
Fortune
Fortune may refer to:General concepts* Luck, a chance happening, or that which happens beyond a person's controls* Wealth, an abundance of items of economic value* Prophecy, the prediction of future events...
editorial.
See also
- Protect IP ActProtect IP ActThe 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...
- The Commercial Felony Streaming ActBill 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...
- Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits ActCombating Online Infringement and Counterfeits ActUnited 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) - 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...
(ACTA) - 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- SplinternetSplinternetSplinternet is a term used to describe the splintering and dividing of the Internet due to various factors, such as technology, commerce, politics, nationalism, and religion. "Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it," writes the Economist weekly, and it may soon splinter along geographic...
- Scunthorpe ProblemScunthorpe ProblemThe Scunthorpe problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine blocks e-mails or search results because their text contains a string of letters that are shared with an obscene word...
- DNS cache poisoningDNS cache poisoningDNS cache poisoning is a security or data integrity compromise in the Domain Name System . The compromise occurs when data is introduced into a DNS name server's cache database that did not originate from authoritative DNS sources. It may be a deliberate attempt of a maliciously crafted attack on a...
- Deep packet inspectionDeep packet inspectionDeep Packet Inspection is a form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data part of a packet as it passes an inspection point, searching for protocol non-compliance, viruses, spam, intrusions or predefined criteria to decide if the packet can...