SOPA, pols run into Internet buzz saw
Summary: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) raises a ruckus as the Internet wakes up to realize that this nutty copyright bill could actually pass.
The Stop Online Piracy Act, a controversial nutty, delusional and shortsighted bill created by people who could be construed as idiots, is hitting a buzzsaw of Internet opposition. Large companies are also starting to tabulate their potential compliance costs too.
On the surface, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) sounds reasonable. All the legislation wants to do is stop online copyright infringement. The rub is that anyone can complain and have sites taken down and cut off from their revenue sources. Yes, you can be a rogue site too.
SOPA was introduced Oct. 26 and despite some initial outcry largely went unnoticed. A hearing with a arguably loaded deck in favor of SOPA was met by late inning resistance from AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo! and Zynga.
In a nutshell, SOPA kills the safe harbor in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). So long safe harbor and hello U.S. Attorney General.
Related: CNET: MPAA's SOPA testimony links job loss to piracy | CNET: Copyright Office will endorse SOPA anti-piracy bill | New House of Representatives bill may strangle the Internet or nerf the First Amendment | Techmeme
How would this work in practice?
A reader of CNET News' Declan McCullagh's story about SOPA sums it up nicely.
I've e-mailed C|Net to notify them that that you post was plagiarized from a satire blog post of a local comedy troupe. I've asked that they ban your user ID and IP from C|Net and their affiliates (CBS Interactive, Last.fm, CBS sports, ZDnet, Chow, Clicker, GameSpot, metacritic, TechRepublic, etc.) and turn over your IP and identifying info over to the troupe so that they can sue. $150,000 isn't much, but it'll go a long way in fixing up their venue.
Thanks for playing. Credit to FellowConspirator for the witty rebuttal.
In other words, you allege and we take sites down.
Given that reality it's no surprise that legislators are playing a bit of defense. Mozilla is urging folks to write their Congresspeople. Others call SOPA an Internet blacklist bill. The Electronic Freedom Foundation calls SOPA a disaster.
But hey don't believe the Internet guys. MasterCard's Linda Kirkpatrick, group head of customer performance integrity, outlined how SOPA will make her company's costs surge. In her testimony, Kirkpatrick said that the time frames between an allegation and actual response are unrealistic. Kirkpatrick also has a beef with MasterCard being a copyright monitoring outpost of the U.S. Copyright Office. She said:
As the Committee moves forward with legislation to address the sale of infringing products or services over the Internet, MasterCard believes it is essential to ensure that any obligations imposed on payment systems are capable of being readily implemented through reasonable policies and procedures, and that payment systems be shielded from litigation and liability when acting in accordance with the bill’s requirements.
Just what the U.S. economy needs more acronyms to distract us from doing real work.
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Talkback
RE: SOPA, pols run into Internet buzz saw
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Land of the What and Home of the Who...?
It should have been revised in the 1900's
RE: SOPA, pols run into Internet buzz saw
Possible SOPA irony...
The law as written doesn't seem to allow what you say.
If you read the law, you see a very detailed legal process involving the Attorney General contacting site owners, getting court orders, etc. You make it sound like simply registering a complaint will automatically flip a switch and sites will simply disappear from the Internet.
My misgivings about the law center around the fact that the technical means for proscription described in the law aren't sufficient to stop infringers from putting illegal content online. The flimsy correspondence between DNS domains, IP addresses and websites seems to elude whomever wrote this law.
RE: SOPA, pols run into Internet buzz saw
Yes, but what you have in that detailed process is simply government tyrrany. There is no problem at all with the attorney general supporting takedown requests intended to support unpopular (to the Attorney General) sites, e.g., supporting the Arizona immigration law or OWS.
It may be more than "automatically flip a switch" but not a whole lot more, unless you are one of the people buying influence in Washington.
This is so easy and clear
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/f-b-i-seizes-web-servers-knocking-sites-offline/
House or Senate
Maybe you should read both versions.....
One lends to your description, the ther not.
SOPA & PROTECT IP Act
[i]Maybe you should read both versions.....
One lends to your description, the ther not.[/i]
I have read them both. SOPA (House bill) and PROTECT IP Act (Senate bill) are essentially identical in the legal processes they describe.
@cuhulin1
[i]Yes, but what you have in that detailed process is simply government tyrrany.[/i]
I suspect you would categorize any government authority to take down websites illegally serving copyrighted content as "tyrrany". It's due process of law. The Attorney General has to open a case. A judge has to give a court order for a takedown to occur. No one person or organization has the power to take anything down. How is that tyrannical?
Writing your congressman will do nothing.
The biggest effect will be to push many online companies overseas and away from the ridiculous legal threats, costing even more American jobs in the process. Will it stop piracy? No. It will create several new cottage industries on how to defeat the new restrictions. Visa and Mastercard have special reasons to be worried: there is the real possibility that new payment systems will take hold and flourish, not under their control or under the thumb of the US government.
One interesting marketplace has sprung up using a unique "currency": $10 and $50 iTunes gift cards. You don't need the actual card itself, just the number. It makes it quite simple to buy cards at the local Target then enter their numbers at the paysite. It's quite ironic when you think about it ...
I'm actually afraid of this.
Great Wall
Holy Crap!!!!!!! :O
RE: SOPA, pols run into Internet buzz saw
dbbsdmk 67 voc
RE: SOPA, pols run into Internet buzz saw
I love how the bill is worded to make it sound like it promotes prosperity and protects jobs. If enacted as is, it will not only cripple the internet but it will BRUTALLY MASSACRE most internet-related jobs. It will force companies to outsource at an even higher rate and it will kill even more jobs. I can't imagine why people wouldn't be rioting in the streets about this. This bill could destroy the very lively hood we've come to love and depend on. And they think we're going to buy movies after this? We're going to boycott every industry involved in this for even having the audacity to come up with such a crude bill!
If this passes, nobody wins and everybody loses, even the very industries that proposed and backed this bill could be crippled by it. =(
I've heard of bringing about your own demise but damn they are fighting tooth and nail to kill their own industries. I almost feel sorry for them, but no, when this blows up in their faces, I will laugh.
Vote: ALL Incumbents out in 2012 - send a clear message to Congress...
RE: SOPA, pols run into Internet buzz saw
RE: SOPA, pols run into Internet buzz saw
RE: SOPA, pols run into Internet buzz saw