Protests Grow Against US Anti-Piracy Bills

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

20 January 2012

A number of websites, including Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Mozilla and Reddit, have joined in a protest against the pending Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the United States House of Representatives and Senate, respectively.

Opposition from within the internet sector to the proposed parallel bills had been growing since the bills were drafted, but the matter did not appear to be urgent until it was learnt that the PIPA is scheduled to be presented to the full Senate on January 24, while it is suggested that the House of Representatives will also begin a mark-up of the SOPA next month.

The bipartisan legislation aims to crack down on rogue websites dedicated to providing access to unauthorized downloads, streaming or sale of copyrighted content and counterfeit goods, ranging from new entertainment releases to pharmaceuticals and consumer products. They are often foreign-owned and operated, and therefore outside of American jurisdiction.

According to estimates, intellectual property theft costs the US economy more than USD100bn every year. Supporters of the bills include television networks, music publishers, the film industry and book publishers.

The legislation would provide the Department of Justice (DOJ) with an expedited process for cracking down on websites accused of "enabling or facilitating" piracy. There would be an authorization for the serving of an issued court order on search engines, payment processors, advertising networks and internet service providers.

The leading sponsor of the SOPA in the House, its Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R - Texas) reconfirmed his support for legislation which contains “provisions that ‘follow the money’ and cuts off the main sources of revenue to foreign illegal sites".

"It also protects consumers from being directed to foreign illegal websites by search engines. And it provides innovators with a way to bring claims against foreign illegal sites that steal and sell their technology, products and intellectual property,” Smith said.

Remedies are limited to eliminating the financial viability of the site, and a previous stipulation in the proposed legislation that access to the websites should be blocked by using the Domain Name System (DNS) has been deleted. DNS has previously been used, for example, in China, and means that, effectively, a website vanishes from the internet.

However, internet companies still fear that they would be forced to police web content. There have been comments that sites such as YouTube would need to close down immediately after the legislation was passed, and that, overall, the bill's sponsors have not understood the internet's architecture or comprehended the bills’ real implications.

For example, in a statement, Google has said that “we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites, without asking American companies to censor the internet”.

A further statement from Wikipedia expressed the opinion that the bills, if passed, “would be devastating to the free and open web”. It professed that “legal scholars and others” have advised that the legislation has the “potential to significantly change the way that information can be shared through the internet.”

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