Stop Online Piracy Act

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) or H.R. 3261 is a bipartisan bill introduced at the United States House of Representatives by Congressman Lamar Smith, House Judiciary Committee Chairman and co-sponsored by 31 other Representatives including John Conyers (D-Mich.), Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.) on June 26, 2011. The bill aims to promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes such as intellectual property rights protection of U.S. businesses particularly in the film, music and software industry against online piracy and counterfeiting.

A legislative hearing was conducted by the House Judiciary Committee on November 16, 2011 to examine the various issues related to proposed Stop Online Piracy Act. According to the statement released by Cong. Lamar Smith, the bill is not targeting technology but it is concentrated on "preventing those who engage in criminal behavior from reaching directly into the U.S. market to harm American consumers." He pointed out that "protecting America’s intellectual property will help the country's economy, create jobs, and discourage illegal websites."

A full committee mark-up was held on Dec. 15, 2011 and lawmakers rejected 20 amendments intended to address the concerns raised by technology companies and civil liberty organizations most particularly the amendments introduced by Cong. Darrel Issa, which aims to resolve the DNS security problems. The committee also rejected theamendment requiring copyright holders to pay for all court costs if the accused violator of copy right infringement wins legal charges. The proposed amendment to remove the provision providing legal immunity to ISPs, domain name registrars, payment processors, and other businesses that voluntarily take action against accused websites was also rejected.

On December 16, 2009, the House Judiciary Committee postponed the hearing on the proposed legislation because of strong oppositions from internet engineers, cyber security experts, large technology companies and other organizations. According to Cong. Smith, chairman of the Judiciary Committee and proponent of the bill, he will consider a hearing or a classified briefing to tackle the impact of SOPA on cybersecurity. Congressman Jason Chaffetz from Utah stressed that it is imperative for the legislators to hear from internet engineers and cybersecurity experts before voting for the final passage of the bill.

Provisions

Under the proposed bill, the Department of Justice through the Attorney General is authorized to ask for a court order against the owners, operators, domain name registrants of foreign websites to stop their operations if found conducting or facilitating online piracy including copyright infringement, unauthorized fixation and trafficking of sound recordings or videos of live musical performances, the recording of exhibited motion pictures, or trafficking in counterfeit labels, goods, or services.

Section 102 of the bill stipulated that search engines, ISP, and other services ordered to stop doing business with suspected violators of online piracy and counterfeiting cannot be sued in court while Section 103 of the bill gives copy right holders the right to ask an injunction for third parties such as payment processors and advertisers to stop doing business with suspected websites selling pirated products. Under section 104, domain name registrar, registry, ISPs, search engines, internet advertisers, etc. that voluntarily take action and stop doing business with infringing websites are given legal immunity. In addition, any copyright holder who misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement or a if a respondent to an infringement claim knowingly misrepresents that a site is not dedicated to infringement will be liable for damages including attorneys fees and court costs.

Supporters

According to a statistics conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics, the film, music and TV industry have spent more than $ 91 million to fund the lobbying for the approval of SOPA. The entertainment industry claimed that internet criminals are stealing from hard working Americans by using foreign websites that are illegal. The Stop Online Piracy Act is supported by different organizations including:

• Motion Picture Association of America
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce
• Better Business Bureau
• National Consumers League
• 43 State Attorneys General
• National Fraternal Order of Police
• AFL-CIO, the Independent Film and Television Alliance
• American Federation of Musicians
• Directors Guild of America
• International Brotherhood of Teamsters
• Screen Actors Guild

GoDaddy

Unlike many major Internet companies, GoDaddy, a web hosting and registrar service, came out in support of SOPA in late October. The reasons for their support were cited as protecting American businesses from being robbed and American consumers from being harmed by counterfeit products. The company stated that it was trying hard to help SOPA become an acceptable form of legislature for all those involved.

By the end of December, significant media and Internet user attention was being paid to GoDaddy's SOPA support; users of the webforum Reddit.com began a protest against GoDaddy, urging those hosting their domain names with the company to transfer their domains to another service. The original poster suggested that December 29th be made "Move Your Domain Day," and in response many of GoDaddy's competitors began offering discount rates to those wanting to transfer.

Oppositions

Objections from Technology Giants

Many organizations particularly the global technology companies are protesting the passage of SOPA including Google, Yahoo, Facebook,eBay and Twitter. According to them, "the bill will only expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of web sites." They asked the proponents of the bill to develop alternative measures that will target illegal websites dedicated to copyright infringement and trademark counterfeiting. They emphasized that the measures should preserve innovations and dynamism, which is a great contributor in creating more jobs and economic growth.Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said it will shutdown Wikipedia temporarily to express its objection to the bill.

Microsoft has also come out in quiet opposition of SOPA, despite being a longstanding supporter of increased copyright law in the U.S, and supporting PIPA earlier this year. Microsoft is a part of the Business Software Alliance, a trade association representing the interests of Microsoft and several other corporations in the U.S. government. BSA is one of the seven members of the International Intellectual Property Alliance, along with the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America.

ISOC Joins the Protest

The Internet Society also joined the organizations in protest of the passage of SOPA and raised concerns over the provision of the bill that allows DNS filtering. According to the statement released by ISOC, "Policies mandating DNS filtering undermine the open architecture of the Internet and raise human rights and freedom of expression concerns and often curtails international principles of rule of law and due process"ISOC President and CEO Lynn St. Amour pointed out that it is not a feasible option for the development of the internet.

Internet Engineers Against SOPA

More than eighty internet engineers also signed a petition letter against SOPA addressed to the members of the House of Representatives. In their letter, the internet engineers explained that once the bill is enacted it "will create an environment of fear and uncertainty and it will harm technology innovations as well as the credibility of the United States as the steward of key internet infrastructure." In addition, the engineers also stressed that censorship of the internet infrastructure will cause inevitable network errors and security problems just like what happened in China and Iran where censorship is imposed.

Vinton Cerf Statement Against SOPA

Vinton Cerf, former chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and considered as one of the fathers of internet sent his letter of opposition to Cong. Smith regarding SOPA. In his letter, stressed that despite the amendments on certain provisions of the proposed SOPA, the bill is still problematic particularly the issues on site blocking. According to him, "These will undermine the architecture of the Internet and obstruct the 15 year effort by the public and private sectors to improve cybersecurity through implementation of DNSSEC, a critical set of extensions designed to address security vulnerabilities in the DNS." In addition, he also emphasized that the bill would result to an "a worldwide arms race of unprecedented censorship of the Web." Furthermore, Cerf encouraged the Congress to create a more effective and tailored legislative actions that will focus on the "follow-the-money" tactic or cutting the ability of illegal foreign websites to generate advertising revenue and to process payments.

Lawmakers Against SOPA

Several members of the House of Representatives also joined the different organizations against SOPA. In a statement, the lawmakers pointed out that the current form of the bill used overly broad language and targets legal domestic websites and it created uncertainty to the technology and venture capital industries. In addition, the lawmakers also said that the bill may cause innovation-killing lawsuits and litigation. The lawmakers against SOPA include:

• Rep. Anna G. Eshoo
• Rep. Jared Polis
• Rep. Mike Doyle
• Rep. Doris Matsui
• Rep. Mike Thompson
• Rep. Zoe Lofgren
• Rep. Ron Paul
• Rep Lloyd Doggett
• Rep. Mike Honda
• Rep. George Miller

Other Opposing Organizations

Other organizations cited that it could put individuals and companies under suspicion by just linking an article to a suspected infringing websites. They also argue that it could harm businesses providing web services. Other Opposing organizations include:

• Human Rights Watch
• Public Knowledge
• Free Press
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Computer and Communications Industry Association
• Consumer Electronics Association
• Americans for Job Security
• Demand Progress and Consumers Union

Public Opposition

In addition to groups like Public Knowledge, EEF, and Demand Progress, who have generated a lot of public concern towards SOPA in the form of hundreds of thousands of letters, emails, and phone calls, there have also been two heavily supported We The People petitions on the White House website. The first petition, created on October 31, 2011, garnered 25,000 signatures in two weeks, meeting its goal two weeks before the deadline. The second petition, created on December 18, garnered its goal of 25,000 in just two days.

Internet Society