| 20 January 2012
SOPA is something you may have seen or heard about recently as it’s been prominently featured in the news, and if you guessed that it had something do with soup, then you are mistaken.
While “sopa” is the Spanish word for “soup,” SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act, a controversial House of Representatives bill sponsored by Texas Republican Lamar Smith.
There is a similar bill in the Senate known as PIPA, and no, it has nothing to do with Kate Middleton’s sister.
PIPA is the PROTECT IP Act (full name: Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011… who comes up with these names?), and both pieces of legislation have drawn the ire of the internet community.
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You may have witnessed this firsthand if you tried to go on Wikipedia or noticed Google’s logo being censored on the search engine giant’s homepage. These actions were done in protest of the proposed legislation.
The bills are an effort to combat online piracy, specifically in the form of “rogue websites.” These sites deal in pirated movies, television shows, music, counterfeit medicine, and other assorted goods. According to Mark Elliot of the US Chamber of Commerce, rogue web sites “attract more than 53 billion visits a year and threaten more than 19 million jobs.” American companies claim they lose billions of dollars a year to these sites.
The problem is that most of these sites are based on foreign soil in countries with much more lenient copyright laws. Therefore, they are out of the reach of US law enforcement agencies and US courts.
Sounds like a serious issue.
The solutions proposed by Congressman Thomas and Senator Patrick Leahy are SOPA and PIPA. Since rogue sites are in other countries, the idea is to go after them by blocking access to them here in America. Government prosecutors would be able to serve court orders on internet service providers and have them deny their users access to the offending site. Internet providers may be required to monitor customer traffic and block web sites that violate copyright laws. Search engines would be required to remove rogue sites from their indexes. Advertising companies and payment providers, such as PayPal, would have to cease doing business with them. Anti-circumvention language is also present in the legislation, meaning that it would be illegal to inform people how to access any site that has been blocked. In layman’s terms, the government would have the power to shut down websites guilty of copyright infringement.
So why all the controversy and outrage?
There are numerous concerns regarding these two pieces of legislation. Many fear they go too far and give the government and service providers too much power. They believe it will result in internet censorship and infringe upon our First Amendment rights because the government would have the authority to take action without due process. SOPA and PIPA sound good on paper, but where do you draw the line?
The fear is that the law could be used in a manner that goes beyond its spirit. Both bills allow the attorney general to “blacklist” web sites that will blocked by ISPs. SOPA has language that would enable companies to be held liable for violations. Take YouTube, for example. Under the current system, is a user posts a video on YouTube that infringes upon a copyright, YouTube is immune from prosecution provided it takes down the offending content as soon as it is brought to the company’s attention. SOPA would change that. Under SOPA, YouTube could face legal repercussions is someone posts copyrighted material on the site. YouTube would have to vet all videos, and if you’ve ever been to YouTube, you know that would be a daunting and seemingly impossible task.
The law is designed to target nefarious sites overseas, but what is to stop it from being used on sites here? WikiLeaks published copyrighted documents from US companies as well as leaked government documents. Under SOPA, it would qualify for blacklisting. If that were to occur, it would reek of a government crackdown and cover-up. Critics argue that the law could be abused and allow for the government to censor websites it deemed appropriate. Basically, it could turn into something akin to the situation in China where the Chinese government heavily censors the internet.
Another controversial part of the proposed legislation is that internet service providers would have the power to voluntarily block access to foreign websites if they have “credible evidence” that the sites distribute copyrighted content. The companies don’t even have to prove that the sites are breaking the law; simple belief is enough.
Furthermore, SOPA and PIPA would grant the providers immunity. This seems rife for abuse. If a provider takes action against your site, you’d be at their mercy with no recourse available. What’s to stop an internet provider from using this as leverage? Extortion seems inevitable.
It’s not just censorship that has people worried. There are technical and security fears as well. Both bills originally proposed DNS blocking to deny access to rogue sites, but experts are concerned that DNS blocking could negatively affect cybersecurity. A major security issue is fake websites.
A solution to this problem is known as DNSSEC. This new security tool allows companies to digitally sign their domain names, meaning that when they claim a domain name, that name will become associated with a single internet address. This is huge for online banks and other companies that do monetary transactions online. With DNSSEC, it will be harder for scammers to redirect people to a fake site that impersonates their bank’s site. Your internet browser won’t go to a fake site because that site won’t have the proper credentials to be verified by the bank.
SOPA and PIPA undermine that effort. The techniques utilized by the proposed laws would be incompatible with DNSSEC. Innocuous, safe websites could be mistakenly blacklisted, and the blacklist itself can be circumvented by simply using the website’s numeric IP address.
What is more important: shutting down a site that deals with bootlegged movies or making sure online banking is secure?
What’s Next?
The recent backlash and internet blackouts have greatly diminished support for the bill. Congressmen are bailing left and right and backpedaling faster than Champ Bailey in renouncing their support of the bill. However, that does not mean that these controversial pieces of legislation are dead.
As of the time this was being written, PIPA has been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and is scheduled for a floor vote on January 24, although Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has placed a hold on the bill. Despite all the outrage and protests, the House of Representatives plans to resume work on SOPA in February. Some Congressmen have offered to change the language (removing DNS blocking, for example) in an effort to mollify critics.
This is going to be an interesting fight because both sides have powerful, deep-pocketed backers. The legislation’s backers include the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Recording Industry Association of America, US Chamber of Commerce, AFL-CIO, CBS, Major League Baseball pharmaceutical companies, and several major corporations such as Sony, Disney, Time-Warner, and Comcast/NBC Universal.
They are going up against a group of determined opponents in the tech and internet industries that include Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, eBay, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Microsoft. The Obama Administration and the European Parliament are both opposed to it, with the former threatening to veto the bills if they are passed by Congress. SOPA has even managed to unite bitter political rivals, as the Heritage Foundation, a staunchly conservative think tank, and the liberal MoveOn movement both oppose the bills.
Democratic Senator Wyden and Republican Jerry Moran are preparing to filibuster (delaying indefinitely so a bill cannot come up for vote), and with all recent defections of supporters in Congress, achieving the necessary 60 votes to invoke cloture (the only way to end a filibuster) will become even more difficult to obtain than it already is.
SOPA and PIPA are not dead, although for the moment, the tide has swing in favor of those opposing the two bills. It seems likely that, at the very least, changes will be made to both pieces of legislation, but this battle is far from over.
