Ron Wyden D-Ore. Darrel Issa R-Calif. Instead of "three guys in a garage" launching a Web-based business "you're going to be three people with an upstairs full of lawyers telling you whether or not you are going to be able to operate a Web site. The fight over this particular bill is part of a long-running battle in Washington between content producers and large parts of the IT industry over how Congress should go about protecting copyright.
SOPA, in particular, has generated an outpouring of protest over provisions that would allow ISPs to cut off access to infringing Web sites. Critics warn of censorship. The bills aim to tackle that. Crucially, the bills seek to block access to pirate sites by allowing courts to make orders against intermediaries such as ISPs, search engines, credit card companies and advertising sites. The DMCA was passed before the growth of social media and online video and the increase in broadband speeds.
Today, for example, it is estimated that 48 hours of video are uploaded on to YouTube every minute. Opponents of the bills include free speech and open source campaigners, as well as operators of websites who fear they will be caught by the legislation despite not being involved in piracy.
Google has been the most high-profile company to challenge the bills. Opponents argue that the proposals amount to censorship, will disrupt the internet, punish innocent parties and impose unreasonable burdens on intermediary websites.
In the light of a recent decision to extradite a UK man accused of copyright piracy, there are also worries that they would extend the jurisdiction of US courts to other countries.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has summarised its specific concerns. Second, it says the Act would encourage overblocking by service providers who wish to receive immunity Section a. Third, it objects to copyright owners having the right to seek court orders against foreign websites, saying that similar rights under the DMCA are being abused. Section of SOPA sets out a two-step process for rights holders to take action. Fourth, it still has concerns about the ability of the Attorney General to block domain services, even though these have been scaled back.
This issue is covered in Section of the Act. Up to 7, websites shut down in whole or part yesterday, and many bloggers and tweeters went silent, as a protest against SOPA. The most notable site to act was Wikipedia, which blacked out its English-language version as a protest following discussion among nearly 2, users other versions, including the simple-English one, were running as normal.
The bills do not appear to target sites such as Wikipedia, but users appeared to want to use its profile to raise their concerns. You said no. You melted their servers. From all around the world your messages dominated social media and the news.
Millions of people have spoken in defense of a free and open Internet. It is worth noting that Wikipedia is a charitable institution with no paying customers, shareholders or investors.
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google functioned as normal — though the latter did black out its dynamic logo. Petitions opposing the bills have attracted more than 50, signatures. Indeed it would help the entertainment industry to lock in more profits, but it would also change the architecture of the open web, opening the door to government censorship and possibly shutting down popular sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, some say.
Along those lines, legal scholars -- including one well known Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe -- have called the bill unconstitutional, an assault on Americans' First Amendment rights.
So it's not a surprise at all that Senator Leahy would blink when confronted with the challenge of pushing the legislation forward. It remains surprising that Smith won't back down. After all, it is an election year. So far SOPA's made a villain out of at least one politician, quite randomly. Paul Ryan is not the SOPA proponent that Smith is, but in an attempt to flex their crowd-powered muscle, Reddit decided to go after Ryan and helped raise thousands of dollars for his opponent's campaign.
After Reddit's initial threat, Ryan's office denied that he supported the bill. But the damage was done. What happens next depends on a number of factors. Darrell Issa is the chairman.
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