The rise of the Internet as an intractable piece of the global social engine has brought with it a number of large scale societal problems.\u00a0 One of the ones that has resisted a common ground solution the hardest is that of how to protect intellectual property in the information age.<\/p>\n
Piracy of information has been a problem for a long time.\u00a0 Bootlegs of concerts and copies of videotapes have been black market staples for decades.\u00a0 The advent of the internet, though, has raised this problem to a new level.\u00a0 Just about all but the most in-person art forms are now easily digitizable.\u00a0 If they are digitized, then they can be copied to every person on the planet almost instantaneously.<\/p>\n
This is a startling development that few people saw coming, and a monumental problem for defenders of intellectual property.\u00a0 In turn, they have often taken what amounts to \u201cscorched earth\u201d policies to combat it.\u00a0 Arguably, the worst of these yet is now under consideration.\u00a0 It is known as \u201cSOPA\u201d or the \u201cStop Online Piracy Act\u201d \u2026 and it has internet freedom advocates sounding the alarm like never before.<\/p>\n
Is it that bad?<\/strong><\/p>\n As with all modern legislation, 112 HR 3261 is a plate of legalese spaghetti.\u00a0 At 78 pages, it’s actually kind of short as modern legislation goes.\u00a0 If you are reading it, though, and you fall on your face as you try to cut your way through lines such as…<\/p>\n \u201c<\/em>If an effective counter notification is made under subsection (b)(5), or if a payment network provider fails to comply with subsection (b)(1), or an Internet advertising service fails<\/em> <\/em>to comply with subsection (b)(2), pursuant to a notification under subsection (b)(4) in the absence of<\/em> <\/em>such a counter notification…\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n …<\/em>you could be a bit forgiven.\u00a0 As always, then, we have to go by the read from the \u201cexperts\u201d on this, and we know how often they’re in agreement.\u00a0 Still, going to the authorities that we trust most here, such as the Electronic Freedom Foundation, this looks really bad.<\/p>\n A first power \u2013 private enforcement of complaints, and lots of it<\/strong><\/p>\n What seems to make SOPA so bad is that its approach to potential \u201crogue\u201d web sites or copyright infringers is little less than \u201cWhatever you have to do\u201d.\u00a0 The main target for this legislation is anyone who abets the web site in question.\u00a0 This includes not only those who host the site but anyone who has even an indirect hand in its continued operation, with payment processors the primary target.<\/p>\n The way that SOPA works for most reviews is this.\u00a0 Someone lodges a complaint against a web site.\u00a0 The web site operator passes the complaint on to the web site operator, who has 5 days to issue a retort.\u00a0 At that point, if the original one complaining wants to, they would take legal action.<\/p>\n This is not new; it is roughly how the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) works.\u00a0 What makes this worse is that it is not just web hosts that are required to cut off the accused web site, but payment processors and ad networks as well.\u00a0 The potential for abuse here is obvious.<\/p>\n Enforcements expands to almost everything<\/strong><\/p>\n Search engines would also be saddled with the duty to prevent the offending site \u201cfrom being served as a direct hypertext link\u201d.\u00a0 Software to get around any such blocks would be outright illegal.\u00a0 This is an especially ominous precedent, as it states that certain types of programming now be made illegal.\u00a0 Step back for a second and just picture what a future based on that kind of idea could lead to.<\/p>\n A further extension of this attack exemplifies why such blunt measures often have the potential to do far more harm than good.\u00a0 ISPs would be included in the list of companies whose responsibility it would be to cut off access from the offending site.\u00a0 But this is like finding a fish by draining the ocean.\u00a0 A domain name can handle traffic that serves all manners of functions related to all types of web sites.\u00a0 Forcibly shutting it down over a single complaint could rip the interplay of websites, indeed the very concept of the \u201cweb\u201d apart.\u00a0 A past example of this occurred when 84,000 sub-domains of \u201cmooo.com\u201d were shut down due to a complain about the content on one of them.<\/p>\n Finally, the bill ventures into the creepy territory occupied by enforcement agencies which require that their citizens spy on each other.\u00a0 Websites that don’t sufficiently target sites \u201cdedicated to infringing activities\u201d are also considered in violation.\u00a0 As is often the case, what constitutes sufficient enforcement on their part is unclear.<\/p>\n Please tell me that some people are standing up against this!<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, they are, and it’s not just the EFF<\/a>.\u00a0 US Representative Zoe Lofgren<\/a>, one of the most consistent voices in Washington DC against most intellectual property legislation, stated this legislation would bring about \u201cthe end of the Internet as we know it\u201d.\u00a0 From anyone else this might be laughable alarmism, but as the Congresswoman representing Silicon Valley, Lofgren has been described by one tech group as someone who \u201cunderstands how the Internet works.\u201d<\/p>\n