Article: SOPA/PIPA Legislation

[LWPD]

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) are two pieces of controversial legislation with broad bipartisan support in Congress. If enacted, they could radically change the way Americans access the Internet. Powerful interests on both sides of the issue have weighed in, and the White House has recently stated it will not support either of these bills in their current forms. While momentum has been halted, this issue is far from settled.



Courtesy of VatorNews
White House comments on SOPA/PIPA, Congress responds
A volley of statements by the upper seats of US Government has the country talking about SOPA/PIPA

There have been major developments in the story surrounding the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), including an important volley of statements made between the White House, the Congressmen responsible for SOPA, and several important parties whose interests lay with the bill's passing.

"While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet," said the White House statement, which was released on the White House blog Saturday, referencing another statement from the administration, Thursday.

The White House statement went on to indicate that while Barack Obama's administration is for legislation regulating online piracy, it would need to target more explicitly criminal activity. The Obama administration authors of this statement got more specific about what aspects of SOPA "increased cyber-security risk," with the mention of DNS regulations in SOPA.

"Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security," said the statement. "Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online." The statement was made in response to two online petitions created through the White House website's We the People feature.

It is significant that the White House would make specific mention of the DNS provision in SOPA, because this has been widely considered by SOPA's opponents as its most draconian aspect. The DNS provision allows both the US Government and copyright holders to file court orders to block the Domain Name Systems (DNS) of websites associated with pirating or counterfeiting copyrighted property, which would effectively prevent users from visiting said sites.

However, the DNS provision of SOPA had already been addressed by Rep. Lamar Smith the day previous to the White House's statement, last Wednesday. "After consultation with industry groups across the country, I feel we should remove Domain Name System blocking from the Stop Online Piracy Act so that the Committee can further examine the issues surrounding this provision," said Smith, via a statement.

This sentiment was echoed by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor Friday, when he said that he would not bring the bill to the house floor until "a real consensus" was reached. Cantor's attitudes concerning SOPA were relayed in a statement by Rep. Darrell E. Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee. "While I remain concerned about Senate action on the Protect IP Act, I am confident that flawed legislation will not be taken up by this House," said Issa. "Majority Leader Cantor has assured me that we will continue to work to address outstanding concerns and work to build consensus prior to any anti-piracy legislation coming before the House for a vote."

SOPA's sister bill in the Senate the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which essentially proposes the same measures as SOPA, is still in play, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stating that he plans to bring up PIPA on the first day the Senate is back in session, Janury 24th. However Sen. Patrick Leahy, the author of PIPA, stated something very similar to Rep. Smith, that the DNS measures in PIPA needed more study before going to a vote. Those Internet companies who have opposed SOPA and PIPA are counting both the White House's position and the subsequent Congressional backpedaling as a victory.

“Like others, we believe Congress wants to get this right, and we know there are targeted and smart ways to shut down foreign rogue Web sites without asking U.S. companies to censor the Internet," said a director of public policy at Google, Pablo Chavez, to the NY Times. “Looks like the Internet is winning a battle against some really bad potential law,” stated Craig Newmark of cragislist.org, in a blog post.

Also chiming in, regarding this most recent dialogue between top government seats, was General Manager of Reddit Erik Martin, who expressed both encouragement and fear about the eventuality of SOPA/PIPA passing to become federal law. Reddit, along with MoveOn, BoingBoing, and the Cheezburger network, will stage a site blackout on Wednesday, January 16.

Others making their voices heard in the most recent round of the SOPA debate, included vocal SOPA supporters News Corps CEO Rupert Murdoch. "So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery," said Murdoch, via his Twitter account.

“Look forward to @whitehouse playing a constructive role in moving forward on #sopa & #pipa,” stated the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), another SOPA supporter, via its Twitter account.

VatorNews will show solidarity with Reddit and other SOPA/PIPA opponents by reporting only minimal news coverage Wednesday, in observance of their blackout.

[LWPD]

On the topic of SOPA and PIPA, below is a link to an interesting infographic showing which nations are currently using similiar legislation to censor the Internet. A small part of the full feature is shown below.

Courtesy of Evan You Awareness Project
So you still think the Internet is free?

Below is a visualization of the constraints put on internet usage throughout the world. If you thought Americans were browsing freely, think again. It turns out Mexico and most of Africa have more cyber freedoms than the United States—though to be fair, that's probably due to those nations having far less internet access than America.

As it stands, American ISPs are currently working with the government in order to crack down on illegal file sharing, child pornography, and "dangerous speech" that could be considered a national security issue. It's nowhere near the draconian censorship of, say, China, but it certainly isn't "freedom" in the truest sense.

Also interesting is that Australia, a nation normally thought of as being a totally open and Westernized democracy, has the same level of web surveillance as Russia.

[chewey]

No Wikipedia for 24 hours due to protesting this legislation. What are we going to do???

;D

[Mike M]

To circumvent the blackout, there are a few options, but the simpliest is to use the mobile site. Simply add an "m." to the address line before "wikipedia". Example:

Normal address: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chikara_(professional_wrestling)

Mobile address: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chikara_(professional_wrestling)

[LWPD]

Hollywood vs Silicon Valley. A brief FAQ on the issues is listed below.

Pro SOPA/PIPA Ad



Con SOPA/PIPA Ad



Courtesy of npr.org
Q&A: Congress, SOPA And A Fight Over The Web
By Bill Chappell

Google's main search page featured a black bar over the company's logo Wednesday, along with a link to a page describing its stance on the issue.

The possibility that strong anti-piracy legislation known as SOPA — or the Stop Online Piracy Act — might advance in the House of Representatives led Wikipedia and other websites to "go dark" Wednesday, as a protest against the bill.

Other sites, such as Google, remained operational — but blacked out part of their logo, and provided links to groups against the legislation.

SOPA, along with a companion bill in the Senate called PIPA (for PROTECT Intellectual Property Act), seeks to blacklist sites that facilitate online piracy. The legislation touches on topics that roil passions in America's culture: copyright laws, free speech and the Internet.

Below, we answer some basic questions about the issue, and where things may be headed.

What Would SOPA and PIPA Do?

The bills targets websites that use the Internet for two things: helping people transfer copyrighted content, or selling counterfeit goods.

Once an offending site is identified, the bills target all the pieces of an ecosystem many websites need to survive. Companies from Internet service providers and advertising services to payment networks like PayPal would be forbidden from doing business with the site. The bills would also force search engines to not link to sites deemed to contain pirated content.

The SOPA bill contains a clause promising, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to impose a prior restraint on free speech or the press protected under the 1st Amendment to the Constitution."

But that caveat has not placated critics, who are alarmed by what they call the bills' aggressive measures and ambiguous language. Both bills are meant to target foreign entities — but they also state that any site "facilitating" violations of the law is punishable.

SOPA was introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, along with a bipartisan group of 12 co-sponsors. PIPA was introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., along with 11 co-sponsors from both parties. After their introduction, both bills gained more supporters — until protests against them became more public, in December.

Who's For SOPA?

Essentially, large media groups support the proposed bills — corporations such as Time Warner and News Corp., and industry groups that include the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They say they're losing billions of dollars each year to counterfeiting and file-sharing enterprises based overseas.

These industry groups say that the anti-piracy bills aren't aimed at domestic U.S.-based sites, but instead at "foreign infringing sites," as the SOPA bill calls them, which cater to American users for the sole purpose of getting around U.S. copyright laws.

The bills' supporters say they want to give content owners a way to enforce copyrights against sites that aren't covered by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which targets U.S.-based sites.

Who's Against It?

On the other side of the issue are Internet giants like Google, Twitter, Wikipedia and Facebook. Those companies don't create much content on their own. Instead, they often help their users find or share text and images, music and video. And they don't want to be held responsible for millions of users' actions.

And because the new bills contain harsher penalties than the DMCA — and also because many U.S.-based Internet and social media companies have large international presences — those companies are worried that regulators and courts could use the proposed law to force them to change how they work, at a very basic level.

To many people, the discussion boils down to copyright vs. free speech. That means you have some civil liberties groups on the same side as dedicated pirating sites, such as The Pirate Bay. And on the other side of the fence, you have media companies complaining that their content is being reproduced without compensation.

The issue has splintered the two main parties, with Republicans and Democrats crossing the aisle to band together with like-minded legislators. You can follow who in Congress supports or opposes PIPA and SOPA at the ProPublica site.

What's Next For SOPA And PIPA?

Many observers think Congress had been building momentum to adopt the legislation, before mounting protests and concerns caused members of the House and Senate to take a new look at the bills. It now seems likely that at least one, and possibly both, of the bills will be altered to take the concerns of free-speech advocates and web companies into account.

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said as much Wednesday, when he stated, "It's pretty clear to many of us that there's a lack of consensus at this point. I would expect that the committee would continue to work to try to build a consensus before this bill moves."

For now, at least, the House version of the bill is staying in the Judiciary Committee. The Senate version was already approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Senate is slated to hold a cloture vote on its version of the legislation next week, on Jan. 24. But the bill is losing steam as that date nears. NPR's David Welna reports that "nearly half the Senate bill's 40 sponsors are Republicans, but many of them have withdrawn their support in the past few days."

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has placed a hold on the PIPA bill, tells Welna that the bills' backers intended all along to get approval in the Senate first, and then settle on a compromise version with the House.