SOPA-What?
Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 4:18 AM Over the last couple of weeks the Internets have been on fire, outraged against the prospect of two pieces of legislation being passed in the United States Congress: SOPA and PIPA. The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act are two bills that are supposed to protect the rights of content creators against copyright infringement.
The problem is that the content creators who are most behind the two bills are the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and the RIAA (The Recording Industry Association of America) and their backing (read: lobbying - $$) has lead to two distinctly bad pieces of legislation that, if implemented, will have serious consequences not to pirates - those who are actually ripping off movies and music on the internet - but on the whole structure of the internet.
Huge numbers of academics, legal minds, and Internet entrepreneurs have come out and voiced their concerns that not only is the structure of the Internet at risk (explained below) but that there are also serious economic and foreign policy (for the US) implications that would arise if these two pieces of legislation were passed.
Why are People Upset?
There are several issues that have been annunciated concerning SOPA and PIPA. The first, and arguably most serious is that the terms in the bills are so broadly defined that they create uncertainty for nearly every site online. Previously, infringing sites that are based off shore have been blocked in the US and thats the end of it. However under PIPA and SOPA go well beyond those sanctions by not only blocking "foreign rogue sites" but by putting the onus of compliance on third party service providers.
This has the potential to stifle innovation and new start-ups because of crippling legal costs - startups will need an entire legal team sitting in the back room ready to jump to action.
Why?
The definitions are ridiculously broad. Under SOPA you can be found "dedicated to the theft of US property" if the core functionality of your site "enables or facilitates" infringement. The core functionality of nearly every internet website that involves user generated content enables and facilitates infringement. The entire Internet itself enables or facilitates infringement. The only way around this for your user generated content site involves constant monitoring. Proactive, expensive monitoring.
Supporters of the bills say not to worry and that the language contained therein is perfectly stringent and not at all broad. HOWEVER Some big players in the content world - Universal Music, Paramount and Warner Bros. started to compile a list of websites that were supposedly infringing on their intellectual property. And of course the list contained a number of legitimate sites; The Internet Archive, SoundCloud, Vimeo - sites that help creators get their work out. Of course in a move that shows the absurdity of the whole thing - Universal music put the website of one of it's own artists on the list of infringers - the artist? Massively popular 50 Cent.
Another ridiculous example of how broad the language goes, cable manufacturer Monster Cable has listed eBay, Craigslist Costco and Sears as having infringing websites. Each of these sites carries images of Monster Cables, specs and descriptions created by Monster Cable etc.
Why?
Because all of these sites SELL MONSTER CABLES!
And if you think that the United States is already litigious enough, provisions of SOPA and PIPA will expand secondary liability. The concept of "Safe harbour" - which allows sites like Google to provide the services they do is now (again) equated with infringement and will keep liability lawyers in money for years to come.
These are the legal issues surrounding the two bills.
The technical issues are much more problematic given that they have the potential to literally break the internet. The key sanction listed in both bills is DNS blocking. (look it up if you're not entirely clear on how DNS blocking works, save to say it's what they do in China, and by extension, relatively easily circumvented.) Mucking about with DNS also opens the kinds of security holes in the internet that people have spent thousand of hours over the last decade trying to plug. PLUS under PIPA and SOPA the final word in infringement cases will be in the hands of the judiciary - and judges in the United States and elsewhere are not noted for being the most technically minded individuals (much like politicians) who are up to the play with the latest technology.
The final word on DNS - Blocking content is the same as censorship (again see: China)
The upside is that the likes of the MPAA ad the RIAA are the same groups that complained about Digital Video Recorders like TiVo, screamed blue bloody murder about the iPod, and who crapped themselves in the 80s about audio cassettes and video tapes. The Internet is hopefully but one in a long line of technologies that will be a thorn in the side of "Big Content" until such time as they can successfully monetize it or like in the case of the iPod have someone convince them that it'll all be OK. (Possibly the most important legacy of the late Mr Steven P. Jobs).













