SOPA Matters to Canada

OpenMedia.ca Petition: Canadians Against SOPA 

SOPA-like Internet piracy laws could be coming to Canada, expert warns

Jameson Berkow  |  Jan 24, 2012  | Financial Post

There is a behind-the-scenes campaign underway to bring laws such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the United States northward, warns a noted Canadian digital policy expert.

Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and Canada Research Chair for Internet and E-Commerce, said in a post to his personal blog that Ottawa’s reintroduction of copyright reform legislation makes the country “a prime target for SOPA style rules.”

The U.S. Congress’ proposed SOPA legislation and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), its Senate equivalent, would make it possible for American copyright holders to have any Website anywhere in the world blocked in the United States without a court order if they are alleged to be infringing on those copyrights. Both bills were halted in Washington last week following a widespread online protest, though are expected to be revived as early as February.

In the meantime, with Bill C-11 — which would update the Copyright Act for the digital age — set to once again come before the House of Commons in the coming weeks, Mr. Geist expressed what he argues is cause for Canadians to be concerned.

“Lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other countries,” he said.

“In fact, a close review of the unpublished submissions to the Bill C-32 legislative committee reveals that several groups have laid the groundwork to add SOPA-like rules into Bill C-11.”

Chief among his concerns is efforts to expand the “enabler provision” of the bill. Groups such as the Canadian Independent Music Association and the Entertainment Software Association of Canada have been advocating for Ottawa to expand the provision to allow them to go after not just sites containing copyright-infringing content, but also those “enabling” acts of infringement as well.

“There is no indication in the music industry document of due process or even proof of infringement [being required],” Mr. Geist said.

Other critics such as Google Inc. have argued SOPA-style rules, had they been in place when YouTube was first created in 2004, would have likely made it impossible for the world’s largest online video service to exist. Proponents of the bill, which largely include major music labels and Hollywood film studios, argue a lack of effective anti-piracy legislation is putting millions of industry jobs at risk.

Mr. Geist has raised the alarm over the potential Canadian implications of SOPA before, though Barry Sookman, a partner in the Toronto office of McCarthy Tétrault LLP and former co-chair of the firm’s technology practice, said the arguments raised by his colleague are “without foundation.”

“Even if Bill C-11 is amended to cover sites that are primarily designed, operated or used to enable infringement or which induce infringement it would still be inconceivable that the section could be used ‘to shut down mainstream sites such as YouTube’ as he claims,” Mr. Sookman said.

“Michael Geist’s blog post fails to point out that Section 27(2.4) of Bill C-11 has six factors that a court must consider before it can conclude that a site is liable for enablement. It is not remotely possible that mainstream sites such as YouTube could be caught.”

While last week’s high profile takedown of Megaupload.com suggests to some that current laws are enough to stem the tide of digital piracy, others argue a more innovative approach is needed to protect the legal rights of content creators without stifling the free and open nature of the Internet.

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Would a SOPA Version of the Canadian Copyright Bill Target Youtube?

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SOPA and PIPA laws would affect Canadians if passed

By Jason Magder | Wednesday, January 18, 2012 | The Gazette 

Canadians would be affected if online privacy laws proposed south of the border get passed by Congress, free speech and privacy advocates say.

The laws – The Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act, known as PIPA and SOPA – would require Internet Service Providers to block access to any site accused of posting, or linking to, copyrighted content. It would also force search engines from removing the offending sites from their databases and prevent advertisers from giving the site their business.

Critics say the law would make media companies judge and jury of copyright infringement, rather than having the process resolved in court. They also say it’s a blatant attack on freedom of expression.

“The goal in many ways of SOPA is to reach beyond the borders of the United States,” said Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor and copyright expert. “It’s Canadian sites and sites around the world that would find themselves a target for these kinds of actions.”

The proposed law would do this because, Geist explains, it is written so any website domain name registered in the United States is treated as if it were a U.S. page — The Gazette’s website included.

Because Canadian and U.S. copyright laws differ, a website could be taken down for breaking U.S. provisions, without running afoul of Canadian law.

In the U.S., there were protests in the streets of New York City., Seattle and San Francisco on what was known as Black Wednesday. Internet companies such as Wikipedia and Reddit shut down parts of their websites for the day, and provided links to anti-SOPA and PIPA sites, as well a way for people to advocate on behalf of open Internet and free speech.

Sharon Polsky, the chairperson of the Canadian Association of Professional Access and Privacy Administrators, said she’d like to see similar protests going on here. She said not only would PIPA and SOPA affect the Canadians, but there is a slew of other legislation being prepared by the Conservative Government that would violate the privacy of most Canadians.

“Canadians have not taken up the gauntlet and made themselves aware of the laws that will affect their personal freedom,” Polsky said.

With files from Postmedia News       © Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

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The Behind-the-Scenes Campaign To Bring SOPA To Canada

Michael Geist | January 23. 2012 | Originally Posted here

The Internet battle against SOPA and PIPA generated huge interest in Canada with many Canadians turning their sites dark (including Blogging Tories, Project Gutenberg Canada, and CIPPIC) in support of the protest. In writing about the link between SOPA and Canada, I noted that the proposed legislation featured an aggressive jurisdictional approach that could target Canadian websites. Moreover, I argued that the same lobby groups promoting SOPA in the U.S. are behind the digital lock rules in Bill C-11.

While SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S., lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other countries. With Bill C-11 back on the legislative agenda at the end of the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style rules. In fact, a close review of the unpublished submissions to the Bill C-32 legislative committee reveals that several groups have laid the groundwork to add SOPA-like rules into Bill C-11, including blocking websites and expanding the “enabler provision”to target a wider range of websites. Given the reaction to SOPA in the U.S., where millions contacted their elected representatives to object to rules that threatened their Internet and digital rights, the political risks inherent in embracing SOPA-like rules are significant.

The music industry is unsurprisingly leading the way, demanding a series of changes that would make Bill C-11 look much more like SOPA.

For example, the industry wants language to similar to that found in SOPA on blocking access to websites, demanding new provisions that would “permit a court to make an order blocking a pirate site such as The Pirate Bay to protect the Canadian marketplace from foreign pirate sites.” Section 102 of SOPA also envisioned blocking of websites:

A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet  Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.

The music industry also wants Internet providers to be required to adopt a termination policy for subscribers that are alleged to be repeat infringers. According to the industry document:

To incent service providers to cooperate in stemming piracy by requiring them to adopt and reasonably implement a policy to prevent the use of their services by repeat infringers and by conditioning the availability of service provider exceptions on this being done.

This demand would move Canada toward the graduated response policy that could result in loss of Internet service for Internet users. There is no indication in the music industry document of due process or even proof of infringement.

Several lobby groups also want language similar to that found in the infamous Section 103 of SOPA. That provision, which spoke of sites “primarily designed or operated for the purpose of…offering goods or services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates” infringement, raised fears that it could be used to shut down mainstream sites such as YouTube.

According to the music industry document, Bill C-11′s “enabler provision” should be expanded to include “services that are primarily operated to enable infringement or which induce infringement.” Those demands are echoed by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, which called on the government to “amend the enabling provision to ensure that it applies to services that are “designed or operated” primarily to enable acts of infringement.” Both groups also want statutory damages added to the enabler provision so that liability can run into the millions of dollars for a target website.

Just as there are questions whether SOPA is even needed in the U.S. (the takedown of Megaupload suggests that current laws are effective), the same is true with the enabler provision in Bill C-11, given that the music industry is already suing IsoHunt, the Canadian-based torrent search site, using current law. The expansion of the enabler provision to include sites that operate to enable or induce infringement could extend far beyond so-called “pirate sites”, since many user generated content sites (such as YouTube) and cloud-based service sites can be said to enable or induce infringement, particularly in a country like Canada that does not have a fair use provision.

As for the government’s plans, C-11 committee member Dean Del Mastro specifically referenced changes to the enabler provision in a recent interview about potential changes and there are rumours that the U.S. government is pushing the Canadian government to toughen the enabler provision (while keeping the digital lock rules unchanged). That suggests that just as the U.S. is moving away from SOPA in its own laws due to the political uprising against it, the Canadian government may be headed toward a similar quagmire as the U.S.-backed lobby groups lead it down a politically risky path.

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Op-Ed: Why Canadians should participate in the SOPA/PIPA protest

By Michael Geist |  January 17, 2012 | Digital Journal

Some of the Internet’s leading websites, including Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, WordPress, and BoingBoing, will go dark tomorrow to protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Here’s why Canadians should care.

What Is SOPA? Here Are Five Things You Need to Know

by Jorge Rivas  | Wednesday 18 January 2012 | Posted on Truthout

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has got the entire Internet up in arms today. Media justice advocates say the bill is anathema to basic functioning of the Internet; for a system that’s based on relative freedom and connectivity, SOPA would work as the online world’s stingy gatekeeper, giving government the power to shutdown websites altogether.

Today, hundreds of websites are joining in a day of action to SOPA’s threat to freedom of expression on the Internet. Several civil rights and racial justice organizations are joining in what’s been called an “Internet strike,” by closing their websites from 8 am to 8 pm eastern time. Colorlines.com’s Jamilah King, who covers media policy, explains why:

The Internet’s been an important space for communities of color to tell their own stories and advocate for issues they don’t often see in film or on television. SOPA puts that independence in jeopardy. It’ll add yet another barrier to how and what we can communicate.

So, here are the basics on what you need to know.

Who’s behind SOPA? Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas politician who’s been known mostly for his anti-immigrant stances in recent years. Smith’s got big industry backers, namely: The Recording Industry Association of American, the Motion Picture Association of America (now led by former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd), and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

What’s the justification for SOPA? Supporters of the bill claim that it’ll help copyright holders (think big record labels) protect their content. Rep. Smith has criticized the bill’s opponents and explained that SOPA would only target foreign websites that put American businesses at risk.

But opponents argue that the definition of “foreign infringing sites” is too vague. As it’s written now, they argue, the bill will fundamentally alter the relative freedom with which the Internet currently operates. What’s certain is that it’ll add a level of supervision to the Internet that’s never existed before.

Who’s opposed to SOPA? Basically, every website that you visit regularly. Most notably, Wikipedia, Craigslist, and Reddit, along with at least 200 other websites, have chosen to go dark in opposition to the bill and to help educate users about its potential impact. But the list doesn’t stop there: Google, Yahoo, YouTube, and Twitter have also publicly opposed the bill. The White House has also announced that should the bill reach President Obama’s desk, he will veto it.

How would SOPA work? It allows the U.S. attorney general to seek a court order against the targeted offshore website that would, in turn, be served on Internet providers in an effort to make the target virtually disappear. It’s kind of an Internet death penalty.

More specifically, section 102 of SOPA says that, after being served with a removal order:

A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order…Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within five days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.

How would it impact me? If you create or consume content on the Internet, under SOPA the government would have the power to pull the plug on your website. If you’re a casual consumer, your favorite websites could be penalized and shut down if they seem to be illegally supporting copyrighted material.

This is especially important for human rights groups and advocates in communities of color, who could faced increased censorship if the bill is passed. The language of the bill makes it easy for the US Attorney General to go after websites it simply sees as a threat.

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Defend our freedom to share (or why SOPA is a bad idea)

Why we need to stop SOPA and PIPA

Internet and technology experts discuss why current anti-piracy legislation in the US must be stopped.

January 16, 2012 |  Joi Ito and Ethan Zuckerman  Joichi “Joi” Ito is Director of the MIT Media Lab | Posted on Al Jazeera

Cambridge, Mass - I just posted a blog post on the MIT Media Lab blog officially taking a position against SOPA and PIPA. This is a longer blog post co-authored with Ethan Zuckerman describing the issue in more detail.

SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act - and a sister bill, PIPA – the Protect IP Act - seek to minimise the dissemination of copyrighted material online by targeting sites that promote and enable the sharing of copyright-protected material, like The Pirate Bay. While this goal may be laudable, entrepreneurs, legal scholars and free speech activists are worried about the consequences of these bills for the architecture of the internet. At the MIT Media Lab, we share those concerns, and we oppose SOPA and PIPA as threats to innovation on the internet.

To limit access to rogue sites, SOPA and PIPA would:

• Supersede the “notice and takedown” method of policing for copyrighted material on internet services and require service providers to police content uploaded by users or prevent users from uploading copyrighted content.
• Require Internet Service Providers to change their DNS servers and block resolution of the domain names of websites in other countries that host illegal copies of content.
• Require search engines to modify their search results to exclude foreign websites that illegally host copyrighted material.
• Order payment processors like PayPal and ad services like Google AdSense to cease doing business with foreign websites that illegally host copyrighted content.

Major internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and others, oppose SOPA and PIPA because it changes the liability rules around copyright infringement. Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998, companies are protected from charges of “contributory infringement” on content uploaded by users, so long as the company follows a procedure and remove infringing content when an alert process is followed.

SOPA substantially alters this system, and internet companies worry that without protection from contributory infringement, user-generated content sites like YouTube and Twitter would not have come into existence. The burden of reviewing user-submitted content – every blog post, every video, every image – would be impossible for a company to manage, and companies would have likely stuck with the Web 1.0 model of publishing edited, vetted content instead of moving to a Web 2.0 model where users create the content. Several internet companies took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to express their concerns about SOPA and PIPA.

Free speech advocates, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, worry that SOPA may provide powerful new tools to silence online speech. Confronted with uncomfortable political speech, repressive governments often seek to silence dissent by reporting content as defamatory, slanderous or copyright infringing, hoping the companies hosting the speech will remove the content.

SOPA accelerates the process of copyright removal, with a mechanism that permits copyright holders to obtain court orders against sites hosting copyrighted materials and have those sites rapidly blocked. Scholars of online censorship, like Rebecca MacKinnon at the New America Foundation, worry that SOPA may be popular with the Chinese government as with the copyright holders who are lobbying for the bill.

US law already permits the seizure of domestic domain names that are used for piracy, and the US seized 150 domains in November. SOPA is an attempt to enforce copyright provisions across international borders by prohibiting American internet users from accessing certain foreign websites, like The Pirate Bay. In effect, it would create a firewall to prevent users from accessing prohibited intellectual property, much as China’s “great firewall” limits access to politically sensitive information.

Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe believes that SOPA is likely unconstitutional, as it can remove constitutionally protected speech without a hearing, a form of “prior restraint”. In a memo sent to members of Congress, he points out that SOPA proposes a system where a single instance of prohibited material could lead to the blocking of thousands of unrelated pieces of content.

Internet experts have observed that, beyond being dangerous to innovation, harmful to speech and potentially unconstitutional, SOPA and PIPA are unlikely to work. Countries that block access to prohibited websites by altering the domain name system – as Vietnam does in blocking access to Facebook – find that millions of users are able to circumvent this form of censorship.

Millions of Vietnamese users have become Facebook users by entering that site’s IP address into their browsers, or configuring their computers to use an uncensored DNS server. It’s likely that dedicated US users of The Pirate Bay and other sites will do likewise. Effectively blocking access to sites like The Pirate Bay might require US ISPs to install powerful and expensive “deep packet inspection” software, a cost that would inevitably be passed onto their users.

The progress of the bills was slowed in late 2011 by widespread online activism opposing SOPA and PIPA. Hearings are likely to resume early in 2012, and opponents of the bills are facing off against organised lobbying campaigns by the music and film industries who support the legislation.

On November 16, 2011, participatory media company Tumblr took strong online action against SOPA, redirecting requests for content on the site to a page that urged users to call US representatives and oppose the bill – their daylong campaign generated more than 87,000 calls to Congress. Internet community site Reddit plans a site-wide “blackout” on January 18 to inform users of the potential harms of SOPA and PIPA. Wikipedia is considering doing the same.

In the spirit of these protests, the MIT Media Lab has linked this blog post to all our site pages, encouraging anyone interested in the work we do to learn more about SOPA and PIPA. More information and resources follow below. We believe that SOPA and PIPA would make it harder for Media Lab students, researchers and faculty to do what we do best: create innovative technologies that anticipate the future by creating it. We hope you’ll join with us in opposing these bills and, if you are a US citizen, in letting your representatives know your concerns about this legislation.

Follow him on Twitter: @JoiJoichi “Joi” Ito is an entrepreneur with a focus on internet and technology companies. He is the Chairman of the Creative Commons and Director at the MIT Media Lab.

Ethan Zuckerman is director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and a principal research scientist at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on the distribution of attention in mainstream and new media, the use of technology for international development, and the use of new media technologies by activists. He also co-founded international blogging community Global Voices.

Follow him on Twitter: @EthanZ

A version of this article was first published in Joi Ito’s blog.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

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SOPA and PIPA Would Destroy Internet Freedom

Julie Borowski | January 15, 2012 |  Freedom Watch | Originally posted here

Two pieces of dangerous legislation are currently being debated in Congress that could forever change the Internet: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). The proponents of these harmful bills claim that it is necessary to stop online piracy, the illegal sale and/or distribution of copyrighted and trademarked products on the Internet. Regardless of how well-intentioned the pieces of legislation may be or one’s perspective on intellectual property laws, SOPA and the Protect IP Act would severely cripple free speech and stifle innovation online.

The Internet is a prime example of what Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek called spontaneous order. One single institution does not control the Internet. This is primarily what makes the Internet so great. Billions of individuals all over the world are free to spread unrestricted information on the Internet. I actually became a libertarian largely because I was exposed to ideas that I never heard before on the free Internet. Can you imagine how terrible the Internet would be if it was centrally planned by the government? A centralized institution cannot possibly know or satisfy the unique wants of billions of individuals across the globe.

Despite the lack of centralized control, the Internet exhibits a high degree of order. As the Taoist Chuang-tzu said, “good order results spontaneously when things are let alone”. Self-policing has worked to a certain degree to keep harmful content off the Internet. As it currently stands, there are no government mandates requiring search engines to remove information. Many websites alreadyvoluntarily remove information deemed inappropriate. For instance, Google routinely screens out child pornography from its search results. Facebook and Twitter encourages users to flag malicious content that violates their terms of service. While self-regulation may not be perfect, it is much preferable to government regulation.

The House version SOPA and Senate version PIPA would grant the federal government unprecedented control over the Internet. Both bills would give the federal government the power to shut down literally millions of websites. SOPA, the most dangerous version of the two, contains vague language permitting the government to shut down any website that is found to “engage in, enable or facilitate” copyright infringement. Senior Fellow at New America Foundation Rebecca MacKinnon writes in the New York Times,

The bills would empower the attorney general to create a blacklist of sites to be blocked by Internet service providers, search engines, payment providers and advertising networks, all without a court hearing or a trial. The House version goes further, allowing private companies to sue service providers for even briefly and unknowingly hosting content that infringes on copyright – a sharp change from current law, which protects the service providers from civil liability if they remove the problematic content immediately upon notification. The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar.

SOPA and PIPA threatens our free speech. These bills forcibly require search engines and other third parties to remove links to rogue websites. This is a clear violation of our constitutional right to free speech as well as a burdensome regulation that will destroy jobs. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and all search engines would likely have to hire countless new employees to ensure that no copyright infringing content is posted to prevent their websites from getting shut down by the government.

Social networking sites would surely prefer to spend money on growing their websites rather than complying with costly government rules. David Carr of the New York Times even writes that the bills would “probably not” stop online piracy. He further states that, “even if it made some progress toward reining in rogue sites, the collateral damage would be significant.” These proposed online piracy laws would have disastrous economic consequences while failing to fix the problems that they were supposedly intended to solve.

SOPA and PIPA would undermine the free flow of information on the Internet. This could be a dangerous slippery slope in which the federal government seeks more and more control over the Internet. The Egyptian and Chinese governments have actually shut down citizen access to the Internet over the past few years. Every authoritarian government ultimately desires to have complete control of information and communication technologies.

Twenty-seven Republican lawmakers who strongly opposed net neutrality are strangely cosponsors of SOPA in the House or PIPA in the Senate. Yet, the proposed online piracy laws are equally as bad or perhaps even worse than net neutrality. SOPA and PIPA would disrupt the growth of technology and infringe on free speech. Any individual interested in preserving the freedom of the Internet should not support either version of this dangerous bill.

Original Post

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Victory for Internet Freedom: Obama Announces Opposition to SOPA, Congress Shelves Bill

The Protect IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act have generated intense opposition because of their crackdown on Internet freedom–and that opposition just won big.

By Steve Benen  | January 15, 2012  |  Posted on Alternet

Misguided efforts to combat online privacy have been threatening to stifle innovation, suppress free speech, and even, in some cases, undermine national security. As of yesterday, though, there’s a lot less to worry about.

At issue are two related bills: the Senate’s Protect IP Act and the even more offensive Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, both of which are generated intense opposition from tech giants and First Amendment advocates. The first sign that the bills’ prospects were dwindling came Friday, when SOPA sponsors agreed to drop a key provision that would have required service providers to block access to international sites accused of piracy.

The legislation ran into an even more significant problem yesterday when the White House announced its opposition to the bills. Though the administration’s chief technology officials officials acknowledged the problem of online privacy, the White House statement presented a fairly detailed critique of the measures and concluded, “We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” It added that any proposed legislation “must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet.”

Until now, the Obama administration had not taken a position on the issue. The response was published yesterday as part of the online “We The People” petition initiative launched by the White House last year.

Though the administration did issue a formal veto threat, the White House’s opposition signaled the end of these bills, at least in their current form.

A few hours later, Congress shelved SOPA, putting off action on the bill indefinitely.

House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said early Saturday morning that Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) promised him the House will not vote on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) unless there is consensus on the bill.

“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,” Issa said in a statement. “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.”

It’s possible that a related version of SOPA could come back at some point down the road — though probably not this year — but for now, the push against the bill has succeeded beautifully.

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Official White House Response to  Stop the E-PARASITE Act  and Veto SOPA

Combating Online Piracy while Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet

By Victoria Espinel, Aneesh Chopra, and Howard Schmidt  | Originally posted here

Thanks for taking the time to sign this petition. Both your words and actions illustrate the importance of maintaining an open and democratic Internet.

Right now, Congress is debating a few pieces of legislation concerning the very real issue of online piracy, including the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the PROTECT IP Act and the Online Protection and Digital ENforcement Act (OPEN). We want to take this opportunity to tell you what the Administration will support—and what we will not support. Any effective legislation should reflect a wide range of stakeholders, including everyone from content creators to the engineers that build and maintain the infrastructure of the Internet.

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.

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small. Across the globe, the openness of the Internet is increasingly central to innovation in business, government, and society and it must be protected. To minimize this risk, new legislation must be narrowly targeted only at sites beyond the reach of current U.S. law, cover activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws, and be effectively tailored, with strong due process and focused on criminal activity. Any provision covering Internet intermediaries such as online advertising networks, payment processors, or search engines must be transparent and designed to prevent overly broad private rights of action that could encourage unjustified litigation that could discourage startup businesses and innovative firms from growing.

We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. 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. 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. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.

Let us be clear—online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, and threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation’s most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs.  It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews, and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders. That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response.  We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of legitimate American values.

This is not just a matter for legislation. We expect and encourage all private parties, including both content creators and Internet platform providers working together, to adopt voluntary measures and best practices to reduce online piracy.

So, rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself: Where do we go from here? Don’t limit your opinion to what’s the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what’s right. Already, many of members of Congress are asking for public input around the issue. We are paying close attention to those opportunities, as well as to public input to the Administration. The organizer of this petition and a random sample of the signers will be invited to a conference call to discuss this issue further with Administration officials and soon after that, we will host an online event to get more input and answer your questions. Details on that will follow in the coming days.

Washington needs to hear your best ideas about how to clamp down on rogue websites and other criminals who make money off the creative efforts of American artists and rights holders. We should all be committed to working with all interested constituencies to develop new legal tools to protect global intellectual property rights without jeopardizing the openness of the Internet. Our hope is that you will bring enthusiasm and know-how to this important challenge.

Moving forward, we will continue to work with Congress on a bipartisan basis on legislation that provides new tools needed in the global fight against piracy and counterfeiting, while vigorously defending an open Internet based on the values of free expression, privacy, security and innovation. Again, thank you for taking the time to participate in this important process. We hope you’ll continue to be part of it.

Victoria Espinel is Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget

Aneesh Chopra is the U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President and Associate Director for Technology at the Office of Science and Technology Policy

Howard Schmidt is Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff

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House Kills SOPA

PIPA is the new SOPA

Keep Tweeting to protect an open Internet

Jan 04, 2012 | San Diego CityBeat

It looks like the hashtags are paying off.

As the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in December, the powers of the Internet—the web companies who innovate, the users who populate it—joined together to defend the idea of a free and open ’net. Now, because of the controversy and noise (more than 700,000 tweets and a million emails), there may no longer be the legislative will in the House to pass it, according to Rep. Darrell Issa, one of the bill’s most vocal opponents.

But bills often come in pairs, and SOPA’s twin in the U.S. Senate is the Protect IP Act, or PIPA. Both bills threaten to rip apart the fabric of the Internet, compromise the planet’s digital security and open the doors for China-class censorship. While the SOPA brand is damaged, PIPA has yet to attract similar levels of negative attention. It’s scheduled for a Senate floor vote on Jan. 24 and could easily sneak through under the radar. The most important thing for Internet activists to do, right now, is spread the word that PIPA is the new target.

Understandably, the entertainment industry is sick of watching its films, records and software stolen by large-scale online file-sharing operations based overseas, also known as “rogue sites.” However, in the name of intellectual-property rights, media companies have enlisted a bipartisan chunk of Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation weighted irrationally in their favor. Copyright holders want to give themselves and the U.S. Department of Justice the power to block websites accused of infringement. They want to force Internet service providers to create a wall between their customers and these websites. They want to force banks and payment services like PayPal to cut off these websites’ money. They want the websites removed from search results and to ban people from linking to them. And all of that, without any kind of formal hearing.

The measures won’t stop copyright infringement. The Internet, and the flow of information, will find a way around any dam the entertainment industry tries to put up. But as ineffective as the measure may be, to continue with the metaphor, the dams themselves will do serious damage to the ecology of the web.

Experts and Internet engineers, who were conspicuously not invited to testify before the House committee, have issued warnings that SOPA could undermine the global domain system and create gaping network-security holes. The world’s major Internet innovators—Google, Twitter, Facebook, Mozilla—contend that the legislation eliminates the safe harbors of previous laws that allowed them to experiment in good faith and would create onerous liabilities that would stifle new platforms. Civil-liberties organizations point to the First Amendment implications, arguing that the U.S. would be setting a global model for mass Internet censorship.

Even Marc Randazza, an attorney featured in our Watch List who makes a living suing gay-porn pirates, says the legislation goes too far. Media companies will “definitely” abuse it, he says, noting there are no penalties for frivolous accusations. While he agrees that rogue sites need to be fought, Randazza says that any law this strict should also have strong fair-use and safe-harbor exceptions. SOPA and PIPA do not.

Besides, anyone who understands the evolution of the Internet knows that copyright infringement has been fundamental to its development and that media companies can only blame themselves for being slow to adapt to new technologies.

“It took piracy to force the iTunes model to exist,” Randazza says. “There needs to be a little room at the margins, even if it means the people get shut down eventually. We don’t want to stifle innovation.”

Issa has an alternative bill he’d like considered: The Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act, or OPEN, which also has a twin in the Senate, introduced by Sens. Ron Wyden, Jerry Moran and Maria Cantwell. OPEN puts rogue sites under the purview of the International Trade Commission, which already oversees patent infringement. The ITC would have the authority to block the flow of money and advertising to these sites, but that’s all.

We think the bill should get a fair hearing, with all parties at the table. We’d also like to see media companies abandon their power grab, embrace the concept of open content, explore new revenue models (front-loaded funding, like Kickstarter, is not just a fad) and take advantage of the hunger for information that is so apparent in the popularity of these rogue sites.

For users, the task at hand is simple: PIPA is the new SOPA, so change your hashtags, keep hounding your senators (americancensorship.org makes it easy) and give this editorial a Like.

What do you think? Write to editor@sdcitybeat.com

** End **

Selected resources on SOPA and PIPA

Liz Dwyer, “Why SOPA Could Kill the Open Educational Resource Movement“, Good Magazine.

Julian Sanchez, “SOPA: An Architecture for Censorship“, Cato Institute.

Dan Rowinsky, “What You Need to Know about SOPA in 2012“, ReadWriteWeb.

“Internet Blacklist Legislation“, Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF’s email campaign against the legislation and EFF guide to meeting with your representatives.

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