SOPA, PROTECT IP Promote Internet Censorship, Says Google’s Schmidt
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act could “break a fundamental aspect of the Internet,” Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt told reporters Monday after a luncheon hosted by the Washington, D.C. Economic Club. “What these bills do is they force you to take content off the Internet. By doing so, it’s a form of censorship, it’s not a good thing.” Schmidt scoffed at the mobile-phone patent battle being waged in the International Trade Commission (ITC) and said he expects to hear a decision from European antitrust regulators sometime in the first half of 2012.
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Google has been a vocal opponent of SOPA because the legislation contains an overly broad definition of illegally infringing sites that could unfairly target legitimate sites, Google’s privacy counsel told lawmakers at a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing. House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, introduced the legislation as a means to promote American jobs by giving law enforcement and copyright holders more tools to bring action against infringing websites, he said.
Schmidt railed against the anti-piracy bills while acknowledging that something needed to be done to stem copyright infringement and the online theft of intellectual property. “I understand the goal of what SOPA and [PROTECT IP] are trying to do. Their goal is reasonable but the mechanism is terrible. They should not criminalize the intermediaries. They should go after these people without violating the law,” Schmidt said. “What they are essentially doing is whacking away at the DNS system and that’s a mistake. It’s a bad way about going after this problem.”
The MPAA dismissed Schmidt’s rhetoric as a “distraction,” in a press release issued Monday. “Today, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt again engaged in sky is falling rhetoric in attacking important legislation that targets criminals who profit from online piracy and counterfeiting,” said Michael O'Leary, the MPAA’s senior executive vice president for global policy and external affairs. “Schmidt’s comment that the legislation ‘criminalizes the intermediaries’ is a new weapon in their arsenal of hyperbole … This type of rhetoric only serves as a distraction and I hope it is not a delaying tactic.”
Schmidt said he did not know enough about the current draft of the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act to say whether Google should back the proposal. Last week Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., released a draft proposal of the bill as an alternative to SOPA and PROTECT IP that gives the ITC more power to target and sever funding to foreign websites that infringe copyrighted goods.
The ITC should not be used as a venue for mobile device manufacturers to “shut down consumer choice,” Schmidt told reporters. The ITC has recently become a battlefield in the patent war among industry giants in the Internet and mobile device sectors, he said. “It’s bad. From a consumer perspective you want choice,” he said. “And the consequences of this ITC mechanism is it appears that if it does find against Android it could limit your choice.”
European antitrust regulators have not telegraphed any decisions stemming from their investigations into Google’s business practices, Schmidt told reporters. Last year the European Commission initiated a probe to determine whether Google is violating EU antitrust law by giving itself preferential treatment over rival services. “It’s hard to characterize what’s going to happen because we honestly don’t know,” Schmidt said. “They have been quite careful not to tell us what is coming. They have not given us a time frame, although my guess would be the first half of 2012 we would begin to hear from them.”