SOPA and PROTECT IP Would Harm Internet Business, Associations Say
The most common concern with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act is how they will affect the domain name system, Public Knowledge Deputy Legal Director Sherwin Siy said Tuesday. Other concerns about SOPA and PROTECT IP include their broad definitions, he said during a conference call with reporters on the bills hosted by several associations.
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Sites can be acted against for enabling a copyright infringer under the bills, but an infringing site is not defined, Siy said. Under the current definition, a site providing services to many people could be accused of enabling infringement if an infringer is using their services. “This is too broad,” Siy said.
Other definitions are also seen as vague, like the descriptions of foreign sites being targeted by the bill, said General Manager Erik Martin of Reddit. With the current definition, social news site Reddit could be considered a foreign site even though it’s U.S.-based, he said: The definitions were written “without a lot of thought on the impact and a lot of thought on the execution and not much knowledge on how these things work and how the Internet operates."
The Future of Music Coalition also thinks the bills were written in ignorance, said Deputy Director Casey Rae-Hunter: “Lawmakers may be trying to address a problem without a functional understanding of how today’s marketplace works.” He also said he finds it troubling that the bills were drafted without input from parties that would be most affected. SOPA is “so almost comically overreaching that it was classic Hollywood trying to do heavy-handed legislation to protect their business interests,” Rae-Hunter said.
Another concern was the presence of a private right of action. There is the ability to entirely remove a site’s ability to host ads or remove payments, and that’s too much power, Siy said. Critics also raised concerns on Tuesday about provisions that provide blanket immunities to anyone who takes voluntary actions against suspected infringers. Intermediaries can cut off sites of their own accord and not be liable for it as long as they say they had good reason, Siy said. This could present opportunities for discrimination and abuse of power, critics said.
The blanket immunities create a different balance of power for intermediaries and plaintiffs in copyright situations, Siy said. Under SOPA, it would be easier for parties to give into infringement complaints and cut off the customer in question without checking the complaint’s validity than to deal with the consequences of being deemed as enabling infringement, he said.
Martin said the bills could shut down growing companies before they have a chance to start. Sites like Reddit and Facebook started small and might not have become the sites they are if such Internet censorship existed then, he said, but the bills could affect bigger sites too and would affect Reddit. “Having to check domain names, filter out results and respond to a predicted high volume of requests from copyright holders could make a real impact on our ability to run the company,” Martin said. He predicted that if someone came after Reddit under one of these bills, the uncertainty and compliance burden would make such a company unprofitable and it would shut down.