Internet Community Celebrates SOPA Defeat One Year Later, Anticipates Upcoming Policy Battles

Policy makers should take care not to censor or regulate the Internet, which “is a revolutionary tool for innovation, job-creation, and democratic discourse” and has the “ability to give every user and every constituent a voice in the political process,” as evidenced by the SOPA protest, the Internet Association -- a trade association of Internet companies including Amazon, Facebook and Google -- said in a statement. “Censoring or regulating the Internet would have a devastating impact on countless families, small businesses, and entrepreneurs worldwide,” the association said: It plans to collaborate “with policy makers, innovators, and all Internet users to ensure that future proposals affecting the Internet do not harm the Internet’s central role in our lives."

There are “two clear and long-overdue reforms” in the Internet policy realm, according to Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom. The first is requiring “a warrant when law enforcement accesses files and communications we store in the cloud, or tracks our location,” Szoka said in a statement. The second reform needed is of “anti-hacking statutes,” Szoka said. In the last week, members of the Internet advocacy community have partially attributed the suicide of open-Internet activist and SOPA opponent Aaron Swartz to disproportionate penalties -- including over 30 years in jail time -- he may have faced for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s network to download millions of academic papers without authorization. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., announced her plans to introduce a bill to reform CFAA by decriminalizing terms of service violations. “Aaron Swartz should be the last person who ever takes his own life rather than face prison for downloads that should never have been crimes,” Szoka said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation laid out additional policy areas that need reform in a blog post (http://bit.ly/13Mveg2). Like Szoka, EFF called for reforming the “draconian computer crime law” and requiring law enforcement to get warrants to access location data. The group also called for patent reform to encourage innovation, encouraged readers to protest a possible law that would require social networks to allow government surveillance of users, and called for more transparency in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade negotiation -- “being negotiated in complete secrecy and with no democratic oversight” -- that could “force countries to drastically lengthen their copyright terms, restrict fair use, institute digital locks to keep people from sharing information, and place greater burdens on websites hosting content.” EFF Trevor Timm wrote that Internet users should pay attention to these issues because “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and the fight for Internet freedom continues."

Stakeholders must continue to protect the Internet from the subtle threats, as well as the obvious ones, said Computer and Communications Industry Association President Ed Black in a statement. The Internet must be protected from “those who want to carve out seemingly well-intended exceptions to Internet freedom in frustrated attempts to fix social ills” as well from those entities -- such as the Chinese, Syrian and Iranian governments -- who “overtly oppose” Internet freedom, Black said. “We must remain equally vigilant in protecting the Internet from a death by a thousand cuts and direct assault,” he said, calling on those fighting for Internet freedom to “look at all policies impacting the Internet, measure the intended and collateral damage and analyze the costs and benefits carefully."