{"id":16421,"date":"2011-12-23T12:45:04","date_gmt":"2011-12-23T19:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wapreview.com\/?p=16421"},"modified":"2012-01-17T13:37:51","modified_gmt":"2012-01-17T20:37:51","slug":"why-sopa-is-a-bad-for-freedom-and-the-internet-and-what-you-can-do-to-help-stop-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/16421\/","title":{"rendered":"Why SOPA is a Bad For Freedom and the Internet and What You Can Do To Help Stop It"},"content":{"rendered":"

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SOPA, the Stop Online Privacy Act<\/em>\u00a0 (HR3261<\/a>) is a bill that is currently being considered by the US House of Representatives. SOPA and its companion Protect IP Senate bill (S.968\u00a0<\/a>)\u00a0are well intended but badly drafted. If passed they have the potential to censor the Web, bankrupt web startups, stiffle innovation and severely\u00a0disrupt social media and the Internet itself.<\/p>\n

Drafted and pushed by a group of large “old” media providers,\u00a0SOPA and Protect IP have the laudable goal of stopping “online piracy”, primarily the sharing of copyrighted movies and music. \u00a0And that’s a good thing, musicians and the movie industry have the right to be paid for their work.<\/p>\n

But SOPA and Protect IP are doing it all wrong. \u00a0The majority of illegal filesharing uses BitTorrent, which because of its distributed nature is difficult to block. \u00a0The bills don’t even try. \u00a0Instead they make all Web sites that allow users to post content liable if a single user amonhg millions posts a copyrighted file or even a link to one. \u00a0This will force sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr and every blog that allows users to leave comments to review everything that’s posted. That’s probably impossible for all but the smallest sites.<\/p>\n

Search engines will be \u00a0effected too. It would be illegal for Google display links to any site that hosts prohibited material.<\/p>\n

SOPA\/Protect IP go much farther than the DMCA, which already lets rights holders remove infringing material sites from social media sites while providing an appeal process and\u00a0protecting\u00a0sites from legal action provided they remove the material. \u00a0The DMCA is far from perfect, and is frequently abused for\u00a0commercial\u00a0gain. A study by two legal\u00a0scholars\u00a0found 41% of DMCA takedown notices<\/a>\u00a0were filed against \u00a0a complainant’s competitor. There is no reason to believe that SOPA will not be abused the same way and it’s quicker, broader and provides only a five day window for\u00a0appeals (there is no time limit for appealing DMCA takedown notices).<\/p>\n

What’s even scarier is the way SOPA\/Protect IP will be enforced. \u00a0Any rights holder can get a court order requiring all US based ISPs, domain name registrars\u00a0and DNS providers to block access to any domain that the rights holder believes hosts infringing material. \u00a0ISPs will need to use deep packet inspection and IP blocking to block infringing domains. \u00a0These are the same techniques that Iran and China use to censor the Internet for their citizens. \u00a0Once these filtering mechanisms are in place they\u00a0could potentially be misused to block political dissent,\u00a0whistle\u00a0blowers and consumer advocacy.<\/p>\n

The bills are exteremly broad and could even be interperted to prohibt Americans from\u00a0operating\u00a0anonymous\u00a0web proxies<\/a>\u00a0like those used by “Arab Spring”\u00a0dissidents\u00a0to get the word out on Facebook and Twitter when those sites were block by their\u00a0governments.<\/p>\n

SOPA and Protect IP are technically flawed and are likely to effect the stability and availability of the Internet. \u00a083 prominent Internet engineers and inventors including Vint Cerf and Paul Vixie have signed an open letter<\/a> to Congress saying that SOPA would endager the Internet, cause security issues,\u00a0stifle\u00a0innovation and harm the credibility of the US on the subject of Internet censorship.<\/p>\n

SOPA and Protect IP are opposed by most web and tech companies and organizations <\/a>including:\u00a0American Express,\u00a0AOL,\u00a0Discover,\u00a0eBay,\u00a0Facebook,\u00a0foursquare,\u00a0Google,\u00a0LinkedIn,\u00a0Mozilla,\u00a0OpenDNS,\u00a0PayPal,\u00a0Twitter,\u00a0Visa,\u00a0Wikimedia Foundation,\u00a0Yahoo!,\u00a0Consumer Electronics Association,\u00a0Microsoft, OpenDNS, the American Library association, the European\u00a0Parliament, EFF and ACLU.\u00a0Prominent\u00a0publications have editorialized against it including the\u00a0Stanford Law Review,\u00a0Los Angeles Times,\u00a0San Jose Mercury News, and\u00a0The New York Times.<\/p>\n

Supporters include the RIAA, Motion Picture Association of America Viacom, US Chamber of Congress, Macmillan Publishers, News Corp., ABC, NBC, BMI, Sony, Time Warner, Comcast, Disney and the NBA. SOPA supporters have raised over $2 million to bankroll lobbying for the bill. \u00a0It’s opponents have only raised half a million.<\/p>\n

Not convinced that SOPA and Protect IP \u00a0are wrong? Read more about the\u00a0incredible\u00a0damage they would do to free speech, the open Internet and tech\u00a0innovation\u00a0at\u00a0 Wikipedia<\/a>, PublicKnowledge.org<\/a>, the\u00a0 Stanford Law Review<\/a>, The New York Times<\/a>, ars technica<\/a> and the EFF<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, what can YOU do to fight the passege of SOPA\/Protect IP?<\/strong>\u00a0If you are a US resident you should send an email to your Congressperson and Senators<\/strong>. \u00a0The EFF has an online form<\/a> that makes it extremely easy to. A phone call or fax is even better.<\/strong>\u00a0AmericanCensorship.org, a coallition that includes Wikimedia, Mozilla and the EFF has a web form<\/a> that\u00a0lets you phone your congressperson<\/strong> toll free. \u00a0VOIP provider Altus Carrier Services has a site where you can fax your representatives<\/strong> in opposition to SOPA for free<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even if you don’t live in the US you can\u00a0sign the petition at whitehouse.gov<\/a> urging President Obama \u00a0to veto SOPA if it passes<\/strong>.\u00a0 AmericanCensorship.org<\/a>\u00a0has a\u00a0list of other things\u00a0you can do to fight SOPA\u00a0whether\u00a0you are in the US or not, including “censoring<\/strong>” your website and signing a petition<\/a><\/strong> asking the US State Department, which is so opposed to Internet censorship outside the US \u00a0to take a stand against the censorship aspects of SOPA.<\/p>\n

Act today, don’t let Hollywood and the music industry trample free speech and\u00a0destroy\u00a0the Internet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"