SOPA: 9 Tech Companies That Support The 'Stop Online Piracy Act'

Debate over a House of Representatives bill called the "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA) has created a deep divide between supporters and detractors in both the creative and technology industries. If passed, SOPA and its Senate equivalent "PROTECT IP Act" would require internet service providers to block access to sites that posted or allowed the posting of copyrighted material. These websites could also be removed from search results, among other penalties. Copyright holders would also be able to request that advertising and payment providers sever ties with the offending sites.

Not surprisingly many record and movie companies have come out in support SOPA. A representative for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) called it, "a choice between protecting American creativity and jobs or protecting thieves."

In a speech to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, former Senator and MPAA President Chris Dodd chastised tech companies who oppose SOPA saying, "There are those in the tech industry who hold the mistaken belief that there is nothing wrong with providing links to stolen content[...] I wonder if they would feel the same if their patents were stolen and used by others for profit?"

Many technology companies -- including Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Twitter and eBay -- have come out strongly against the bill, calling it "censorship" and expressing concern that it could "pose a serious risk to our industry's continued track record of innovation and job-creation, as well as to our Nation's cybersecurity." However, The Next Web has pointed out that several key players in the tech industry have been notably silent, and appear to be supporting the bill, at least implicitly. These companies are part of the Business Software Alliance, a trade group that has come out in favor of the bill.

In a statement released in October, BSA President and CEO Robert Holleyman said, "Today Chairman Smith and his co-sponsors in the House of Representatives have taken a good step by introducing legislation to address the problem of online piracy, including software piracy."

SOPA is slated to appear before the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet. The IP Protect act was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year.

Take a look at the slideshow (below) to see the 9 most surprising tech giants that are quietly supporting SOPA. Visit BSA.org to view the entire list of companies that are part of the Business Software Alliance.

Comments

[culturecrash]

06:24 PM on 12/18/2011

Existing laws already protect against copyright infringement. There’s little public interest for legislation that specifically targets the Internet. I suspect Chris Dodd, now CEO of the powerful lobbying firm for the film industry, is the driving force behind this legislation.

Congress puts political interests above public interest and without considerable public pressure, SOPA will pass.

[Bill Twelvepac]

06:47 AM on 11/30/2011

WOW if they would spend this much time and energy on stopping illegal immigrants who are also braking the law. There would be more jobs for people that are unemployed and more tax revenue as the people coming into the company would be legal tax payers and not just leeches.
BUT NO IT"S more important to scratch the back of the entertainment companies those are sure votes.

[philtrum licker]

08:21 PM on 11/22/2011

This bill will not stop pirates from pirating, I am sure that if it passes something new will eventually come up that will allow them to do so.

[SickHippie]

04:28 PM on 11/22/2011

"There are those in the tech industry who hold the mistaken belief that there is nothing wrong with providing links to stolen content[...] I wonder if they would feel the same if their patents were stolen and used by others for profit?"

This is one of the biggest lies being used to pass legislation like this - the idea that all of these sites are profiting directly from the illegal content.

See, here's the reality - the majority of, for example, torrent sites host user-submitted content. There is rarely a membership fee or any form of payment other than donation directly to the site owners.

The reason the old laws are considered not good enough anymore? Because the profiteering is gone - people are just giving away copies of material they own. Without directly profiting from the sale of copyrighted material, there is no commercial infringement, only personal.

Of course, the copyright owner's idea of how much money they lose is absurd. The RIAA claims LimeWire caused losses in the amount of $75 trillion dollars.

Yes, the RIAA believes LimeWire caused them to lose profits 5 times the amount of the national debt.

What it boils down to is this: it's easier for these organizations to fund layers of legislation forcing an outdated system then change their business model to reflect the current needs and desires of consumers.

[No Yards]

12:13 PM on 11/21/2011

I have a solution for all the corporate SOPA supporters .... don't use the Internet as a product delivery system if your business model doesn't fit with that delivery system.

You just want to take advantage of the openness, freedom, interconnectability of the medium, but at the same time take away all the openness, freedom, and interconnectability ... in other words, you want to destroy the parts of the Internet that made it the preferred choice for business delivery ... so you can do business.

You know, when I was a kid and my parents read me the fable of the "golden goose", I always wondered why this came to be fable ... isn't it obvious that if you had a goose that laid golden eggs it would be stupid in the extreme to kill it? Of course at that age I guess I never understood "business" as practiced by greedy corporate fools.

There are lots f businesses on the Internet making money following the rules as they now exist on the Internet ... it's not the rules that need changing it's the 1960's mind sets of certain businesses that need changing ... find ways to work with the world as it is and as it becomes .. stop asking that we regulate ourselves back to the 60's so your old ways of doing things are profitable for you.

[Greg Albright]

03:43 PM on 11/21/2011

You know, I could take your POV back to 1997 and the DMCA debate and not modify a single word, and you would fit right in.

People opposed to the DMCA made all the same exact predictions that you have. None of it has come true.

One of the things that has been a result of the DMCA is torrents. SOPA merely closes the loop hole on torrents.

Oh, and I know why Google is a against this bill... They benefit from various forms of piracy...

http://www.wpri.com/dpps/entertainment/consumer_tech/google-settles-pharmacy-ad-probe-for-500-million-nt11-jgr_3921717

so much for that "don't be evil" rhetoric...

[No Yards]

01:57 PM on 11/22/2011

You don't have a clue what you're talking about (or rather you do, and are twisting the truth to your own benefit ... can't sue little children if there is no law available that tilts the playing field so corporations can sue without taking any responsibility for their false accusation.)

The DMCA hasn't stopped anything .. it shut down a few sites that were trying to do legitimate business, but that just drove file sharing to other methods.

In the meantime all the DMCA does is give the RIAA and MPAA a tool that targets mostly innocent youtubers ... there are far more false takedown notices than there are legitimate takedown notices.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111110/10135116708/glimpse-future-under-sopa-warner-bros-admits-it-filed-many-false-takedown-notices.shtml

Let me guess, your an RIAA/MPAA layer.

[drunkarate]

01:41 AM on 11/21/2011

The bill is poorly written and would create so much chaos, it's absurd on its front. By all means, Congress, bow down to your corporate masters who pay your campaign bills, but do it in a way that is sane and level-headed, with clear-cut procedures that protect the interests of all citizens involved.

[Thanks4Watching]

11:25 PM on 11/20/2011

http://www.yousaytoo.com/congressional-sopa-hearings-no-opponents-of-the-bill-allowed/1434936#.Tsl5xNcWPKM.tumblr

Censorship has already begun. They're not even allowing opponents of the bill to testify at the hearing.

[kustom]

07:46 PM on 11/20/2011

Did HP get permission to use Microsofts logo?

[SickHippie]

04:30 PM on 11/22/2011

Media outlets are granted a level of "fair use". Regular people have as much 'fair use' access as we do freedom of assembly.

[Deborah M Noble]

02:39 PM on 11/20/2011

Shame on those Corporations and politicians who are in support of this so called "Act". These Corporations should stop being so mediocre about consumer protection standards, improve and pay for their own individual security. They should utilize their own money! That is just a lame excuse for control, save their dollars, use government welfare to police the internet and a terrible use of our tax money. How many tech jobs workers they could hire to improve their product's security, specially those kids graduating from college who are desperately trying to find employment? No, instead they want to use our tax money to police us! Brilliant and evil, aren't they? The sad part is that people fall for this and these big private corporations might get away with it by purchasing the politicians we elect, yet again. Please, I beg of you, wake up! Perhaps you do not agree with me and that's OK. However, thanks for reading this and letting me vent. I love Huffington Post! Have a nice day and a wonderful Thanksgiving week :-)

[PlainSpeak]

10:45 AM on 11/20/2011

Quietly supporting????? Does HP have facts to support this claim or are they making up the story???

[SickHippie]

04:31 PM on 11/22/2011

In the tech world on a subject like this, no comment is the same as approval. There are no 'quiet opponents', as those who disagree do so vehemently.

[SuperBenFranklin]

10:00 AM on 11/20/2011

People steal my content every day.

If people stole from my house every day, the government would do something about it.

But online, there is no response.
\

[No Yards]

10:36 AM on 11/20/2011

If the SOPA were applicable to your house then you could accuse anyone with stealing something from your house and they would be put in prison until it was proven they were innocent ... I'm sorry if someone is stealing your content, but that shouldn't give you the right to put others out of business just on your say so and only allow them back in business (if they could actually recover from such a take down) only when it was clearly shown that they were innocent.

There are already thousands of cases where legitimate content has been taken down by false accusation under the DMCA ... I know of no case where any of these false accusations have had real consequences for the liars.

Here's what Google had to say about false DMCA take down notices:

"In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims."

The process Google has to follow in order to protect itself, just in case there might be some rare merit in these requests, is to remove the content first and ask questions later ... that's hardly fair.

[SuperBenFranklin]

11:14 AM on 11/20/2011

The problem is why does Google have the right to publish other people's property? Why must I tell them to stop?'

There has been a free for all on content, and companies have made millions on other people's stuff. See the start of youtube.

[meebo]

07:07 PM on 11/20/2011

If people steal your content then you need to take a look at your security. In fact, if anyone steals anything from you, blame yourself. I run my own servers and admin with others who host their own servers and sites as well. Protect yourself and you won't feel like you need some bill to protect you.

[SuperBenFranklin]

09:51 AM on 11/21/2011

Ha! You think security protects anything. Everything is cracked. Big companies like sony can't even keep people from attacking their servers.

The problem is there is no recourse right now. People steal and nothing happens.

[oftenon]

11:44 PM on 11/19/2011

It's a breathtaking testament of inanity that legal agreement on something that already decimated an entire artistic industry has not been implemented. Fair use does not license piracy and euphemisms of neutrality don't legitimize false entitlement to others' property.

[No Yards]

09:16 AM on 11/20/2011

If corporate bullies didn't abuse these kinds of laws to chill and even prevent free speech and expression then we wouldn't have to be so nit-picky about how these laws can be abused ... but they do, so the caution and skepticism is justified.

For example, the "unintended" abuse and chilling effect on free speech and expression experienced from the DMCA act was real, we don't want to repeat that mistake ... https://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-under-dmca

[oftenon]

01:19 PM on 11/20/2011

Very well said. God's in the details and so is the devil. While you can't legislate morality nor fit a lock proof free from burglars you damn well have to try. It's a pity that myopic, avaricious corporate gatekeepers have come to define an extreme pole of transactional fairness.

[2crudedudes]

11:41 PM on 11/19/2011

Oh, no. Someone is illegally downloading Halloween 17 and the re-re-make of Scarface. Those thieves.

[philtrum licker]

07:27 PM on 11/19/2011

This bill makes me think of a post apocalyptic war, unneeded and scary to america as a whole. If it passes everyone you know will be a convict in someway, shape, form or fashion.

[Christian J Nieves]

05:23 PM on 11/19/2011

lol the herd eats what the masters serve. The internet is a danger to the elites; censorship is the logical step. Of course they will not sell censorship as what it is but under the cover of copyright protections blah blah blah.

[Greg Albright]

06:03 PM on 11/19/2011

From the bill...

(1) FIRST AMENDMENT.—Nothing in this Act
4 shall be construed to impose a prior restraint on free
5 speech or the press protected under the 1st amend
6 ment to the Constitution

[No Yards]

12:27 AM on 11/20/2011

I don't think you understand what this "prior restraint" clause means in legal terms.

"prior restraint" of speech is preventing the censored material from being heard or distributed at all ... this just says that nothing in this Bill is considered of having the same importance as does say "national security" where "prior restraint" CAN be applied to prevent certain material from being protected by constitutional free speech... this doesn't mean freedom of speech cannot be put under attack with such tactics as attacking "fair use" rights, etc.

[No Yards]

12:33 PM on 11/20/2011

BTW: despite the Bill making the claim of no "prior restraint on free speech", it goes on to do just that (making actual dissemination of facts illegal.) If the DOJ takes down a domain name from the DNS infrastructure it will be a crime to provide the IP address of that defunct domain.