Criticism of the Stop Online Piracy Act usually falls under four major categories. When compared to the facts, these charges just do not hold up.
Charge: Breaks the internet
The Facts: The Stop Online Piracy Act targets foreign criminal websites. There is nothing new about the methods used to target criminals in the Stop Online Piracy Act. They are currently used to protect consumers and combat all kinds of harmful behavior including spam, phishing, malware, viruses, copyright infringement and other forms of Internet crime. And this is happening without claims of harm to the Internet.
Google makes more decisions about website blocking than any other company or country in the world. They block websites every day, including in the United States.
Daniel Castro of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation addressed many of these claims in a report. He wrote:
Many inaccurate claims have been made about PIPA/SOPA by opponents of the legislation. The most serious of these claims to date is that the proposed countermeasures in PIPA/SOPA, particularly the DNS filtering obligation, would 'break the Internet' or otherwise harm users. This claim, which has been used by critics to rally the public, media and lawmakers to their cause, is completely unfounded and without merit." [ITIF, 12/5/11]
Charge: Promotes censorship
The Facts: Stealing is not free speech. The Stop Online Piracy Act upholds free speech and the First Amendment. Just as the First Amendment defends Americans' right to create, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution, the Copyright Clause, guarantees Americans the ability to protect their creations from those who would steal them.
First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams wrote the following in an op-ed in the Washington Post:
Yet when legislation is introduced to put teeth in the effort to prevent rampant and unconstrained theft of copyrighted creative efforts, it has been denounced as creating 'walled gardens patrolled by government censors.' Or derided as imparting 'major features' of 'China's Great Firewall' to America. And accused of being 'potentially politically repressive.' This is not serious criticism. The proposition that efforts to enforce the Copyright Act on the Internet amount to some sort of censorship, let alone Chinese-level censorship, is not merely fanciful. It trivializes the pain inflicted by actual censorship that occurs in repressive states throughout the world. Chinese dissidents do not yearn for freedom in order to download pirated movies. [Washington Post, op-ed, 12/9/11]
Charge: Stifles innovation by targeting legitimate companies
The Facts: Piracy puts Americans' jobs at risk; the Stop Online Piracy Act encourages innovation and investment. Protecting intellectual property encourages economic growth. Under the bill, only the Justice Department can seek an injunction against a foreign website for which the primary purpose is illegal and infringing activity. It does nothing to add to the burden of companies that are engaged in legal activity.
What the technology companies aren't discussing is that their sector of the economy relies on content protection laws to grow. Consumers want content such as movies and TV shows. The tech sector creates products and websites that distribute the content from the creative industries. Inventors and investors have an incentive to invest time and money in content only if it will be protected.
Charge: Overly broad reach
The Facts: The Stop Online Piracy Act specifically targets foreign websites primarily dedicated to illegal activity or foreign websites that market themselves as such. The bill targets online criminals who profit from stolen American content and counterfeit goods and are a danger to American consumers.
As with all criminal activity, the courts, not "the government" will make the final decision. The Stop Online Piracy Act targets criminals who are currently violating copyrights but beyond the reach of current law. It follows established due process in our federal courts that already consider copyright infringement cases. In fact, foreign websites are afforded the same due process as Americans are.
It does not force social networks to monitor their sites and does not provide any authority for a judge to serve an order on social network sites. The bill also upholds the safe harbor protections under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Copyright protection is pro-Internet. It has given us the Internet today, alive with commerce, free speech and innovation.
Mark Lemley, David S. Levine and David G. Post: Don't Break the Internet
http://www.itif.org/files/2011-pipa-sopa-respond-critics.pdf
It should bring clarity to both sides of the debate.
Congress is free to create—and should create—copyright laws that are in the best interests of the American people generally, not just its Michael O'Learys. Mucking with basic functionality of the world wide web is an extreme step and should be viewed as such.
Response: Bad things are bad.
YouTube exists (in part) to distribute pirated movies / tv shows and songs. The visitors to YouTube know this, and often use the service to download said movies.
Even though YouTube claims it's not feasible to TRY to filter copyrighted material, they're really trying to keep a userbase that uses their site to specifically download illegally hosted content.
"Complying" with takedown orders isn't enough. If user-uploaded content isn't monitored then the USERS will INTENTIONALLY use what would be considered a "good faith" service to commit illegal acts.
90% of all americans support digital piracy... can you honestly say that they would stop simply because YouTube issues notices saying "We're being threatened to be shut down... please stop uploading illegal content... read this article on copyright... please... help us"?
Also, where do you get your statistics?
Fact: People do gladly purchase content online if you make it as easy and hassle free as piracy.
Fact: You might be able to shut down the pirate bay and other websites but you will always be a step behind, you would be much better off improving your product and business model than trying to stop napster, i mean limewire, i mean kazaa, i mean torrents.......
Go ahead and shoot yourself in the foot, you in the industry like to think of piracy as lost revenue, that is a part of that but it is also free advertising.
Fact: People are complaining about paying the $1 for 1 or 2 songs that they could easily download off of youtube (even though that is still piracy).
Fact: We will stop you. It may take time... but you are in the wrong and we are gaining the courage to go into the Wild West of the Net.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music
A separate dutch study:
The researchers further found that people who download music and movies are not buying less than people who don’t. In fact, downloaders are reported to be more frequent visitors of concerts, and game downloaders actually bought more games than those who didn’t.
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/01/dutch-government-study-net-effect-of-p2p-use-is-positive.ars
You are equally wrong concerning the other two points as well.
I don't watch TV, I hate it. I gladly watch Hulu or Netflix cause they are models that work on my schedule while providing payment to the creators/companies. What sucks is the fact that the companies limit this reach and keep pumping crap onto the TV market only.
People will find a way to obtain anything, regardless if you shut down some sites. Torrents are an example of this, where it's fragments of a file (or set of files) spread across multiple computers. Trying to stop them with a bill will only cause more harm than benefit. Instead, it's better to push new business models that appeal, such as Hulu and Netflix.
This is a business problem, not so much a civil problem.
Meanwhile Google and other tech giants earn rich rewards from this eco-system of unregulated theft. The time has come for reasonable people to work together toward a solution. The internet is a wonderful place where innovation reigns, but that does not mean that internet commerce of the black-market variety should be exempt from the law.
We can figure out a solution. It's time to move beyond the rhetoric and respect the rights of those whose livelihoods depend on creating content.
It really is the MPAA vs the internet.
It's no different than what TV tried to do against the VCR and later the DVR.
Or what the music industry tried to do to the radio.
Google has no difficulty demanding in court that its patents and trademarks be respected. However, when it comes to respecting copyright law, the company takes great pains to obfuscate the fact they do everything to avoid compliance.
Indie artists don't have deep pockets. We can't hire lobbyists in Washington to represent OUR interests. But I am telling you will all sincerity that the time for action has come. Go online and poke around. It's not hard to see what is happening and why it is happening. It's about money. It's about people stealing content and making money by doing so. Google (and many other companies) also profit and they do so at the expense of content creators.
We have plenty of laws that regulate commerce in our world. Why should the internet be exempt. No one is asking for censorship. That's a convenient red herring promoted by the likes of Google. All we are asking for is that reasonable measures be taken to prevent pirate profiteers from destroying our livelihoods. Is that really too much to ask?
I also notice that there are firms all over the country popping up that hoard broad/vague/existing patents for the sole purpose of litigating against any infringement, however specious the calim. This practice, as with the proposed "anti-piracy" law, amount to blatant overreach.
Everything in this article is probably true. But it leaves out one crucial detail. SOPA grants powers for a particular reason -to fight piracy. The problem is that after the power is granted, the reason no longer matters.
Look at the Constitution's interstate commerce clause has been recently used to challenge the Affordable Care Act. The PATRIOT act has been used against drug dealers 100 times more often (1600v15) than against actual terrorists.
This isn't about whether you like the movies being made in Hollywood or not. It's about protecting intellectual property.
I am particularly concerned about the proposed rules that require that search engines block access to certain sites. There are some First Amendment and policy issues surrounding this. Thankfully, due to the protests, Congress has narrowed the original legislation. I suspect more changes. But all is not bliss with this bill -- not even close.
It has nothing to do with stealing. Why not call it "murder?"
The value of anything is what someone else is willing to pay for it. If a consumer can get something for free, they will not be willing to pay for it if no one else does and if there is no kudos or recognition for doing the honorable thing.
Moreover, if your victims dare to protest, you insult them, threaten them, call them ugly names, shout to the world that they are no good.