WASHINGTON -- At a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday,
Democrats and Republicans joined together to voice support for
legislation that would criminalize much of the activity that occupies
the Internet. The bipartisan bill known as the Stop Online Piracy Act
would establish major new powers for corporations intent on corralling
copyrighted materials -- powers that would lead to big legal bills for
start-ups and Silicon Valley giants alike.
SOPA's Senate counterpart, the PROTECT IP Act, was already voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in September.
Both political parties -- flush with campaign contributions from
Hollywood studios and trial lawyers -- are eager to pass the
legislation. The Senate version, introduced in May, has broad support,
but has been held up by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). Without Wyden's hold,
the legislation looks certain to pass by a landslide. The House version,
introduced last month, was written by House Judiciary Chairman Lamar
Smith (R-Texas) and co-sponsored by ranking member John Conyers
(D-Mich.).
"The theft of American intellectual property costs the American
economy over $100 billion annually ... and thousands of American jobs,"
Smith declared at Wednesday's hearing.
"I am very pleased that this is a bipartisan bill, and I think that that's very important," Conyers added.
But generating all this enthusiasm is legislation that would shift the balance of power over the Internet.
Under current practice, copyright owners such as TV networks and
Hollywood studios reach out to websites to request that pirated videos
be taken down. Under the new regime, they could ask banks, Internet
service providers and domain name registrars to stop doing business with
websites that they believed were devoted to piracy. They could, for
instance, go straight to YouTube's domain registration company and
demand that the entire YouTube website be taken down. And if the
registrar resisted, the copyright owners would have the legal ability to
take the registrar to court.
That
move might not be very threatening to major players, like YouTube, with
expensive legal teams, but life on the Internet could be made very
difficult for smaller companies and start-ups. For lawyers who litigate
intellectual property issues, the bill is a godsend, guaranteeing a
flood of work, no matter which party wins the case.
The bill would also alter the relationship between the government and
the basic architecture of the Internet, allowing the Department of
Justice, acting on behalf of aggrieved copyright holders, to perform
domain name system filtering -- essentially, blocking entire websites in
the name of preventing piracy.
Web experts contend this tinkering could threaten the very
functionality of the Internet and make it difficult to implement key
cybersecurity measures that have been in the works for years. In May,
five web security experts published a 17-page analysis of the legislation's implications for online security,
concluding, "The PROTECT IP Act would weaken this important effort to
improve Internet security. It would enshrine and institutionalize the
very network manipulation that [tech experts] must fight in order to
prevent cyberattacks and other malevolent behavior on the global
Internet, thereby exposing networks and users to increased security and
privacy risks."
Since then, the House version of the legislation has grown still more
aggressive. The Senate bill proposes to give copyright owners those new
powers to sue over foreign websites only. It's the House bill that
extends the draconian measures to domestic websites as well. It also
sweeps in a separate bill, sponsored in the Senate by Amy Klobuchar
(D-Minn.), to make it a felony to stream videos or mp3s of copyrighted
films and songs.
A host of libertarians, Tea Party members, radical progressives, and mainstream conservatives have spoken out against the bills.
But good government advocates cannot win legislative battles against
major corporations without their own corporate support. AOL Inc., eBay
Inc., Facebook, Yahoo Inc. and Twitter all have opposed the bill. The
single largest company attempting to stand in its way is Google -- because its business model depends entirely on an open Internet.
At Wednesday's hearing, Google was the only corporation to speak
against the legislation on a panel stacked with representatives of
Hollywood studios, pharmaceutical giants and intellectual property hawks
from the Obama administration. Unfortunately, Google is one of the
worst allies to have in Washington today, as it faces an antitrust
investigation as well as government scrutiny for directing consumers to
unregulated online pharmacies. Google paid a $500 million penalty in
August to settle complaints involving illicit online pharmacies from the
Department of Justice and the Food and Drug Administration.
Members of both parties piled on Wednesday, banging away at Google
for the pharmacy scandal -- a public declaration that the company's
lobbying might not help to moderate SOPA.
