First Hearing for Stop Online Piracy Act

With a title like Stop Online Piracy Act, one would think people would be flocking to support the bill, but just the opposite is true. Today the House Judiciary Committee held its first hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261), otherwise known as “SOPA.”

Those that oppose the bill do offer credit to the members of the House Judiciary Committee to try to combat rogue foreign web sites. The goal of H.R. 3261 is to allow “the Attorney General to seek injunctions against foreign websites that steal and sell American innovations and products. The bill increases criminal penalties for individuals who traffic in counterfeit medicine and military goods, which put innocent civilians and American soldiers at risk. And it improves  coordination between IP enforcement agencies in the U.S.”

According to Center for Democracy & Technology’s (CDT) Senior Policy Counsel David Sohn,”Today’s hearing can’t and won’t even scratch the surface of the far-reaching problems posed by this legislation. This is a bill that would eviscerate the predictable legal environment created by the DMCA, subjecting online innovators to a new era of uncertainty and risk. It would force pervasive scrutiny and surveillance of Internet users’ online activities.  It would chill the growth of social media and conscript every online platform into a new role as content police. And it would lay the groundwork for an increasingly balkanized Internet, directly undercutting U.S. foreign policy advocacy in support of a single, global, open network.”

As we have seen with other attempts to craft legislation to address the Internet, the bill’s definitions and remedies are too broad and too vague. Says CEI Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia, ” Legitimate, user-driven websites often contain both lawful and unlawful content. Cutting off these sites’ economic lifeblood should be a last resort. It would be a grave mistake to grant broad discretion to the Justice Department and rights holders and assume that they, along with federal judges, will interpret SOPA’s unclear provisions as narrowly as is necessary to protect Internet entrepreneurship.”

Cybersecurity legislation has to strike a delicate balance, and the current SOPA in most experts opinion is needing a lot more work and discussion.

“Fighting large-scale infringement is an important goal. But SOPA would do far too much collateral damage to innovation, online expression, and privacy. Congress needs to listen to the full range of stakeholders and seriously rethink how it should address the problem of online infringement.”

For a resource list from the CDT of the growing opposition to SOPA, see : http://www.cdt.org/report/growing-chorus-opposition-stop-online-piracy-act