SOPA and PIPA Bills Go to Washington, Public Protest

On October 26, 2011, Texas's 21st congressional district representative Lamar Smith, along with a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors, introduced the House Bill 3261, called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), referred to in the Senate as the Protect Internet Property Act (PIPA). Soon after its introduction, the bill caused many unexpected ripples, with a phenomenal reaction from the public.

January 18 marked the climax of the opposition to this bill. Wikipedia, among other websites, disconnected its site altogether, leaving a dark page with the words "Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge." Though many did not take such a drastic measure as Wikipedia, 75,000 websites participated in the protest in one way or another, according to CBS. A black censor bar was put over the usual "Google doodle" on the main search page with a plea to contact local representatives. Google reported to the Los Angeles Times to have collected over 4.5 million signatures against SOPA, while nearly 350,000 e-mails were sent to representatives through websites such as SopaStrike.com and AmericaCensorship.org. Twitter, one of the fastest growing social networks with over 250 million tweets daily, reported 2.4 million SOPA-related tweets between 12 a.m.  and 4 p.m. EST January 18.

The drastic uproar halted the bill's progress and caused its authors to seriously reconsider it. But why the uproar? What triggered responses and opposition from mega Internet players such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and many others if the intent of the bill is, as described in its title, "to promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes?"

Stripped to its essentials the bill's purpose is to protect copyrighted material in order to promote legal and fair trade. It aimed to accomplish its goal by expanding the ability of U.S. law enforcement to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property, through cracking down on Internet pirates, censoring "rogue" websites and blocking illegal activities online. The general public became concerned by what defined "rogue" websites and illegal activities.

SEC. 102. states, "action by attorney general to protect U.S. customers and prevent U.S. support of foreign infringing sites, For purposes of this section, a foreign Internet site or portion thereof is a ‘foreign infringing site' if -- (1) the Internet site or portion thereof is a U.S.-directed site and is used by users in the United States; (2) the owner or operator of such Internet site is committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations punishable under section 2318." What this means is that the website in question does not have to commit any violation of copyright laws for the government to have the right to censor it; it merely has to facilitate the commission of criminal violations. This means, any site with a comment box or picture upload form is potentially infringing. If the website is found to be in violation, a court order will follow, ordering the site to be blocked by the Internet service provider, search engines will be forced to remove all reference to the offending sites, ad providers will no longer be allowed to service the site and payment providers, e.g. Paypal, will be required to end its service to the site. This allows the Attorney General the right to fully block any website outside of the government's jurisdiction.

SEC. 103. states "market-based system to protect U.S. customers and prevent U.S. funding of sites dedicated to theft of U.S. property." It is followed by a description of what this section implies that being, "An Internet site is dedicated to theft of U.S. property' if [a portion of the site is U.S.-directed] and is used by users within the United States and is primarily designed or operated for the purpose of offering services in a manner that enables or facilitates [copyright violation or circumvention of copyright protection measures]." This does not imply the site has to be created for evil purpose so long as it has the potential to facilitate such purposes, which like Section 102 would include any site with a comment box; this means YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Gmail, Dropbox, and millions of other sites would be "Internet sites…dedicated to theft of U.S. property."

David Drummond, the Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer of Google said, "These bills wouldn't get rid of pirate sites. Pirate sites would just change their addresses in order to continue their criminal activities." What this bill would have the power to do, however, is to criminalize Internet users that do not deem it necessary to screen every bit of content that is posted on their site. As Chris Heald, a writer for Mashable.com, said, "If you have a comment box, and you state that you aren't guilty under that definition [Internet site dedicated to theft of U.S. property], you just committed perjury."

A White House statement released on its website stated its position as follows: "While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet." Following what became the largest Internet protests in history, SOPA and PIPA were postponed indefinitely as of January 20.