At a recent hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), companies and organizations that oppose the bill were branded as “pro-pirates.” The legislation's supporters in the House of Representatives, along with proponents of a similar bill in the Senate known as the PROTECT IP Act, are working hard to pass them and get some version of them signed into law before the end of the year. Among opponents, there is still hope that the loud outcry from tech giants, civil rights groups and public outcry against the bill could keep them from sailing through.
SOPA was introduced in the House of Representatives in October with the strong support of the Chamber of Commerce and film and music industry companies. The bill claims it would stop piracy online, but civic activists and law professionals have stressed it would give corporations unprecedented power to censor almost any site on the internet, thereby stifling free speech online. (Read the bill in a PDF form or an Infographic about the bill)
Here are several of reasons why people call it “draconian” law:
Intense Opposition from Tech Companies and Activists
During the past few weeks, internet giants, venture capitalists and civil rights advocacy groups have denounced the bill and they have gained momentum against SOPA and PROTECT IP. Several large technology companies teamed up and bought a full-page advertisement against SOPA in The New York Times. US-based advocates for Internet openness and privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called out to users to take action to help stop the bill with their allies. The Chamber of Commerce, however, insisted in its webpage that the SOPA is not a “blacklist bill.”
Reflecting web users’ attention to the bills, four of the top 10 searches were related to the bill at one point during the hearing day. Arstechnica lamented on the low level of debate at the hearing, while ReadWrite Web pointed out that Hollywood is outspending Silicon Valley in terms of lobbying for the bill by an enormous margin. A ‘Protect the Internet’ Tumblr page was set up to help tens of thousands of users bombard their representatives with phone calls. For an explanation of why SOPA's sister bill in the Senate, the PROTECT IP Act is also bad for free expression on the Internet, see PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.
Remaining Questions
On various forums and community sites, net users have heated debates. Numerous comments were made under the topic, “SOPA would be the end of entertainment industry as we know it…” in one pubic forum. Net user Bammer warned the danger of criminalizing the unchangeable consumer habit:
This is a problem that should be solved by the content-creators through technology, not through the law.
Net user Chiaroscuro wrote the SOPA would cause disruption even in the market for free content.
What's worse is, SOPA is likely to make it so risky to download free content too, because as soon as the rights are bought up you're now going to be on the hook for owning copyrighted material, and they will bring dozens of cases against people, regardless of the former status of the works involved.
Net user Nekojin speculated people would find ways to circumvent the regulations:
With flash drives becoming so cheap, I honestly keep expecting to see people selling flash drives “pre-loaded” with popular software at swap meets, in the same way they used to sell floppies, then bootleg carts, then CDs and DVDs.
The opposition is unlikely to prevent SOPA from being brought to a committee vote in the US House of Representatives. The activist group Demand Progress has gathered over 100,000 names of opponents of the bills, which they are asking Senator Ron Wyden, who stands with the opponents, to read out as part of a filibuster to prevent a vote on the Senate version, the PROTECT IP Act.