The “Stop Online Piracy Act” (full text) could pass this week.

Read more about it here and here and here and everywhere else.

Wikipedia has a good summary.

If you only read one thing, read this.

This bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a felony. It also gives immunity to ISPs who take action against websites for suspected infringement.

This is a bill written by the entertainment industry in yet another 100% guaranteed to fail attempt to stop people from pirating their generally shitty content. They are so profoundly lazy and unpatriotic that they would rather cripple the internet, potentially subjecting countless people to censorship or prosecution or monitoring by the government, than make any real attempt to innovate their business model to deal with the new reality.

Fuck them. Call Congress. Fight for the Future will connect you.

Content owners don’t have to give it away and they don’t have to look the other way when people steal their content, but this is clearly not the right approach. Don’t criminalize your customers. Figure out how to give them what they want and still make a profit. It will not be the same as it used to be. Deal with it.

The DMCA already provides copyright-holders simple ways to go after people who publish their material. They can send a takedown notice, and the content must be removed or the notice contested. Under SOPA, instead of just going after the infringing content, these companies can go after the revenue stream for the entire site. THIS IS BAD.

Anthony Hecht is The Stranger's Chief Technology Officer. He owns no monkeys.

6 replies on “Stop SOPA, Call Congress”

  1. There are some sites that offer links to people streaming live NFL games (lifted from foreign tv signals) for example using torrents.

    SOPA is set up to deal with that.

    However, currently, I no of no way to get streaming NFL games legally — you can only get them through cable.

    So, I see both sides.

  2. @1 – SOPA is intended to target foreign sites that aren’t subject to US laws, that’s true, but it creates very broad powers that will inevitably (probably immediately) be used to target domestic sites as well. It doesn’t matter what scenario the lawmakers had in mind when it was drafted, all that matters is what the law actually says, and this one goes far beyond the foreign infringers thing.

  4. EFF is all over this, as usual. There’s plenty to read at http://www.eff.org.

    I’m not advocating for SOPA, but I’ve found the DMCA’s takedown procedure to be largely ineffective against foreign infringers. And it’s also worth noting that there are already criminal penalties for willful copyright infringement. 17 U.S.C. § 506; 18 U.S.C. § 2319. SOPA would amend these statutes.

  5. @2 His thinking stops at his own immediate desires. You won’t have much impact on him.

    Of course, I’d like to see America two months from now if this passes. It will break the internet here, and lead pretty much everyone into a screaming conniption fit. The protests would dwarf OWS. If ever there would be an inspiration for a nation-wide strike, this would be it.

  6. How can you shut down a foreign website? My understanding is that all this bill will do is is kill the DNS for the domain name – so what? There is already a widely used browser plug-in that resolves DNS issues for sites like the Pirate Bay.

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