What is SOPA?
SOPA is what the big media corporations have always wanted; and it is what they have been working towards for more than a decade. SOPA makes someone else take responsiblity for enforcing copyright owners rights; and forces smaller organisations who do not have the resources to respond to accusations of copyright infringement; into a policing roll where they have no choice but to comply with the directives of the larger media orgainisations.
It sounds like a hair brained computer geek conspiracy theory doesn’t it.
But it isn’t …
It’s SOPA and Protect IP - the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Bills currently before US Parliamentary Congress; and it is due to be passed into legislation and become law very soon.
The main problem with SOPA and the Protect IP Bills is that they don’t actually stop online piracy. The bills only server to make ISP’s liable for copyright infringements; or police the internet usage of their customers. It is akin to using dynamite to dig holes to plant seeds. And the policy is
If you are a US Citizen or living the US, tell US Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa
“PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”
The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.“
PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”
The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.
The SOPA Bill is the Ultimate Internet Filter; designed to make Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) responsible for what Internet Consumers are able to view and access. It will put in place the tools required to implement internet filtering at the whim of Corporations and Governments; with little practical right of reply to accusations.
The US SOPA and Protect IP Bill’s place the owneus of law enforcement on those people who do not have the resources to implement or defend themselves against it’s directives. The SOPA and IP Bilss enable someone to simply make an accusation, in some cases an unfounded accusation, and compliance by the internet service providor is automatically required or they can be held financiall and legally liable for facilitating access to the content mentioned in the accusation. It is extreemly expensive and difficult to police and
The US SOPA and Protect IP Bill’s allow copyright owners to accuse others of infringement or facilitating infringement and make them liable prior to any valid claim being presented to substanciate the accusation.
The United States Government wants to pass a bill that will enable US Media Corporations the power to shut down any internet site that is accused of hosting or copyrighted material. The Bill will provide powers to the Untied States Government and the United States Entertainment Industry that extend far far beyond the enforcement of simple copyright law. The bill will enable the shut down of ANY website that is ACCUSED of violations of the copyright act; regardless of whether the accusation is correct or not. The Bill places the ownus on internet service providers to police the material that internet uses can access, regardless of the actual content that is viewed.
Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and its sister bill in the Senate, the Protect IP Act, or PIPA. Both bills attempt to deal with online sites that traffic in illegally copied content, but at extreme cost of remaking the architecture of the internet itself. That’s a high price to pay, especially since neither bill will actually curb real piracy: SOPA and PIPA are the effective equivalent of blowing up every road, bridge, and tunnel in New York to keep people from getting to one bootleg stand in Union Square — but leaving the stand itself alone.
The below excert is from Yahoo Answeres and was voted the most correct. It states:
In October, the “Stop Online Piracy Act”, was introduce by House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas). S.O.P.A. was submitted in addition to the Senate’s “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act”, (P.R.O.T.E.C.T. IP). The film industry , pharmaceutical industry are supporting the bill, among other groups.
Opponents state that the bill would give the government too much authority over websites and the capacity to close them down simply by hosting copyrighted material. The restriction of free speech/expression is a concern for many which include Google, right wing political parties, Twitter, Facebook, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, E-bay, etc.. Opponents insist that legislation should specifically target foreign “rogue” websites that violate US copyright laws.
Thus:
The United States Government is about to pass a bill that will provide US Corporations and Government with the power to demand Internet Service Providers shut down or remove access to any internet site that is accused of hosting or providing access to copyrighted material.
The concern over SOPA isn’t actually removing access to illegal copyrighted material. United States companies apparently lose approximately 135 billion US annually to online piracy. It is an issue that needs to be addressed in some manner. The primary concern with SOPA is that the internet filtering put in place to prevent access to illegal media content will eventually be extended to include material that is deemed politically divergent from current Governmental objectives … ie: those people that don’t agree with a Governments political or economic policy.
Why are the U.S. SOPA and Protect IP Bill’s relevant to Australia?
Australia signed an agreement with the United States called the Australia / US Free Trade Agreement. It incorporates directives that require Internet Service Providers and Content and Web Hosts to automatic comply with Judgements passed by the U.S. Justice Department requires ISP’s and Australian Content Hosts to enforce those judgements automaticlly within Australian Jurisdictions.
That means that the Australian Law Enforcement sector is bound by law to enforce US DMCA (Digital Mellinium Copyright Act) Legislation in Australia. This, by extension of the IP Act, holds Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) liable to enforce the provisions of the US SOPA and Protect IP Bills, or face prosocution by U.S. Media Corporations for not doing so.
Why are all these shenanigans important in Australia?
This is important to Australian Internet Users because we recently defeated an attempt to by Government to implement an Internet Filter in Australia. If the U.S. SOPA Bill is pass, then the Austrailian Govenrment will be required by law subject to the Australian / US Free Trade Agreement signed by the John Howard Liberal Government, to implement the very measures the Australian People voted AGAINST in the 2009 Federal Election. That’s right. It will be a requirement as a result of our international contractual obligations with the United States to implement the tools to filter internet sites according to U.S. Judicial directives and judgements. Australia will recive an Internet Filter in accordance with directives from the U.S. Department of Justice via compliance with the U.S. DMCA.
http://www.ilaw.com.au/public/ftaarticle.html
From WikiPedia: Although the United States White House is reported as stating On January 14, 2012: “Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small.” and “We must avoid creating new cyber-security risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet”[8][9][10] puts in place the tools required to moderate peoples access to certain online content and resources.
SOPA is the beginning of the censorship of the internet on a global scale. The tools legislation required to implement SOPA will provide the means to censor any material published on the Internet. Think Nazi Gemany in the Second World War, Iran, George Orwells novel 1984 and the current situation in North Korea. That is what happens when public discussion is censored. The Inernet is a communication medium. SOPA will eventually result in censorship of everyone.
UPDATE
The block IP internet filter provision of SOPA has been removed in order to facilitate its progress through the US Senate.
Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
Peter Hallam
