News
Online piracy bill would ‘criminalize’ the Internet
Posted on December 18th, 2011
The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, is new legislation in the U.S Congress which would criminalize linking and the fundamental structure of the Internet itself. By criminalizing links these bills force sites to take content off the Internet.
SOPA would also punish firms, including search engines, that link to foreign websites dedicated to online piracy. As written, the bill would effectively break the Internet. Although the bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods, SOPA has caused controversy in its possible unintended consequences regarding content sharing and self-policing.
One of the unintended consequences is new law pertaining to VPNs, or virtual private networks, which should be of interest to industry leaders across industries like energy, construction, supply chain and hospitality. Many top companies use VPNs, and this law could change how a company, or a vpn provider, would have to do business. The bill is essentially whacking away at the DNS system and that’s a mistake.
It’s a bad way to go about solving the problem.
Under SOPA, it wouldn’t be just websites who would be held accountable for copyright infringement, but developers, distributors, and “enablers” as well. So, a website that hosts copyrighted content is not only in jeopardy, but also those who share copyrighted content without permission and those who try to help those who share or host copyrighted content without permission. This extension of violators means that a VPN could be considered an enabler of copyright infringement.
SOPA also boosts power to copyright holders to punish those they consider in violation of the copyright. Currently, if someone or a website is accused of copyright infringement, they are given a chance to fix the problem before action is taken. Not so under SOPA. If a copyright holder finds someone in violation, that person or company can automatically take action, which includes stopping online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the infringing website; barring search engines from linking to such sites and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. All that can happen from just one infringing link or one copyright violation.The goal of SOPA is reasonable, the mechanism is terrible. They should not criminalize the intermediaries. They should go after the violators of the law.
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