E-PARASITE Bill: 'The End Of The Internet As We Know It'

from the this-gets-worse-and-worse dept

We already wrote about the ridiculously bad E-PARASITE bill (the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act), but having now had a chance go to through the full bill a few more times, there are even more bad things in there that I missed on the first read-through. Now I understand why Rep. Zoe Lofgren's first reaction to this bill was to say that "this would mean the end of the Internet as we know it."

She's right. The more you look at the details, the more you realize how this bill is an astounding wishlist of everything that the legacy entertainment gatekeepers have wanted in the law for decades and were unable to get. It effectively dismantles the DMCA's safe harbors, what's left of the Sony Betamax decision, puts massive liability on tons of US-based websites, and will lead to widespread blocking of websites and services based solely on accusations of some infringement. It's hard to overstate just how bad this bill is.

And, while its mechanisms are similar to the way China's Great Firewall works (by putting liability on service providers if they fail to block sites), it's even worse than that. At least the Chinese Great Firewall is determined by government talking points. The E-PARASITE bill allows for a massive private right of action that effectively lets any copyright holder take action against sites they don't like. (Oh, and the bill is being called both the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and E-PARASITE (which covers the PROTECT IP-like parts of the bill, SOPA refers to the larger bill that also includes the felony streaming part).

Some of the key problems with the bill, beyond what we discussed yesterday:

• While supporters of the bill still continue to insist that this bill is only targeted at foreign infringers, that's false. Part of the bill focuses on foreign infringers -- the part that allows the Attorney General to kill websites. But the private right of action section has no such restriction. Instead, it allows copyright holders to effectively kill any site they'd like. You have to dig down into the details to see this, but let's pull out the key sections to see. The act, in section 104, defines sites that are "dedicated to the theft of US property" as including any "US-directed site" that:

  is taking, or has taken deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation of section 501 or 1201 of title 17, United States Code;

  If that sounds massively confusing, you're right. But what it's saying, in the most twisted language possible, is that if it's probable that a site used in the US (note no restriction to just foreign sites here) can be used to infringe, and that site fails to take some sort of action against the "high probability" that the site can be used to infringe, then it can be declared dedicated to the theft of US property. This turns both the DMCA safe harbors and the Supreme Court's Sony Betamax ruling completely on their heads. In effect, it appears to be saying that if you choose not to self-police your site for infringement -- i.e., putting up filters, or proactively monitoring content for infringement -- you can be declared in violation of the law... at which point a court can order all ad networks and payment processors to automatically stop doing business with you.
  
  Think of all the sites this could effect. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, SoundCloud, Ebay, Flickr, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Wordpress -- basically any site that has any user-generated content. If they don't proactively filter or monitor their content, they could be at risk of a claim that they took "deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability" that their sites could be used to infringe... and thus they could be subject to an action by a private party that strips them of both ad revenue and the ability to process any payments.
  
  Remember how Monster Cable -- massive supporters of this bill -- declared both Craigslist and eBay as being dedicated to infringement? Under this bill, a company like Monster could take action against those sites, putting a tremendous burden on them.



• The definitional problems don't stop there. Separate from the ridiculous definition above, this act would also declare a site "dedicated to theft of U.S. property," if it is "primarily designed" in a way that "engages in, enables, or facilitates" a violation of copyright law. Those last two points are ridiculously broad. "Enables" infringement? "Facilitates"? That's practically the entire internet. The primary design of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. all "enable" or "facilitate" infringement.



• While some reporters claimed that the "private right of action" was taken out of this bill, or even "softened," nothing could be further from the truth. The details show that the private right of action is significantly worse in this bill. What changed is that in PROTECT IP, private copyright holders could go to court to force payment processors and ad networks to stop dealing with sites they accuse. Under E-PARASITE, before they go to court, they first have to send a notification, very similar to a DMCA takedown notice. But, of course, as we've seen with the DMCA, while it's "voluntary" to comply, if you don't comply you lose safe harbors -- so nearly everyone complies. That means this private right of action almost certainly will lead to ad networks and payment processors cutting off any site they receive a notification on -- no matter how legitimate. And, while the bill does allow for a counternotification process, unlike the DMCA, there is no requirement that the payment processors and ad networks restore service to anyone who files a counternotice, after a given period of time (absent a lawsuit). In other words: a copyright holder could issue a bogus claim that a site is dedicated to infringement, and the payment processor and ad network could pull the plug on the site... and even if a counternotice is filed, those services have no obligation to bring back service.
  
  Again, using our Monster Cable example, it could force all payment processors to no longer allow payments on Craigslist or eBay, and even if those sites filed counternotices, the service providers would be under no obligation to turn those things back on. And just think of the massive, irreparable harm if legitimate sites lose both the ability to accept payments and to have ads for just a few days? And while there is liability for those who file false notices, as we've seen with the DMCA, such provisions are rarely, if ever, enforced -- and generally are interpreted to only apply in cases of extreme misrepresentation.



• As noted above, the private right of action establishes an astoundingly broad new standard for what's considered infringing. Beyond user-generated content sites, pretty much any cloud computing service can be deemed "dedicated to the theft of US property," if they choose not to filter and monitor the content being sent through the cloud. Any of the online locker services are in serious trouble if this bill becomes law. Amazon's and Google's music services would have to monitor your uploads and try to stop infringement to avoid liability. Box.net and Dropbox would likely have to monitor what files you're storing to avoid liability. It's honestly that insane.



• Supporters of the bill, beyond falsely claiming that it's just focused on foreign sites, are also claiming that this bill does not target such sites. An aide to the House Judiciary Committee, who supports the bill, claimed, "Sites that host user content -- like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter -- have nothing to be concerned about under this bill." But that's demonstrably false. Perhaps this aide is unaware that Viacom is still in the middle of a $1 billion lawsuit claiming that YouTube was dedicated to infringement. Under the definitions in this bill, YouTube would absolutely have been liable, and likely would have been shut down years ago. In fact, Viacom never would have had to sue. It would have just made use of the notification process, and kept any and all advertising and payment processing from the site... and voila, dead YouTube, without the benefit of a judge reviewing the case (and, need we remind the House Judiciary Committee, that so far the judge has sided with YouTube?).



• The bill would be red meat to any foreign government that censors its internet. China, Iran, Saudi Arabia are going to love this. The mechanisms for censorship are quite similar. Under E-PARASITE, service providers have to proactively block to prevent liability. China's Great Firewall works the exact same way: by threatening ISPs with liability if they don't block content harmful to Chinese citizens. Replace harmful to Chinese citizens with "a high probability" of being used for infringement... and you've got E-PARASITE.



• Another change between this bill and the Senate's PROTECT IP is that this bill calls out "search engines" more directly, rather than "information location tools," as in the Senate bill. While that may seem to be narrower, the definition of a search engine is ridiculously broad (of course).

  The term ‘‘Internet search engine’’ means a service made available via the Internet that searches, crawls, categorizes, or indexes information or Web sites available elsewhere on the Internet and on the basis of a user query or selection that consists of terms, concepts, categories, questions, or other data returns to the user a means, such as a hyperlinked list of Uniform Resource Locators, of locating, viewing, or downloading such information or data available on the Internet relating to such query or selection.

  Under this definition, Techdirt could be declared a search engine under this law. After all, we take "questions" and queries from readers, and often return stories that link elsewhere on the internet. Yikes!



• As highlighted above, there are all sorts of definitional problems with the bill. And you can tell how insane things get with definitions when the authors of this bill even go so far as to define the word "including." I'm not joking:

  INCLUDING.--The term "including" means including, but not limited to.

  This is the kind of mess we're dealing with.

About the only good thing is that the insanity and out-and-out censorship and hindering of the internet that this bill provides appears to have scared off co-sponsors of the bill. Despite a massive lobbying effort from the US Chamber of Commerce and the MPAA (among some others), Rep. Lamar Smith was only able to wrangle up eleven co-sponsors. For a bill of this nature, this is woefully low. Even more surprising is that they couldn't even get Rep. Mel Watt to co-sponsor the bill, despite being the ranking Democrat on the IP subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. Instead, they had to settle for Howard Berman, the Representative from Disney. In other words, it appears that many Congressional reps have heard the massive concerns of the public, technologists, entrepreneurs, investors, artists, human rights activists, and many others who are quite afraid of how this bill will break the internet. And that means that it can only help to continue to speak out and reach out to your representatives about how awful this bill is, and how much harm it would do.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, dmca, e-parasites, internet, liability, protect ip, sopa

New Video On How PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet

from the everything-is-a-remix... dept

The folks behind Fight For the Future have teamed up with Kirby Ferguson, who created the excellent everything is a remix series, have teamed up to put together a video about the problems with PROTECT IP/E-PARASITES. It's worth a watch... and passing it on to others:

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, e-parasites, internet, protect ip

PROTECT IP Renamed E-PARASITES Act; Would Create The Great Firewall Of America

from the censorship-galore dept

As was unfortunately expected, the House version of PROTECT IP has been released (embedded below) and it's ridiculously bad. Despite promises from Rep. Goodlatte, there has been no serious effort to fix the problems of the Senate bill, and it's clear that absolutely no attention was paid to the significant concerns of the tech industry, legal professionals, investors and entrepreneurs. There are no two ways around this simple fact: this is an attempt to build the Great Firewall of America. The bill would require service providers to block access to certain websites, very much contrary to US official positions on censorship and internet freedom, and almost certainly in violation of the First Amendment.

Oh, and because PROTECT IP wasn't enough of a misleading and idiotic name, the House has upped the ante. The new bill is called: "the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act" or the E-PARASITE Act (though, they also say you can call it the "Stopping Online Piracy Act").

The bill is big, and has a bunch of problems. First off, it massively expands the sites that will be covered by the law. The Senate version at least tried to limit the targets of the law (but not the impact of the law) on sites that were "dedicated to infringing activities" with no other significant purposes (already ridiculously broad), the new one just targets "foreign infringing sites" and "has only limited purpose or use other than" infringement. They're also including an "inducement" claim not found elsewhere in US regulations -- and which greatly expands what is meant by inducement. The bill effectively takes what the entertainment industry wanted the Supreme Court to say in Grokster (which it did not say) and puts it into US law. In other words, any foreign site declared by the Attorney General to be "inducing" infringement, with a very broad definition of inducing, can now be censored by the US. With no adversarial hearing. Hello, Great Firewall of America.

And while defenders of this bill will insist it's only designed to target truly infringing sites, let's just recall a small list of sites and technologies the industry has insisted were all about infringement in the past: the player piano, the radio, the television, the photocopier, the phonograph, cable tv, the vcr, the mp3 player, the DVR, online video hosting sites like YouTube and more. All of these things turned out to be huge boons for the industry. And yet, with a law like this in place, the old industry gets to kill off technologies they don't understand. Scary stuff.

And it's not just foreign sites impacted by this law (despite what supporters would have you believe). It appears to expand who would have to take on the entire burdens of enforcing this blacklist -- broadly naming "service providers" as defined in the DMCA. That's significant, because a big part of this bill is to undermine and strip away the safe harbors of the DMCA. The DMCA set up an important balance that gave online service providers freedom from liability if they pulled down content upon notification. This new bill provides a massive and ridiculous burden: allowing the Attorney General to create an internet blacklist that all service providers will need to block access to:

A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.

On top of that, the bill says any attempt to get around such blocks can lead to liability. Would this put liability on things like MAFIAAfire? It sure sounds like it:

To ensure compliance with orders issued pursuant to this section, the Attorney General may bring an action for injunctive relief....

against any entity that knowingly and willfully provides or offers to provide a product or service designed or marketed for the circumvention or bypassing of measures described in paragraph (2) and taken in response to a court order issued pursuant to this subsection, to enjoin such entity from interfering with the order by continuing to provide or offer to provide such product or service.

While the text of the bill insists that nothing in it takes away the DMCA's safe harbors, once again this is a claim without the facts to back it up. A large part of the bill is an effective attempt to strip away the DMCA's safe harbors.

The only extraordinarily minor change against the interests of the entertainment industry is that the bill ever so slightly changes the "private right to action," which allows individual copyright holders to take action under this bill. This was a big problem in the old bill, and the only requirement here is that prior to making use of this private right to action, copyright holders have to provide "notice" to payment processors and ad providers. But then those service providers are expected to take action anyway, or face liability. So all this really does is take the court out of the process, and make it even easier for copyright holders to effectively kill off sites they don't like.

Think about this for a second: think how many bogus DMCA takedown notices are sent by copyright holders to take down content they don't like. With this new bill, should it become law, those same copyright holders will be able to cut off advertising and payment processing to such sites. Without court review.

And... because this bill wasn't already ridiculously bad enough, it also lumps in a House version of the felony streaming bill that will make huge swaths of Americans felons for streaming content online.

This bill is an abomination and an insult to the Constitution. It's unfortunate that Rep. Lamar Smith thinks this is worth introducing in its current state, and anyone who signs on to co-sponsor is effectively supporting mass censorship of the internet in the US, as well as the criminalization of huge numbers of Americans -- while putting a huge burden on the one part of the economy that actually is creating jobs. All because a few legacy companies in the entertainment industry refuse to adapt.

Filed Under: bob goodlatte, censorship, copyright, e-parasites, great firewall of america, lamar smith, prior restraint, protect ip

House Trying To Rush Through Its Version Of PROTECT IP; Tech Industry Asks Why?

from the slow-down dept

For a few months now we've been hearing that the version of the PROTECT IP Act from the House of Representatives was going to be released "in a couple weeks." And yet, every time it got delayed -- often because new and unexpected opposition suddenly showed up. The supporters of PROTECT IP, such as the MPAA and the US Chamber of Commerce, had always figured that this was going to be the an extremely easy bill to pass, but the very vocal opposition caught them a bit by surprise. During this time, we kept hearing from various House members working on the bill, that they would be listening to all of the concerns. During a visit to Silicon Valley last month, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who is helping to push PROTECT IP through the House, insisted that he'd heard the concerns from some in the tech community and that the bill would be noticeably different than the Senate version.

However, a variety of groups representing the tech industry -- including CCIA, NetCoalition and CEA -- pointed out a few weeks ago that they had not been consulted at all. This was problematic, since it was the entertainment industry driving PROTECT IP almost entirely, with almost no recognition of the serious problems it would cause for innovation and job growth. Just last Friday, members of the House working on PROTECT IP finally agreed to meet with these groups representing the tech industry, to hear their concerns. But rather than listening to those concerns and working together to fix the myriad problems with the bill, the latest report is that these Reps are about to release the bill they had been working on anyway, which retains basically all of the problems of the Senate bill... and that they're then planning an accelerated push to get it approved.

This is pretty disturbing. It suggests that even after they've been shown how this bill is a jobs-destroying, innovation-hindering, internet-breaking bill, they're going to rush it through anyway, without even listening to ideas on how to fix the bill. What a legacy these representatives must want.

As noted below, CCIA, NetCoalition and CEA have all asked members of the House of Representatives to slow down and let them actually be a part of the process. Let the tech industry be heard, and make sure that the problems with PROTECT IP aren't put into law, where those who support it will end up regretting it. Hopefully some folks in the House are willing to listen.

Filed Under: copyright, house of representatives, protect ip

CreativeAmerica: When Major Hollywood Studios Set Up Bogus 'Grassroots' Campaigns

from the don't-make-me-laugh dept

For a little over a week now, we've been receiving emails from various actors and musicians, telling us that they've been getting emails from various entertainment industry giants, telling them to join a new "grassroots" coalition called CreativeAmerica, whose main purpose is to advocate for passing the PROTECT IP censorship bill. The whole thing is clearly an astroturf campaign. It was registered via domains-by-proxy to hide who really bought the domain name. It highlights the video that was secretly created and owned by NBC Universal. It includes the totally false claim that "there's no such thing as a free movie."

If you dig into the website to figure out who's really behind it, it claims that it's a "grassroots organization," but fails to name a single creative individual who was behind putting the group together. Instead, it lists out the following companies and organizations who really put the site together (amusingly, they even block you from cutting and pasting this part, so I just retyped it -- meaning I circumvented their DRM... come at me, entertainment industry):

CBS Corporation, NBC Universal, the Screen Actors Guild, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Viacom, the Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Entertainment

Well, well. That's not a grassroots effort, folks. Now, the site also includes various unions, including the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild and IATSE (stage hands, etc.). But these are the old school, out of touch unions that who have done little to nothing to help their members adapt to the times (often doing the opposite). Do we see any of the actually creative folks who have embraced new technologies, new methods of distribution and new business models? Nope.

In the meantime, how can the website seriously claim that it's a grassroots effort when it has every single major Hollywood Studio behind it. Do they think that people are stupid? And should we remind people that these are the same studios who have all sorts of scammy tricks for "Hollywood accounting" to make sure even the most successful films are never seen as profitable, allowing them to avoid paying royalties to the actual creative folks.

Next, if you dig into the website, they have a "send a letter to your elected officials" thing. And the real evidence that it's not a real grassroots effort? Just like other faux grassroots efforts, those agreeing to send the letter have no option to edit the letter. When groups like Demand Progress and EFF let you send letters about PROTECT IP, they let you edit them to your liking -- trusting people to express themselves.

But, this "Creative America" apparently does not trust its own members to be creative. The letter is 100% locked down. You can only send their text. Honestly, if a group supposedly representing creators won't even let its own members express themselves freely, you know that it's not actually about protecting "creative" America.

This is not a grassroots effort. This is not about protecting "Creative America." This is about protecting a few megacorporations who are scared of new innovations, afraid of their dwindling monopoly rents, and trying to force the rest of the world to go back to the way things used to be.

Filed Under: astroturf, creative america, grassroots, hollywood, protect ip, studios
Companies: cbs, disney, fox, nbc universal, news corp., sony, viacom

The Connection Between Wikileaks Censorship And PROTECT IP: Censorship Through Cutting Off Service Providers

from the this-is-a-problem dept

The always thought-provoking Yochai Benkler, has a new paper, which, unfortunately (and pointlessly given Benkler's key points -- see update below), is locked up behind an MIT paywall. It explores the "new vector" for censorship found in both the attacks on Wikileaks and the PROTECT IP Act: censorship by forcing service providers to not do business with certain websites. As the abstract notes:

The WikiLeaks affair and proposed copyright bills introduced in the Senate are evidence of a new, extralegal path of attack aimed at preventing access and disrupting the payment systems and advertising of targeted sites. In this model, the attacker may be a government agency seeking to circumvent constitutional constraints on its power or a private company trying to enforce its interests beyond those afforded by procedural or substantive safeguards in the law. The vector of attack runs through the targeted site's critical service providers, disrupting technical services, such as Domain Name System service, cloud storage, or search capabilities; and business-related services, such as payment systems or advertising. The characteristics that make this type of attack new are that it targets an entire site, rather than aiming for removal or exclusion of specific offending materials; operates through denial of business and financial systems, in addition to targeting technical systems; and systematically harnesses extralegal pressure to achieve results beyond what law would provide or even permit.

As he notes, the law has historically focused on narrowly targeting any attack on speech by removing just the offending works. That's about the only way that such efforts could line up with the First Amendment (and some may reasonably even argue that point). Yet with government pressure from the likes of Senator Joe Lieberman and the new PROTECT IP Act, they now go for scorched earth policies in which a variety of service providers are suddenly pressured or required to no longer do business with the sites in question. Payment processors, "information location tools," ad networks and DNS providers are all told they have to cut off the offending site. While the site itself may not be touched, the goal is to effectively starve such sites out, by blocking most reasonable services that such a site needs to exist.

While putting tremendous compliance burdens on those third party service providers, it also goes against the very fundamentals of the First Amendment in that it doesn't merely seek to stop illegal speech, but takes a broad attack against entire sites. The risk here was clearly laid out earlier this year by over 100 law professors including many of the most respected in the field. The other side has only trotted out one lawyer on their side: Floyd Abrams (who, while famous as a First Amendment lawyer, also does a lot of work with Hollywood). Supporters of this massive threat to the First Amendment keep pretending that as long as they say "Floyd Abrams says it's fine!" that they can ignore everyone else raising serious and significant First Amendment concerns. The problem, of course, is that even Abrams' "support" is pretty weak.

In fact, if you read what Abrams actually says (pdf), at points he appears to come out against provisions of PROTECT IP as violating the First Amendment. Such as this:

Any bill providing injunctive relief should be limited to halting infringement and prohibiting future infringement online, not acting as a prior restraint on protected speech in the future. For example, if a site or domain is seized or blocked for infringement, operators must be free to post all their non-infringing content elsewhere, as well as on their original site, once the infringing content is removed.

Except, as we've seen with the Puerto 80 case, the government does not allow site operators to repost non-infringing content on their original site at all. Given that Benkler, in the paper above, compares PROTECT IP to the Wikileaks situation, it should equally come as no surprise that Abrams last year ran into some problems for misrepresenting Wikileaks' actions in trying to support censoring that site.

In the long run, I find it difficult to see how one can be intellectually honest and side with Abrams on these issues, as compared to Benkler, who makes a pretty compelling case that these kinds of attacks on free speech are something to be worried about.

Update: Benkler sends over a link to a non-paywalled version (pdf).

Filed Under: censorship, protect ip, service providers, third parties, yochai benkler

Wyden: PROTECT IP Act Is About Letting The Content Sector Attack The Innovation Sector

from the don't-let-that-happen dept

For years we've seen Silicon Valley basically ignore what's happening in Washington DC, and this has allowed certain other industries to take advantage of that policy. Hopefully, more people are beginning to realize that this is a problem and that speaking out and doing something may have an impact. Thankfully, some in Congress are helping to spread that word as well. Senator Wyden, who we've obviously mentioned a bunch due to his willingness to actually fight against attacks on free speech and innovation, showed up in San Francisco earlier this week to speak at the Web 2.0 conference, where he laid out the issues behind PROTECT IP clearly. You can see the full interview below: Around the five minute mark, he lays out the real issue behind the PROTECT IP Act, rather than the BS claims of those supporting it:

Let me go right to the question of the PROTECT IP Act... What this is, at its heart, is a question of whether one part of our economy -- the content sector -- can use government as a club to go after another part of our economy -- which is the innovation sector and everything that the internet represents.

My only issue with this characterization is that it's a little broad. For example, Techdirt is, very much, a part of "the content sector." But we're quite worried about PROTECT IP. I recognize that the Senator was using shorthand, but it's helpful to distinguish the legacy content sector from the next generation content players who don't want to rely on the government to prop up our business models. Either way, the overall point is absolutely true, and it's too bad that almost no one else in Congress is willing to address the reality of the situation. It has everything to do with a small group of companies -- who are unwilling to adapt -- trying to lash out at the industries they need most.

The PROTECT IP, when you really strip it down, is about whether or not you're going to have arbitrary seizure of domains. Whether or not you're going to have these vague standards for going in and seizing a domain. And then, and something I think is particularly ominous, ceding a significant portion of the authority over the internet to private companies, in effect, allowing them to bring private rights of action.... This legislation, in its current form, would take a significant toll on both freedom and innovation. And particularly now, when the digital space is one of the most exciting parts of an economy, where we've had some tough times.

The rest of the interview is equally interesting as well, touching on his efforts to make sure the 4th Amendment applies to the GPS info associated with your mobile phone, his efforts to press the Obama administration to reveal its secret interpretation of the PATRIOT Act, and a variety of other subjects that we talk about here all the time -- including the idea that people here need to pay attention to what our government is doing and speak out when lobbyists and politicians are trying to hold back civil liberties or innovation.

I know it feels like we mention Senator Wyden pretty frequently, but there are two reasons for that: (1) So much of the things he gets involved in are the issues that we normally discuss here and (2) he's one of the only people in Congress who seems to really be interested in these things. It's good to see him come to Silicon Valley and spread that message directly to folks here.

Filed Under: copyright, innovation, patriot act, protect ip, ron wyden

Michele Bachmann Comes Out Against PROTECT IP

from the interesting-developments dept

Whatever you might think of Rep. Michele Bachmann, she certainly gets attention, and as a bunch of folks have just sent over, she's just come out against PROTECT IP. In a letter responding to someone asking her opinion, she stated:

Thank you for taking the time to contact me with your opposition to S. 968, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property (PROTECT IP) Act. As your Representative for the 6th district of Minnesota, your views are very important to me and I appreciate hearing from you.

While I understand the importance of safeguarding Americans' intellectual property rights, I have serious concerns about government getting involved in regulation of the internet, and about ambiguities in this legislation which could lead to an explosion of destructive, innovation-stalling lawsuits.

This is likely as a result of recent Tea Party concerns about the bill as well, since Bachmann is often associated with the Tea Party.

The interesting bit here is that it certainly sets things up for some more vocal opposition of PROTECT IP. Supporters of the bill had been arguing that it would just be "the usual suspects" who were against PROTECT IP, and would talk about how they had bipartisan support for the bill. But we're seeing more and more people in the House begin to express concerns about the bill... and do so on both sides of the aisle. Intellectual property issues, for better of for worse (and I think, for better) have never been a really partisan issue, and I do hope it stays that way, but Bachmann's opposition puts up another roadblock in place to getting PROTECT IP passed. We'd heard that the House version of the bill was supposed to drop today... (after a couple months of being told "in the next two weeks"), but then late yesterday heard that it was pushed back again. It wouldn't be surprising to find out that Bachmann taking a position on it is part of the delay. At the very least, this is going to mean that PROTECT IP won't be able to sail through as supporters expected, and (most importantly) there is likely to be a lot more public scrutiny of a bill that is nothing but a favor to the MPAA/RIAA.

In the end it's good news that people elected officials are increasingly realizing that IP issues aren't as simple as has been put forth by the entertainment industry for so long. The fact that entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and top technologists have already vocally expressed their concerns about PROTECT IP hindering innovation, it's nice to see that these voices are starting to be heard. Maybe, just once, the entertainment industry won't get away with a bill to prop up their failing business models without everyone else just letting it happen.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, internet, michele bachmann, protect ip, regulation

Why Can't PROTECT IP Supporters Just Admit That It's About Censorship?

from the they-should dept

I finally got to listen to a recent episode of Jerry Brito's excellent "Surprisingly Free" podcast, in which Brito spoke with law professor Derek Bambauer on how we could have a more intellectually honest discussion about the appropriateness of PROTECT IP, if its supporters would finally just admit that it's a censorship bill. The talk was based on a new paper from Bambauer, Orwell's Armchair, that compares "soft censorship" of the internet -- using indirect methods, such as pressuring companies to stop working with Wikileaks, and "hard censorship," in which the laws clearly censor content.

Bambauer isn't arguing that PROTECT IP is bad, necessarily. In fact, he argues that "hard censorship" is preferable to soft censorship, in that at least what's happening is upfront and clear, and that there are times when censorship might make sense. His main argument though, is that for there to be a rational and honest discussion about these things, everyone should first be willing to admit that PROTECT IP is absolutely about censorship, and then we can have a direct discussion on whether or not this form of censorship is appropriate.

He notes that supporters are afraid to admit this, and instead insist that it's got nothing to do with censorship, because it's about "stopping copyright infringement." But, as he also notes, pretty much anywhere you see censorship, those who agree with it always couch it in other terms. Thus, South Korea blocking sites about North Korea is about protecting its own people. Various attempts around the world to censor child pornography are seen as reasonable attempts to stop child porn. And China's political censorship has often been framed by the Chinese as protecting its citizens from dangerous ideas. But they're all forms of censorship.

Bambauer, not surprisingly, is not confident that the debate will ever actually move in this direction. It's just not politically expedient to do so. Of course, there's potentially another reason: supporters of the bill know it's about censorship, and they're just embarrassed to admit that. So, denying that it's censorship (and lashing out angrily at those who state the obvious) is just a way of compensating.

Filed Under: censorship, derek bambauer, free speech, protect ip

Yahoo Dumps US Chamber Of Commerce Over Its Extremist Position On PROTECT IP

from the join-the-club dept

We've been covering the intellectually dishonest extremist position of the US Chamber of Commerce (once again, a lobbying group, not to be confused with the federal US Department of Commerce) when it comes to the PROTECT IP Act. The US CoC has been creating a variety of astroturf groups, and putting out ridiculous statements and videos trying to shove through PROTECT IP before Congress realizes what a dreadful, job-destroying, innovation-hindering bill it is. There was the video that conflated counterfeit drugs with copyright. Then, my favorite, was the video of four content creators who were "hurt" by infringement -- but when we dug into the stories of all four, none of them checked out.

We honestly couldn't understand the US CoC's extremist position on this particular topic. Sure, the entertainment industry legacy players are members of the US CoC, but so are plenty of big tech companies that would be hurt by PROTECT IP. Of course, that may be changing. The news came out this morning that Yahoo has quietly left the US Chamber of Commerce over its extremist position on PROTECT IP, and it appears that others are thinking of following suit. At the same time, the US CoC's other major extremist position, concerning fighting against anything that results in reduced greenhouse emissions, has already made Apple leave the US CoC, along with a few other companies as well. At the same time, many various local Chambers of Commerce -- who often do help small businesses -- are disassociating themselves from the US Chamber of Commerce.

As this kind of thing continues, our elected officials are going to finally begin recognizing that the US CoC is an extremist organization that clearly does not represent the business interests of today's innovators and job creators -- but instead represents a few increasingly obsolete legacy organization whose unwillingness to adapt leads them to demand dangerous protectionist policies.

Filed Under: copyright, extremism, lobbying, protect ip
Companies: apple, us chamber of commerce, yahoo