Will Politicians' Support For Draconian IP Laws While Ignoring Civil Liberties Issues Come Back To Bite Them?

from the what-happens-next dept

I'm usually not one for the typical "end of year" summaries of what happened over the preceding twelve months, but Dave Kravets at Wired has put together an excellent post, bringing together a series of separate events that showed that politicians were quite eager to pass new draconian intellectual property laws all year, but shied away from anything that involved protecting our civil liberties. Reading through the article, it's a really sad statement over how the past year went from a politics perspective.

Of course, it will be interesting to see the coming backlash over this. We're already seeing the beginning elements of a reaction over SOPA (as well as the massive support for Ron Paul) and 2012 may make for an interesting year. Declan McCullough is wondering if the internet world is ready to "go nuclear" in the effort to stop SOPA/PIPA next year. As with anything, I think that there will be some mistakes made along the way, but as the internet community gets more organized and more vocal, I do wonder if these two trend lines (more draconian IP laws and less civil liberties protections) can really continue to move in the same direction much longer.

Filed Under: civil liberties, ecpa, intellectual property, ndaa, pipa, politicians, protect ip, sopa

Candidates Starting To Turn SOPA Into A Campaign Issue: Karen Kwiatkowski Goes After Bob Goodlatte

from the don't-mess-with-the-internet dept

We recently pointed out that it was likely that candidates running against SOPA supporters (especially in the House) would start using SOPA as a campaign issue -- which could draw the attention and support of the netroots community, like the folks at Reddit, who are just itching to support candidates who oppose SOPA supporters. Well, here's one they might want to check out. Karen Kwiatkowski is running against Rep. Bob Goodlatte in Virginia, and is using SOPA as a key campaign talking point, noting accurately that Goodlatte both was in charge of putting SOPA together for much of the year (though, towards the end, Lamar Smith took over) and that he's become Smith's go to guy in ushering the bill through the House. Karen sees this as a big problem:

Bob Goodlatte spent 2011 CO-AUTHORING and INTRODUCING the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). SOPA makes the federal government EVEN BIGGER.

If passed, SOPA will dramatically increase the federal government’s role in our lives, online and offline. It authorizes the Attorney General to block websites accused of copyright infringement from search engines and ISPs. And it allows the Attorney General to “commence action” against them without a court order. SOPA will result in fewer independent websites, blogs, media sources, start-ups and tech industry jobs. And as a result, lower quality.

How will it do this, you ask? Simple. It increases the cost of doing business for U.S. tech firms, payment network providers and advertisers.

In addition to increasing legal and compliance costs for small businesses, it also increases the size and scope of the federal government.

SOPA expands the State Department, Attorney General's Office, Copyright Office and other agencies and creates a new set of bureaucrats. One we have never heard of before is the “intellectual property attache.” IP Attaches will be trained and appointed to regional bureaus, embassies and diplomatic missions throughout the world. And they work with copyright holders at the expense of taxpayers.

With the Reddit community so actively looking for candidates to support, perhaps it's time to check out Karen.

Filed Under: bob goodlatte, campaign issue, free speech, government, karen kwiatkowski, sopa

Lamar Smith Out Of Touch With The Internet: Still Thinks It's Just Google That Opposes SOPA

from the time-to-wake-up-to-reality dept

It's really quite stunning to watch Lamar Smith pull out really out-dated talking points as he gets more and more desperate to defend SOPA, as he discovers that all the vaunted "support" that the US Chamber of Commerce promised him there was for the bill melts away. We've already gone through Smith's detailed "defense" of the bill and pointed out that nearly all of it was based on either false or misleading research. And what's worse is that Smith obviously knows this: he specifically cherry picks studies to support his position. In fact, he uses studies produced by lobbyists over the ones produced by the government, when the government ones show that the entire basis for SOPA is faulty. The only reason to do that is because you know the actual facts don't support your position.

His latest move is to pretend that the only opposition to SOPA comes from Google.

There is nothing that would require Internet service providers or bloggers to "censor" the Internet.

Since there is no basis for their complaints, one wonders what the bill's critics are really worried about. Perhaps they don’t want to be held accountable for directing consumers to illegal websites. We know that’s the case with Google.

There's so much wrong in just that little section, it's really quite incredible. First of all, the first statement is an outright fabrication. The entire point of the bill is to censor parts of the internet. Smith is trying to pretend that because the censorship is about stopping infringement, it's not censorship, but that's simply false. The government telling internet sites that they have to block access to other websites is -- undeniably -- censorship. If Smith were being intellectually honest, he would admit that and then we could have a nice discussion on whether or not this form of censorship makes sense. But, instead, he pretends that it's not censorship.

As for the next sentence, there is a very real basis for the complaints, and pretending there isn't is just ridiculous. Yes, it's true that some people have exaggerated some of the claims, but part of the problem here is actually Smith himself. His first version of SOPA was so bad and contained so many awful things that many people still think his latest version contains those things. Perhaps if he had taken the time to invite people who actually understand the internet to the table, he wouldn't be fending off the complaints of his original bill at this time.

But that also leaves out that there are, still, tremendous legitimate concerns with the bill, and that explains the widespread outrage.

• The online security concerns are extremely real and legitimate. Every single credible technology and security expert has agreed on this point. To date, Smith has been unable to find a single independent security expert to back up his side of the argument. He's found two or three think tank "policy analysts" who don't understand the technology issues in play (and it's amusing to watch them run for the hills any time a real DNS engineer shows up), but there has yet to be a single credible technologist to say that provisions in the bill for blocking sites won't do harm to years of careful work on internet security.
• The State Department remains horrified at the message this bill sends to the rest of the world, as they are trying to push the concept of internet freedom to country's with oppressive governments. Even if the purpose of the blocking in the US is quite different, the bill alone gives foreign repressive regimes the perfect blueprint for repressing free speech in a way that the US can't protest: just say you're going after infringement, and the US can't complain.
• The threat of collateral damage against legitimate sites is extraordinarily real. It's so real we have clear evidence of it happening at home, in the case of Dajaz1.com. Or with the death of Veoh. Or with the very fact that SOPA supporters continue to claim that RapidShare is one of the key sites they seek to kill via SOPA, despite it being declared legal in both the US and Europe.
• Finally, there's the fact that all of the evidence suggests that SOPA won't actually help to either stop infringement or to get people to pay more for content. Considering the widespread collateral damage, when all of the evidence suggests that the bill itself won't actually help solve the specific problem it's supposedly targeting, isn't that a cause for a concern?

But rather than address any of those (or many other legitimate) concerns with the bill, Smith falls back on the talking point he was given at the beginning of this: the only company who doesn't want this is Google and that's because Google profits from illegal activity. Neither statement is accurate.

First of all, hundreds upon hundreds of companies have come out against the bill -- including supposed "supporters" on the list that Smith's own staff at the House Judiciary Committee put out, claiming they supported the bill. The idea that these are all driven by Google is hilarious. On top of that, Smith is being downright insulting to the hundreds of thousands of people who have written and called Congress to express their displeasure with the bill. They weren't doing so because Google wants to profit from illegal activity online, but because they're legitimately worried about the bill.

Certainly, back over the summer when Hollywood told Smith he had to take the bill away from Rep. Goodlatte and put in all of their favorite concepts to censor the internet, the most vocal opposition had come from Google. But since then, pretty much the entire tech industry has risen up to point out the problems of the bill. And, even worse for Smith, so have many in the creative community. We have movie and TV stars, along with best selling authors. We've seen more and more in the creative community itself speak out against this bill, because they recognize that they use and rely on the internet as well.

The truth is that the remaining "support" for the bill has been reduced to a few big (but shrinking) companies in a legacy industry who have chosen not to adapt to changing times. And while all of this is happening, the people in that same industry who aren't tied down looking at the past are adapting and making tons of money.

The basic fact of the situation is that Lamar Smith is wrong in almost everything he argues here. He's wrong about what the bill is. He's wrong about whether or not it's needed. He's wrong about the impact of the bill. He's wrong about the opposition. He's wrong about the criticism. The public is recognizing most of this. Smith's decision to double down on the old story that this is just about Google is a sign of a sad politician lashing out because his plan to help his biggest campaign contributors is being seen for what it is: a government hand out to a few Hollywood fat cats too lazy to adapt... and all done at the expense of the one part of the economy that has continued to grow and to shine: the internet.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, free speech, internet, lamar smith, security, sopa
Companies: google

GoDaddy Boycott Fizzles; Twice As Many Domains Transfer In As Out

from the not-sustainable dept

Yesterday, we noted that it appeared that the "GoDaddy boycott" concept may have been losing steam, thanks to the company's decision to move away from supporting the bill... combined with a new aggressive advertising campaign. Finally, on Thursday morning, the company went a step further: saying it hadn't just stopped supporting SOPA but now directly opposed SOPA. Even though the company notes that it saw "a spike in domain name transfers," it looks like the actual "boycott" day fizzled out. Looking at the results from DailyChanges shows that GoDaddy actually had a strongly positive day, netting 20,748 more domains at the end of the day than the beginning. On transfers alone, there were nearly double the number of transfers in as out (27,843 in to 14,492 out) as well as more new registrations than deleted domains (43,304 new registrations compared to 35,907 deletions). This isn't that surprising, really. There was a big burst last week, which is what resulted in GoDaddy changing its stance on the bills. In other words, it seemed like most people jumped to make the move immediately, rather than waiting a week. On top of that, GoDaddy's change in position very likely did ease the concerns of many. And, many made the quite reasonable argument that continuing the boycott after GoDaddy officially changed positions would be counterproductive, since it would discourage other companies from changing their position as well. Of course, a counter argument would be that the goal of the boycott was less about convincing others on the list to change positions as it was to make sure that no other companies decided to support SOPA or any similar future regulations.

Either way, it appears that for those who were hoping for a big boycott on Thursday, that didn't happen. I'm sure some SOPA supporters will use this as fodder to suggest the whole effort was a failure, but that's ridiculous. The whole thing still got a large company that was a huge supporter of these terrible bills to switch its position and recognize that it can't run roughshod over the wishes of its customers. It also helped draw more attention to the overall issue, and helped in getting other companies to back away from supporting the bill. It also got some attention among elected officials about how supporting this bill could get the internet activated. It may not be enough to kill the bills yet, but more politicians are aware of the issues. All in all, getting GoDaddy to change its position was a huge victory against SOPA and PIPA, but remains just one battle in a long and still ongoing war.

Update: There are a bunch of comments insisting that this can't be true, and I'm happy to see more data. NameCheap claims that it had 32,000 domains transfer in, and it's true that Daily Changes isn't a perfect proxy for domain transfers -- but it's a pretty good one. Some are suggesting that delays in processing will show more transfers over the next few days. We'll be watching. It's possible that there were a lot more transfers, but just because people want it to happen, doesn't mean it actually happened. Update 2: NameCheap says in the last week they've received around 80,000 transfers.

Filed Under: boycott, domains, pipa, protect ip, public, sopa
Companies: godaddy

Shouldn't There Be Significant Punishment For Bogus Copyright Claims That Kill Companies?

from the seems-like-it dept

We wrote a detailed post about the latest Veoh ruling, in which Universal Music lost (again) in claiming that Veoh violated copyright law with its YouTube-like service. Of course, as we pointed out, the "victory" for Veoh is pretty meaningless because Veoh is dead. The cost of the lawsuit itself killed it. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, when you see stories like the federal government shutting down Dajaz1 for over a year, without having an actual case for infringement, and the similar case in Japan, in which the developer of a software program, Winny, had to battle in courts for more than five years, before the court declared that he was totally innocent.

The harm done to legitimate businesses by totally bogus copyright claims seems like it should be a big deal. If the government is really concerned about jobs, rather than passing something like SOPA, shouldn't it be ramping up the punishment for bogus copyright claims that cause so much real harm to businesses? Eric Goldman, in discussing the Veoh ruling makes a similar point and puts forth an interesting suggestion for SOPA, to force companies filing such claims to put up a bond to pay, if they turn out to be wrong:

A partial fix to SOPA/PROTECT-IP would make rightsowners bear the cost of their overclaiming. Make them put up a $1 billion bond for the privilege of sending cutoff notices; and pay liberally out of that bond if the rightsowners get the law or facts wrong. Write checks to the investors and employees whose economic expectations are disrupted when rightsowners get it wrong. Write checks to the payment service providers and ad networks who turn down money from legally legit businesses based solely on rightsowner accusations. Heck, write checks to the users of those legit services who are treated as inconsequential pawns in this chess match. Sure, a $1B bond obligation with liberal payouts would turn cutoff notices into a sport of kings that only the richest rightsowners could afford, but perhaps that’s the way it should be. A rightsowner's decision to send a cutoff notice should be a Big Deal, the equivalent of going to Defcon 5, and not like sending holiday cards to distant relatives you last saw at Ethan's bar mitzvah.

The supporters of the bill, of course, would reject such a suggestion out of hand, noting that it would be unfair and would make it harder for them to "enforce their rights." But that ignores the other side of the equation. If enforcing their rights involves completely destroying someone else's company, then, as Goldman notes, shouldn't it be difficult?

Of course, the chances of this happening are nil. During the SOPA markup, Rep. Jason Chaffetz actually put forth an amendment that didn't even go as far as Goldman's suggestion. It merely said that if you file a lawsuit under SOPA and it turns out that the site was legal, then the plaintiff should pay the legal fees of the defendant. This seems quite reasonable. And it was quickly shot down by SOPA supporters who complained that this was somehow unfair. I still can't figure out why only the copyright holders get to talk about "fairness," while the companies and websites completely destroyed by bogus claims apparently have no "fairness" on their behalf.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, pipa, protect ip, punishment, sopa, takedowns
Companies: dajaz1, universal music, veoh, viacom, winny, youtube

Reddit Turns Its Attention To Politics: Seeking Supporters Of SOPA & NDAA To Unseat

from the the-internet-awakens? dept

Following its ability to build up enough grassroots support to get GoDaddy to change its position (if not its mind) on SOPA & PIPA, it appears the Reddit community wants to see if it can do the same thing with some politicians. Earlier this week, we had asked who would be the first politician to be "GoDaddy'd" and it appears that the Reddit community has already jumped onto that challenge. It's been rather fascinating to watch over the past few days as the amorphous crowd self-organized and set up its own rules over who to focus on and why. They've decided to focus on politicians who supported both NDAA (the controversial bill that crystallizes the government's ability to detain Americans without trial) and SOPA/PIPA. They also want to pick one politician from each major party, to keep this from being a partisan thing. Separately, they've been seeking out politicians who may actually be vulnerable... and trying to vet their opponents to make sure who gets elected in their place isn't even worse.

So far, the community has focused in on Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee as its main Republican target (there have been a few others listed as well), but doesn't seem to have settled on a Democratic target yet.

I still think that a lot of this will depend heavily on who is challenging these politicians, and if they're willing to make a campaign issue out of these free speech/civil liberties issues. It'll definitely be tough to unseat incumbents, but even if the internet community can make it into an actual fight, politicians will start to take notice. And, even if it fails this time around, watch out for what comes next. Like many "open" systems, the first version may not be pretty, the second version may be a little buggy, but once you get around to the third version and beyond, they often start being a lot more powerful than anyone expects. Politicians who underestimate the community of folks at Reddit and similar sites may be in for a surprise before too long...

Filed Under: bob corker, community, ndaa, pipa, politics, protect ip, sopa
Companies: reddit

Lamar Smith, Against Regulating The Internet... Until Hollywood Became His Biggest Campaign Funder

from the politics-in-action dept

Well, well. Via Julian Sanchez, we learn that SOPA's official "sponsor" and chief supporter, Lamar Smith, spoke out in 2006 about how Congress shouldn't regulate the internet:

"I want a vibrant Internet just like they do," said Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican. "Our disagreement is about how to achieve that. They say let the government dictate it...I urge my colleagues to reject government regulation of the Internet."

Kind of funny, then, that he's now sponsoring one of the most aggressive attempts ever to have the government regulate the internet, isn't it? Or, perhaps not so funny when you look at a second point made by Sanchez. In 2006, the top donator to Smith's campaign... was the tech industry. In 2012, it's "TV/Movies/Music." Computers/Internet is now ranked all the way down at number eight.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence, right?

Filed Under: campaign contributions, copyright, funding, internet, lamar smith, regulations, sopa

As GoDaddy Deals With SOPA Fallout, Hollywood Wants To Punish GoDaddy For Enabling Infringement

from the as-the-godaddy-turns dept

We've always been a bit baffled by GoDaddy's original support of COICA/PIPA/SOPA. As we noted in the fall, under the original definitions in SOPA, GoDaddy itself was almost certainly a rogue site. If you do searches on various trademarks, its recommendation engine certainly appeared to facilitate infringement by suggesting possible domains that would likely be infringing. What I actually forgot was that GoDaddy was already being sued over this very issue (which, you would think would make its legal team hyper-aware of this issue), and (even better) that lawsuit is coming from Hollywood, its main partner in pushing SOPA/PIPA through Congress.

Yes, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), better known as the folks behind the Academy Awards (the Oscars), launched a lawsuit against GoDaddy back in May of 2010 over this very issue. And, just last week, as GoDaddy was coming to terms with the complaints from the public, AMPAS was in court trying to force GoDaddy founder and ex-CEO Bob Parsons to give a deposition about the company's practices.

The article linked above, by Eriq Gardner at THResq, notes that many people believe that the completely mixed messages come from Parsons'... unique style of managing the company:

... in advance of a February cut-off date for discovery, AMPAS wishes to depose Parsons, whose “fingerprints are all over GoDaddy’s domain name monetization programs,” according to the brief.

And in the process, perhaps get some answers about why Parsons has seemingly been two-faced on the piracy front.

One example given is a post that Parsons wrote for his personal blog. In it, Parsons takes issue with the practice known as “kiting,” where registrars take advantage of a 5-day grace period to put up mini-Web sites loaded with search engine bait. Later, on his blog, Parsons discussed a trademark lawsuit against Dotster – “a registrar who hasn’t exactly been a stranger to domain kiting,” he said – for registering many misspellings of trademarked names, and associating them with search engine pages.

“This is exactly AMPAS’s complaint in this case,” says the plaintiff. “That its marks are famous and well-known; that GoDaddy monetizes domain names incorporating AMPAS’s trademarks – having received 60 cease/desist letters from AMPAS – yet continues to park domain names incorporating AMPAS’s marks.”

Now, as I stated when AMPAS filed the lawsuit, this case seems pretty ridiculous, and it seems pointless to blame GoDaddy for the actions of its users registering these domains -- even if (as the lawsuit contends), GoDaddy makes money from people parking these domains. We called it "absurd" at the time... and we stand by it.

But it's even more absurd in the context of SOPA/PIPA. You would think that, being subject to such absurd lawsuits over enabling infringement (oh, and don't forget the other similar lawsuit against GoDaddy from the Michael Jackson estate...), the company would be extra sensitive to laws that would put it at greater risk. It really calls into question what people are thinking over there, even if they have "backed down" from their support of the bills.

Filed Under: bob parsons, pipa, protect ip, sopa, trademark
Companies: ampas, godaddy

Is A Naked Danica Patrick Working To Quell GoDaddy Boycott Efforts?

from the timing-is-everything dept

Well, today was the day originally scheduled as the GoDaddy boycott day, in which people who had registered domains with GoDaddy were going to transfer them out. With GoDaddy officially dropping support for SOPA, there have been some questions about whether or not that boycott will still happen in significant numbers. There have already been some high profile transfers, such as from the Imgur folks, and there are still plenty of people talking about going through with the boycott as planned.

However, GoDaddy seems to be focusing on what's worked for it in the past: advertising with scantily clad women (and Danica Patrick in particular). Apparently it's been putting full page ads in the NY Times (and other papers?) with Patrick covered strategically by a sign.

And... the strategy may have worked so far.

While tons of domains transferred out at the end of last week, this week has been a bit of a different story. On Monday, it looks like GoDaddy basically broke even, with 18,401 new registrations and 14,853 transfers in... vs only 8,862 transfers out and 24,120 domains deleted. That netted out to an increase for GoDaddy of 272 domains. Tuesday was even more positive for the company. Even though another 16,662 domains were transferred out and another 27,564 were deleted, there was a big bump in new registrations: 31,574 (perhaps driven by new ads?) and another 15,452 transferred in. Net change? 2,800 in the plus column for GoDaddy. Finally, that same trend continued for Wednesday: an impressive 33,251 new registrations and 17,549 transfers in. That goes against 15,524 transfers out and 30,634 deletions. Net: 4,642 more domains under GoDaddy control.

Left unanswered: is this a lull before a bunch of transfers today? Or has the whole boycott issue subsided?

Filed Under: advertising, boycott, danica patrick, domains, pipa, protect ip, public, sopa
Companies: godaddy

Heritage Foundation Says SOPA Threatens Free Speech

from the pirates? dept

We recently wrote about the somewhat surprising move that The Heritage Foundation had come out against SOPA. This was surprising mainly because the think tank was famous for being very closely aligned with the MPAA on copyright issues in the past -- even to the ridiculous degree of insisting that "there is no difference between shoplifting a DVD from a store and illegally downloading a copyrighted movie from Kazaa." However even an organization that has made that statement in the past recognizes that SOPA/PIPA aren't actually about copyright, but about regulating the internet in dangerous ways.

The think tank has decided to speak out again about how SOPA "threatens free speech." Much of the discussion focuses on the government's totally bungled seizure and censorship of Dajaz1.com. It notes how ridiculously overbroad this kind of censorship is under existing law, and questions why we would want to go down the "slippery slope" of expanding those powers for the government.

Once again, when even the most strident supporters of copyright are recognizing what horrible bills SOPA and PIPA are, it makes you wonder how Congress can continue to move forward with them.

Filed Under: copyright, free speech, pipa, protect ip, sopa
Companies: heritage foundation