US Chamber Of Commerce Appears To Argue That SOPA & PIPA Apply To NO Websites At All

from the figure-that-one-out dept

Yesterday, I was on a "panel" discussion at the Congressional Internet Caucus's "State of the Net" event. At some point, I believe we'll have some video of that, which we can post. However, at one point, moderator Tim Lordan asked panelist Steve Tepp, from the US Chamber of Commerce, about the claims that SOPA/PIPA only impact "foreign" sites, and argued that under the definitions in the bill sites like Google.ca or Amazon.co.uk would be subject to the bills, and thus they would effect the American companies who run them. Tepp insisted this wasn't true, because the bill only applies to "US-directed sites" and a site that is a .ca or .co.uk wouldn't be considered US-directed. However, First Amendment lawyer Marvin Ammori sensed a pretty obvious problem with that. If what Tepp argues is true, he's basically saying that SOPA and PIPA apply to no websites at all. Remember, supporters of the bills insist that they don't apply to .coms or .orgs or any other site using a TLD controlled by a US register. So that wipes out that batch of domains. But, here, Tepp now seems to be claiming that it also doesn't apply to any site with a country specific TLD... because those aren't US-directed. So... um... what's left?

First, the bills define US-directed site to mean almost any site that you can access in the US. PIPA does not have a definitive test, but it lets courts determine which sites are directed to the US based on several indicia, including whether the “Internet site has reasonable measures in place to prevent such goods and services from being accessed from or delivered to the United States.” (PIPA, page 48.) Meaning, if the site hasn’t blocked American users from accessing the site, then it’s US-directed. The whole point of the Internet, though, is that sites are globally available, and not blocked for particular countries. SOPA, on the House side, merely requires “minimum contacts” sufficient for personal jurisdiction, which is a very low standard that would touch most sites–as any law student would learn after reading the International Shoe case in the second week of Civil Procedure. (See SOPA, page 9).

Second, this argument is unconvincing because it suggests that the bills would cover zero sites in the whole world. If Amazon.co.uk and Google.ca are exempt from the bill, then so are ThePirateBay.co.uk or ThePirateBay.ca. The point of SOPA and PIPA, in theory, is to target foreign sites, who are defined based on having foreign domain names. So, the Chamber is saying, “Don’t worry Google.com won’t be subject to the bills because that’s not a foreign site.” Now it says, “Don’t worry, Google.ca won’t be subject to the bills because it’s not a US-directed site.” Does that mean neither MegaUpload.com or MegaUpload.ca is subject to the bill? By my count then, the bills don’t apply to any sites that have a domestic domain name nor do they apply to any sites that have a foreign domain name.

The Chamber is trying to convince us that the bills apply to zero websites and companies? They wouldn’t apply to MegaUpload.com or MegaUpload.ca, Google.com or  Google.ca, ThePirateBay.org or ThePirateBay.fr?

This doesn’t strike me as highly convincing.Why would studios and labels spend millions trying to pass a bill that affects zero websites and companies?

Indeed. It's this kind of duplicity that has people so fed up with the lobbyist/politician lies being spread about this bill by supporters. The language was written purposely, so that they could insist it won't actually do any of the awful things the bill clearly allows... while knowing full well that's exactly how the bill will be used (regularly) after it passes.

Filed Under: blackouts, domestic sites, foreign sites, pipa, protect ip, protests, sopa, steve tepp
Companies: us chamber of commerce

If SOPA's Main Target Is The Pirate Bay, It's Worth Pointing Out That ThePirateBay.org Is Immune From SOPA

from the just-saying... dept

In looking over Eric Goldman's excellent "linkwrap" of a bunch of recent SOPA/PIPA stories, it pointed me to a News.com article from last month, about how SOPA was really about going after one single site: The Pirate Bay. I've actually heard this repeatedly -- and from folks heavily involved with the bill itself. The whole point of the bill is to try to take down The Pirate Bay. Now, we can argue back and forth about how pointless that is... but there's something else that seems important:

As written, nothing in SOPA can touch ThePirateBay's main website, ThePirateBay.org

That's because the current version of the bill excludes any .com or .org. from being a target (though, they can be required to take action against other sites). This has caused some confusion, mainly because of the changes between the original version of SOPA and the "manager's amendment," which is the current version of the bill. The manager's amendment makes you jump through some hoops to understand this, but the key point is that a "U.S.-directed site" is defined to be a "foreign internet site" in the bill (in the original SOPA, a U.S.-directed site could be any site). Then, a foreign domain name is listed as not a "domestic domain" (keep hopping!), which itself is defined as "a domain name that is registered or assigned by a domain name registrar, domain name registry or other domain name registration authority that is located within a judicial district of the United States."

This means that all .com or .org domains are domestic, since they're assigned by a registry that is located within the US (for those confused, a domain registry is a company like VeriSign that runs the master database of all domains under a single top level domain). The thinking here is that (as ICE and the Justice Department have claimed) any website that has a TLD that is controlled by an American company can be dealt with via existing laws, such as the one that ICE uses to seize websites. .com is run by VeriSign, which is based in the US. And .org is run by the Public Interest Registry, which is also based in the US (Virginia, specifically).

That means that thepiratebay.org -- the main website for The Pirate Bay... is actually immune from the two key parts of SOPA (sections 102 and 103, since both clearly state that they only cover "U.S.-directed sites").

So, based on the law as written... The Pirate Bay is immune from SOPA (though, potentially not from ICE just seizing the domain). It's worth noting the same is true of both RapidShare and Megaupload -- two other sites frequently cited by the MPAA and the US Chamber of Commerce as the types of awful, evil sites that these bills are targeted to take down. In fact, remember that "53 billion visits to rogue websites" claim that the US Chamber of Commerce loves to repeat? Nearly half of that is from RapidShare and Megavideo/Megaupload. And yet, those sites are clearly excluded from SOPA based on the definitions. So why would they still be trotting them out as examples?

Filed Under: domains, domestic sites, rogue sites, sweden
Companies: the pirate bay