Taking down websites / domain names on allegation (no
judicial finding of) copyright infringing content. See
activity of DHS Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) Opponents to SOPA and PROTECT-IP argued that it would disrupt DNSSEC.
The White House has opposed legislation which disrupts the Internet architecture, and Congress is indicating that the DNS blocking provisions of the legislation will be removed.
See also WHOIS (director information for domain names)
Stop Online Privacy Act SOPA
- Stop
Online Piracy Act (SOPA) HR 3261
- Originally known at the E-PARASITE Act
- CRS
Summary: SUMMARY AS OF:
10/26/2011--Introduced.
Stop Online Piracy Act - Authorizes the Attorney General
(AG) to seek a court order against a U.S.-directed
foreign Internet site committing or
facilitating online piracy to require the owner,
operator, or domain name registrant, or the site
or domain name itself if such persons are unable to be found,
to cease and desist further activities
constituting specified intellectual property
offenses under the federal criminal code including
criminal copyright infringement, unauthorized
fixation and trafficking of sound recordings or
videos of live musical performances, the recording
of exhibited motion pictures, or trafficking in
counterfeit labels, goods, or services.
- note that this goes beyond the reach of the
DMCA, which was limited in scope to copyright, to
now reach trademark
- Supporters of SOPA argue that SOPA is only aimed
at foreign sites, not domestic sites
Sets forth an additional two-step process (See DMCA Notice and Take Down)
that
- allows an intellectual property right holder
harmed by a
U.S.-directed site dedicated to
infringement, or a site promoted or used for
infringement under certain circumstances, to first
provide a written notification identifying
the site to related payment network providers and
Internet advertising services
- requiring such entities to
- forward the notification and
- suspend their services to such an identified
site [within 5 days]
- unless the site's owner, operator, or domain
name registrant, upon receiving the forwarded
notification, provides a counter notification
explaining that it is not dedicated to engaging in
specified violations.
- Authorizes the right holder to then commence an
action for limited injunctive relief against the
owner, operator, or domain name registrant, or
against the site or domain name itself if such
persons are unable to be found, if:
- such a counter notification is provided
(and, if it is a foreign site, includes
consent to U.S. jurisdiction to adjudicate
whether the site is dedicated to such
violations), or
- a payment network provider or Internet
advertising service fails to suspend its
services in the absence of such a counter
notification.
Requires online
service providers, Internet search engines,
payment network providers, and Internet advertising
services, upon receiving a copy of a court order
relating to an AG action, to carry out certain
preventative measures including withholding services
from an infringing site or preventing users located in
the United States from accessing the infringing site.
Requires payment network providers and Internet
advertising services, upon receiving a copy of such an
order relating to a right holder's action, to carry
out similar preventative measures.
Provides immunity
from liability for service providers, payment
network providers, Internet advertising services,
advertisers, Internet search engines, domain name
registries, or domain name registrars that
- take actions required by this Act or
- otherwise
voluntarily block access to or end
financial affiliation with such sites.
Permits such entities to stop or refuse services to
certain sites that endanger public health by
distributing prescription
medication that is adulterated, misbranded,
or without a valid prescription.
Expands the offense of criminal copyright
infringement to include public performances of: (1)
copyrighted work by digital transmission, and (2)
work intended for commercial dissemination by making
it available on a computer network. Expands the
criminal offenses of trafficking in inherently
dangerous goods or services to include: (1)
counterfeit drugs; and (2) goods or services falsely
identified as meeting military standards or intended
for use in a national security, law enforcement, or
critical infrastructure application.
Increases the penalties for: (1) specified trade
secret offenses intended to benefit a foreign
government, instrumentality, or agent; and (2)
various other intellectual property offenses as
amended by this Act.
Directs the U.S. Sentencing Commission to review,
and if appropriate, amend related Federal Sentencing
Guidelines.
Requires the Secretary of State and Secretary of
Commerce to appoint at least one intellectual
property attache to be assigned to the U.S. embassy
or diplomatic mission in a country in each
geographic region covered by a Department of State
regional bureau.
- Support:
- Motion Picture Association of America,
- the Recording Industry Association of America
- Global Intellectual Property Center, US Chamber
of Commerce
- Opponents
- Congressional Response: Fighting
the Unauthorized Trade of Digital Goods While
Protecting Internet Security, Commerce and
Speech, Draft framework for discussion,
authored by: U.S. Senators Cantwell, Moran, Warner
and Wyden and U.S. Representatives Chaffetz,
Campbell, Doggett, Eshoo, Issa, Lofgren and Polis
- Google
- Facebook
- Yahoo!
- CEA
- Justin Bieber
- EFF
- Going
After the Pirates, NYT Editorial (Nov. 26,
2011)
- Piracy
vs the Open Internet, LA Times (Nov. 25,
2011)
- Right
and Wronged, Economist (Nov. 26, 2011)
- Criticisms
- SOPA breaks DNSSEC.[PK]
- DNS Blocking does not work; work arounds include
- using actual IP number of site,
- browser plugins, and
- using DNS services outside of the USA (outside
of SOPA's reach). [PK]
- Due Process:
- Content creators get only 5 days to respond to
the take down notice (barely enough time to even
find an attorney)
- It's a short cut to the legal system, allowing
punishment without proof or evidence, and
without consequences when copyright owners
wrongfully file takedown notices. [PK]
- Authorizes Attorneys General to shut down
websites without due process.
- Vague Definitions
- SOPA targets sites that "facilitate"
piracy. This definition potentially
includes all User Generated Content sites.
- Nuclear Option: Where the DMCA Notice-and-take
down is aimed at the specific page where the
infringing content is located, resulting only in
that specific content being removed, with
SOPA, on sites large or small, one piece of
allegedly infringing content would result in the
entire website being taken down (the domain name
would be blocked and its revenue would be turned
off). This is a sledge hammer
solution.
- Collateral damage: This means that SOPA will
cause significant collateral damage.
Imagine one YouTube video somewhere alleged as
infringing content, the entire site is blocked,
and all of the educational videos used by a
school, or the User Generated Content videos of
a national disaster, being not
accessible.
- Basically repeals DMCA Notice and Take Down,
as use of the SOPA remedies will replace the
DMCA remedies [Goldman Nov
15, 2011]
- It would destroy the User Generated Content
industry. With SOPA, there would be no
YouTube and there would be no Facebook.
- Cuts off revenue to websites without due
process. Websites that have done nothing wrong
will be losing 5 days of revenue per notice. [EFF Oct 28, 2011] [EFF Nov. 7, 2011]
- Revenue sources can voluntarily cut off websites
even without a notice. [EFF Nov. 7,
2011]
- Disrupt business models
- Because the increased risk of significant
disruption of revenue, this will significantly
decrease potential investment in new and
innovative online services. (investment is
premised on the promise and risk of ROI - where
the risk that there will not be ROI goes up,
then investment goes down)
- Small firms innovating with User Generated
Content could potentially get swamped with take
down notices.
- Abusive Take Down Notices: Content owners have
established through the DMCA that they will send
bogus takedown notices, with little repercussion.
[EFF Oct 28,
2011] [Techdirt
Nov 22 2011]
- It creates blacklists of "rogue" websites,
censoring those sites, creativity, expression, and
innovation. As such it is directly
inconsistent with the State
Departments Internet Freedom policy.
- Cost Benefit Analysis
- The cost of SOPA, as demonstrated above, would
be devastating
- The Benefit of SOPA, is less than clear.
The DMCA notice and take down regime is in place
and is working. The RIAA has claimed that
it has piracy in check. Those people who
want pirated content will likely still be able
to get it while those people who want legitimate
content on legitimate services will likely find
those services disrupted.
- Solutions: Part of the problem of piracy is
consumers who want to consume professionally
produced content, but the content owners do not
make the content available - or do not make it
affordable. This creates an incentive for
those consumers who desire to consume the content
to create their own solutions. Where content
owners have made their content available to
consumers at an affordable price, piracy of
content has significantly dissipated.
- The same platforms that enable piracy are the
platforms that enable innovation -- and make the
record production industries redundant.
- Greater enforcement does not result in
decreased infringement. Historically, piracy has
been resolved by new business models that makes
content accessible and affordable. [Techdirt Nov 22 2011]
- Economist Nov. 26: "The
Social Science Research Council, an American
non-profit body, found in a study this year
“little evidence—and indeed few claims—that
enforcement efforts to date have had any impact
whatsoever on the overall supply [of pirated
media].”"
-
News
Protect IP
DNS Filtering for foreign
websites hosting allegedly (no judicial finding of)
copyright infringing content
Proponents
Criticism
- Wyden, Ron. "Overreaching
Legislation Still Poses a Significant Threat to
Internet Commerce, Innovation and Free Speech" .
Sovreign . Retrieved 28 May 2011
- Law
Professors Letter arguing that Protect-IP is
unconstitutional (prior constraint)
- PROTECT
IP Technical Whitepaper Final Steve Crocker,
David Dagon, Dan Kaminsky, Danny McPherson, Paul
Vixie (May 2011)
- The Undersigned (2011), Public
Interest Letter to Senate Committee on the
Judiciary in Opposition to S. 968, PROTECT IP
Act of 2011 , pp. 1-2 , retrieved
2011-05-30
- Halliday, Josh (18 May 2011). "Google
boss: anti-piracy laws would be disaster for free
speech" . The Guardian . Retrieved
24 May 2011 .
- Siy, Sherwin. "COICA
v. 2.0: the PROTECT IP Act" . Policy
Blog . Public Knowledge . Retrieved 24 May
2011 .
Links
COICA
Hearings
Government Enforcement (ICE DHS)
Derived From: 2011 US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Joint Strategic Plan, One Year Anniversary, June 2011
"ICE and DOJ Launched Innovative Operations to Seize Rogue Websites
"Last June, ICE and the IPR Center, in coordination with DOJ, launched an ongoing law enforcement operation – Operation in Our Sites – to seize domain names of websites offering counterfeit products or pirated content, both of which are illegal actions which could be used to finance other criminal behavior in addition to posing certain safety risks. To date, there have been five operations targeting 125 websites.
"Consumer Education Efforts on IPR Infringement Spread to the Internet
"As a result of DOJ and ICE’s trailblazing work against rogue websites, domain names seized pursuant to court order display a banner announcing the seizure of the site by the Government and an explanation of the federal crime and punishment for copyright theft and distribution or trademark violations. Since the initial seizures in June 2010, there have been more than 50 million hits to the banner notifying viewers a Federal court order has been issued for the domain name and educating them that willful copyright infringement is a Federal crime. After the seized domain names are forfeited to the U.S. Government, a new banner is placed on the sites notifying the public that the sites have been forfeited. Also, the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies discussed above has consumer education as one of its four major principles. And DOJ is funding public awareness campaigns on the risks to the public of purchasing counterfeit goods.
"International Efforts Supported Online IPR Enforcement
"In May, the Group of Eight (G8) released a final declaration, in which they jointly announced their commitment
to protect intellectual property rights on the Internet and to take “effective action against violations of intellectual property rights in the digital arena, including action that addresses present and future infringements.”
"In June, in association with Operation In Our Sites, several U.S. law enforcement agencies worked cooperatively with Dutch law enforcement authorities to seize an image a server in the Netherlands being used to facilitate the unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material. That same month, the FBI worked with Latvian authorities to arrest and to extradite a trafficker of counterfeit gaming machines, and in August, the trafficker and his partner were each sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay $151,800 in restitution.
"In October 2010, Operation Pangea III targeted the online sale of counterfeit and illegal medicines across 45 countries and resulted in world-wide arrests and seizures of thousands of potentially harmful medications. During this operation, the U.S. coordinated with the WCO, INTERPOL, and others.
Government Releases
Caselaw
White House
News
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