As we've reported, Wilson and other investors have been fighting SOPA and its predecessors for months. For example, he pointed out that Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures spent time in DC last week lobbying against the SOPA. Radia said this kind of concern has inspired venture capitalists to strongly oppose the legislation. In the meantime, the uncertainty could discourage investment in Internet technology and cause real and irreparable harm. But SOPA's "dedicated to theft of US property" standard is much less clear, and it will take years for the courts to sort out what it means. The courts have been interpreting the DMCA's safe harbor for 13 years, and we now have a pretty clear idea of what sites must do to qualify for it. Radia pointed out that "it's entirely possible that an intermediary that is protected by the DMCA safe harbor could also fit within the category of sites dedicated to infringement." So companies that build websites based on the rules of the DMCA might suddenly find themselves on shaky legal ground. "Many of the companies that have long wished that the DMCA imposed a greater obligation on online intermediaries to act against infringement see this bill as an effective means of accomplishing their end goals without opening the can of worms of revisiting the DMCA safe harbor," he said. ![]() "The bill is written in a way that covers a far broader category of sites" than ordinary "rogue" websites, he told Ars. She claimed that the RIAA hasn't started lobbying for changes to the DMCA, but Radia believes that content companies have been pushing for SOPA for precisely this reason. But Pariser argued that the courts have been letting sites off the hook too easily. The DMCA's safe harbor doesn't protect websites that encourage infringement or ignore "red flag" evidence of infringement. Recording Industry Association of America lawyer Jennifer Pariser recently argued that "the courts are interpreting Congress' statute in a manner that is entirely too restrictive of content owners' rights and too open to service providers." The major content industries have made no effort to hide their disdain for the DMCA safe harbor. In contrast, the SOPA notice-and-takedown regime allows copyright holders to attack entire websites by cutting off their access to payment and ad networks. The DMCA's provides a safe harbor from copyright liability for sites that comply with takedown requests for individual items. Probably the most ambitious new provision in SOPA is the creation of a new DMCA-style notice and takedown system. And he argued that the dollar-value thresholds in SOPA are too low, creating a risk that minor offenders-maybe even Justin Bieber-will wind up in jail. "The problem is that there's no commercial gain requirement in the House version," Radia told Ars. The legislation also incorporates a Senate proposal to make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted works a felony. Radia points out that this could make the US government look hypocritical if Congress passed such an anti-circumvention law at the same time the Obama administration has pledged to support the creation of similar technology to resist the censorship of repressive foreign regimes. So not only does SOPA force DNS servers to blacklist websites, but it also allows the government to obtain injunctions against anti-censorship software like MAFIAAFire that circumvents the government's DNS-blocking efforts. For example, critics pointed out that the DNS blacklist in earlier bills would be easy to circumvent. These bills have gotten more and more ambitious. A series of bills, starting with last year's COICA legislation, have tried to shut down these sites by going after intermediaries, including DNS servers, payment processors, search engines, and ad networks. Such rogue sites deliver infringing content to American consumers while remaining out of reach of American law enforcement. Supporters of the legislation say it's needed to combat "rogue" websites hosted overseas. He's been actively engaged in this year's copyright debates on Capitol Hill, and he argued that the sweeping language of SOPA was specifically designed to undermine the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If passed, it would be the most sweeping overhaul of copyright law in at least a decade.Īrs discussed the proposal with Ryan Radia of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank. But it also includes new provisions that go beyond the language in either of those bills. ![]() It incorporates key provisions of the Senate's Protect IP Act as well as another Senate bill that makes unauthorized streaming a felony. The latest offensive in the content industry's never-ending war on copyright infringement is the Stop Online Piracy Act, which was introduced in the House two weeks ago.
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