In Memoriam: SOPA and PIPA

SOPA and PIPA--two bills that Hollywood said would save their industry, and that the Internet community argued would destroy theirs--are dead. SOPA and PIPA supporter Gavin Polone, a producer of Zombieland and Curb Your Enthusiasm, among others, writes an angry eulogy of sorts over at the New York Magazine website:

Mark Zuckerberg, Craig Newmark, the Google guys, and all of the other tech superstars slammed it to those traditional media companies promoting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) last week, managing to stop the bills. They are so fucking smart and cool. They are also so fucking wrong.

Hey, Gavin, watch the language! This is a family-friendly blog!

According to them, these laws will result in censorship, undo economic hardship for their companies, and a breakdown of Internet security. If you believe them, you haven’t read the law and are ignoring common sense.

I did read the laws. You can too, here: SOPA, PIPA.

Luckily, you don't need to go too far in before you start finding problems. Like the definitions page:

(5) DOMESTIC INTERNET SITE- The term `domestic Internet site' means an Internet site for which the corresponding domain name or, if there is no domain name, the corresponding Internet Protocol address, is a domestic domain name or domestic Internet Protocol address.

(6) FOREIGN DOMAIN NAME- The term `foreign domain name' means a domain name that is not a domestic domain name.

(7) FOREIGN INTERNET PROTOCOL ADDRESS- The term `foreign Internet Protocol address' means an Internet Protocol address that is not a domestic Internet protocol address.

(8) FOREIGN INTERNET SITE- The term `foreign Internet site' means an Internet site that is not a domestic Internet site.

These definitions only seem sufficient if you have no idea how the web works. Take Bit.ly for example, a popular website used for shortening domain names for sites like Twitter. Technically, the .ly part means this website is controlled by the country Libya. But the site is actually based in the Meatpacking District of New York City, and has nothing to do with Libya (the .ly site now redirects to bitly.com). This is only one example-- many sites, including Google, Facebook and others, have domain names registered to other countries. Are these "foreign sites?" If you're a lawyer, you could argue that they are, based on the definitions laid out in SOPA and PIPA. And SOPA and PIPA don't treat "foreign" sites that nicely.

This is just one example of the sloppiness of these bills.

Most people can agree that movies and music shouldn't be illegally downloaded for free. They understand that enormous sums of money and lots of hard work are used to produce this material, and downloading it from a file-sharing site is stealing.

But SOPA and PIPA were badly written laws. "Common sense" tells us that these bills should target the sites that host these copyrighted files and allow them to be downloaded. This is not what SOPA and PIPA do. Instead, they're written so broadly (with terribly vague terminology and a lack of understanding of technical terms) that they can be used to shut down legitimate sites like Reddit, Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube that host user submitted content that occasionally includes some copyrighted material.

It's the equivalent of shutting down all of Times Square because some people on the corner are selling pirated DVDs. Why not arrest the guys selling the DVDs instead of closing the whole area?

Hollywood was attempting to go nuclear with SOPA and PIPA, when they really should have gone for a targeted approach. They set themselves back by overreaching, and the internet masses made them pay for it.

Hollywood should work together with the major internet players and experts on information technology to draft legislation that would specifically target the bad guys, without holding website owners responsible for the rogue actions of a few lawbreakers that use their site.

They can also change their antiquated business model, by providing what the people want-- a cheap and quick way to download movies and music for home use, and a way to share that with a circle of close friends.

Law can be a blunt instrument, if written by people who lack the understanding of the industry they're trying to regulate. With SOPA and PIPA, Hollywood was going for something far too splashy, far too big.

Hopefully Hollywood's next attempt will be less "summer blockbuster" and more "art house indie film."

SOPA Is What Happens When Old People Are In Charge

You may have noticed some of your favorite sites are down today. No Reddit. No Wikipedia. The Google Logo looks like this:

SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act. So does this mean that Reddit, Wikipedia, and Google are all for online pirates? Hardy har har and a bottle o' rum, lets download episodes of Glee illegally!

Actually, no. The thing is, SOPA is a noble pursuit. It's an attempt by the government to prevent people from stealing and distributing copyrighted material for free. If you're a writer, and actor, a singer, a painter, or basically anyone who has ever created any unique work, you have an interest in making sure you control the distribution of that work-- especially if it's a multimillion-dollar movie.

There is already a process by which content creators can get copyrighted material removed: they submit a request to a site to take down the copyrighted material, and if the order is refused, only then do the courts get involved. Owners of websites that feature user-generated content are not forced to keep track of the hundreds of uploads that people make to their sites everyday. Only when a request is filed do they need to find and remove that content.

SOPA defenders say this different from how copyright protection works in the real world. Those found knocking off Louis Vuttons in Chinatown don't get to withdraw their merchandise for sale and avoid prosecution. People found selling pirated DVDs on the street or filming new movies in theaters are put in jail.

SOPA seeks to even that playing field. It's treating websites the same as those guys.

The problem is, it's the wrong analogy. Website owners aren't that guy selling fake Jean Paul Gautlier cologne on the street... they are the street. SOPA is essentially threatening to close down Times Square because there's a guy with a suitcase full of fake Rolexes walking around there. That's what makes no sense.

Sites like Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, thousands of others are merely virtual streets on which strangers and friends exchange information. If you hold the street responsible for the actions of a few of those people, we're all being punished. Can you imagine Facebook being shut down because one guy in Florida posted a video of The Little Mermaid? That's what SOPA will allow to happen.

If this page goes dark, this image will be why.

Meanwhile, what happens to that mermaid-loving Floridian? Absolutely nothing. The street is shut down, and the criminal simply goes distributing his wares on another street.

The thing is, the folks on the hill have no clue. They don't understand what the big deal is. This is because 100% of them were born before the internet as we knew it existed. This is because the majority of them have assistants do all their web research and emailing. This is because most of them think the internet is a connected series of tubes.

To these people, each website is a person, responsible for what appears on it. And every one of these websites is exactly the same. They can all easily filter out any copyrighted material without affecting their performance.

Is it easy to filter out that stuff? Go on YouTube. They've been employing copyright filters for years, and stuff stiff slips by. People reverse the image. They film off a TV. They recut a longer piece into shorter segments. YouTube can ban people, they can ban whole IP addresses, but they can't keep the ship airtight. In trying to do so, they may inadvertently ban parody videos, tributes, other things legally broadcasted under copyright law's the "fair use" exemption. Is it really fair to shut YouTube down if a My Little Pony episode sneaks through their filters? And keep in mind, YouTube is one of the largest sites out there, with tons of employees. What chance does a little website have?

The RIAA went after thousands of individuals for sharing their music over sites like Napster, Kazaa and Limewire-- which was boneheaded and fruitless, but at least legally defensible. SOPA makes criminals out of innocent people.

SOPA would make website owners deathly afraid of their users... in some cases, it could cause them to shutter their pages entirely, rather than face jail time at the hands of overzealous prosecutors. That's what SOPA critics are calling censorship. And I'm inclined to agree.