My Geekdom

SOPA: The End Of Free Speech

SOPA, and its sister bill PROTECT-IP, are currently making their way through congress. I have pointers to some of the excellent sources of information on the bills at the end of this article.

While the magnitude of these bills is staggering, this posting focuses on how the passage of these bills will dramatically remove the ability of individuals to produce and share content on the internet.

While I favor reasonable enforcement and punishment of internet-based crimes, these bills introduce the concepts of:

• Guilty until proven innocent
• Guilty by association
• Whoopsy daisy legal recourse that restricts damages (eg: going bankrupt) due to abuse of SOPA to "s— happens" response.

into American law. At least to me, those concepts don't seem very "American".

The problems with this bill can best be demonstrated by a simple example. Let us use the consider a fictitious, non-profit website run by a couple of friends that is focused on internet freedom. The website is called Big Brother, Back-off and Stop-It! with the URL BBBandS.org.

If this bill is passed, Big Brothers Big Sisters (http://bbbs.org) could simply write a letter to search engines such as Google, content distributors such as Facebook, and payment companies such as Paypal, claiming that they feel BBBandS.org is infringing on their domain name. Once this is done, each search, content, and payment provider must contact BBBandS.org (remember that BBBandS.org is a couple of friends working out of their garage).

BBBandS.org must reply to each and every provider explaining why they do not feel that BBBandS.org is infringing on BBBS.org's domain name. It seems clear that BBBandS.org could not accomplish this task in a timely fashion.

For each company that BBBandS.org does not manage to provide a credible counterclaim to (where credible is determined by the search, content, and payment provider companies), a fairly mechanical process will begin where federal courts will execute a cease and desist to each search, content, or payment service provider informing them that they must stop servicing BBBandS.org.

Guilty until proven innocent: Note that the simple lack of a timely response to sufficient to, by means of a judicial cease and desist order, force search, and payment providers to become legally and financially liable if they continue to do business with BBBandS.org.

Guilty by association: Whether a service provider agrees or disagrees with the order, they can be held accountable if they do not "block access to or end financial affiliation" with BBBandS.org.

To add insult to injury, the bill goes on to provide "immunity from liability for service providers" that follow a cease and desist order, causing clear economic harm to BBBandS.org, even if it is eventually determined that there was no infringement.

Whoopsy daisy legal recourse: Should the cease and desist order be determined to be incorrect via a legal process that may take years and cost more money than most people will ever have, this bill restricts BBBandS.org's legal recourse to accepting the apologies of the US judicial system.

While I am in favor of what the bill claims to be protecting, this bill proposes far too high a price to pay for that protection.

If you care about the rights of small organizations (eg: people like you), please:

• Read an excellent summary of SOPA in this article. Keep in mind that the reason that the article seems ludicrous, insane, and unbelievable is because it is accurately reflecting the proposed legislation.
• Google SOPA or PROTECT-IP.
• Take action via Mozilla's page focused on this issue.
• Take action via the EFF.
• Contact your legislator using this OpenCongress.org page (takes only a minute or so).
• Discuss this issue with everyone you know.
• Discuss this issue with people you don't know. I recommend "So what do you think about SOPA?" as a pick-up line though I encourage creativity and individualism as to the exact wording.
• Post a copy or a link to one or more articles on SOPA everywhere you can.