Nobody who opposes Big Government and favors degregulation should favor the Stop Online Piracy Act, better known as SOPA, or H.R. 3261. It’s a big new can of worms that will cripple use of the Net, slow innovation on it, clog the courts with lawsuits, employ litigators in perpetuity and deliver copyright maximalists in the “content” business a hollow victory for the ages.
A few years back, a former government official confidentially issued a warning to a small group I was part of, which favored some kind of lawmaking around technology. While this isn’t a verbatim quote, it’s pretty close, because it has been burned in my mind ever since: “In the course of my work I have met with nearly every member of Congress. And I can tell you that, with only a handful of exceptions, there are two things none of them understand. One is economics and the other is technology. Now proceed.”
Know-nothing lawmakers are doing exactly that with SOPA. As Joshua Kopstein says, Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works.
SOPA is a test for principle for members of Congress. If you wish to save the Internet, vote against it. If you wish to fight Big Government, vote against it. If you wish to protect friends in the “content” production and distribution business at extreme cost to every other business in the world, vote for it. If you care more about a few businesses you can name and nothing about all the rest of them — which will be whiplashed by the unintended consequences of a bill that limits what can be done on the Internet while not comprehending the Internet at all, vote for it.
Rivers of ink and oceans of pixels have been spilled by others on this subject, so I’ll confine my case to a single section of the bill:
SEC. 103. MARKET-BASED SYSTEM TO PROTECT U.S. CUS- TOMERS AND PREVENT U.S. FUNDING OF SITES DEDICATED TO THEFT OF U.S. PROPERTY.
(I tried copying and pasting the whole section here, but it’s a @#$%^& .pdf, a proprietary format that has been Web-hostile from the start, but beloved of the “content” folks, as well as Congress and lawyers in general. If somebody can find us a .html or a .txt version, please let me know.)
There is nothing “market-based” about this section of the bill. “Market-based” is a paint job on more regulation, more restriction, more bureaucracy, more federal meddling, more litigation. Weighing in at nearly 17,000 words, is not only clueless about the nature of the Net and the Web, mischaracterizing both from front to back, but features the word “plaintiff” 100 or more times (I lost count). Oh, and lots of new work for this bureaucrat:
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ENFORCEMENT COORDINATOR.—The term ‘‘Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator’’ means the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator appointed under section 301 of the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 (154 U.S.C. 8111)
Yes, it exists.
We don’t need SOPA. What we do need is for Congress — along with lawmakers and regulators everywhere, right down to public utilities commissions and town councils — to at least begin to understand what the Internet is, and what it does for everybody, before it starts making laws protecting one business at the expense of all the rest.
If you want to see who is behind SOPA, just follow the money.
A couple days ago, David Weinberger told me Jimmy Wales was mulling the wisdom of shutting off Wikipedia for a day. David blogged about it. So did Cory Doctorow. Later Torrent Freak spilled the beans as well. For some perspective on this, consider these two facts: 1) Jimbo is an economic Libertarian—about as pro-business and pro-“market-based” as you can get; and 2) Wikipedia remains the only search result for anything that consistently rises above the tide of gimmickry that has corrupted the commercial Web and buried more and more “organic” (non-commercial) results under an avalanche of promotional jive.
Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute presents a solid Libertarian case against SOPA on YouTube. If it passes, he says, “the only difference between the U.S. and China is what’s on the blacklist.”
Sure, “piracy” is a problem. So are a zillion other afflictions you can name. New laws — especially ones that are written by regulatory captives and feared by real businesses in the marketplace — are not a solution. They compound the problem they purport to solve and cause untold new problems as unintended but certain consequences. Any conservative worthy of the label should be dead-set against SOPA.
Futhter reading, compiled mostly by Zemanta:
- The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) Stalls In Congress (searchengineland.com)
- SOPA: The End of the Internet as we Know It (BostInno.com)
- Can the Stop Online Piracy Act be Stopped? (musicians4freedom.com)
- Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works | Motherboard (mbcalyn.com)
- Halt The Stop Online Piracy Act (lizbethsgarden.wordpress.com)
- Tech moguls to Congress: Please don’t break the Internet (tech.fortune.cnn.com)
- How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia (wikimedia.org)
- Save the Internet: Take Action Against SOPA (forbes.com)
- Anti-SOPA Movement Picks Up Steam, With Assist from Laurence Tribe (news.firedoglake.com)
- The Internet Braces for the Horrors of the Possible Passing of the SOPA Bill (dreadcentral.com)
- Can OPEN help Congress make peace with the Internet? (gigaom.com)
- Taking The Shrill Out Of The SOPA Piracy Debate (paidcontent.org)
- Tomorrow’s SOPA hearing has been cancelled (thenextweb.com)
- SOPA vote delayed in House (csmonitor.com)
- Anti-SOPA Plug-ins Let You Prepare for the Worst (uberreview.com)
- reblog: If you hate Big Government, fight SOPA. (bostjan.konstrukt.it)
- Anti-SOPA Movement Picks Up Steam, With Assist from Laurence Tribe (news.firedoglake.com)
- Tomorrow’s SOPA hearing has been cancelled (thenextweb.com)
- If you hate Big Government, fight SOPA. (blogs.law.harvard.edu)
- reblog: If you hate Big Government, fight SOPA. (bostjan.konstrukt.it)
- SOPA is the end of us, say bloggers (politico.com)
- Go Daddy’s SOPA Entanglement (zdnet.com)
- How SOPA Would Kill Art & Creativity Online (readwriteweb.com)
- Here’s Why GoDaddy Backed Down on SOPA (news.dice.com)
- With Everyone Busy Opposing SOPA, Sister Bill “PROTECT IP” Might Enjoy a Free Pass (techie-buzz.com)
- Why Rackspace Opposes the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (rackspace.com)
- Namecheap to Donate $1 to EFF for Every Domain Transfer on December 29th (namecheap.com)
- Mashable Staff Debate Head-to-Head on SOPA (mashable.com)
- Opposing SOPA, Still Leaving GoDaddy (howardgreenstein.com)
- Go Daddy’s SOPA Entanglement (zdnet.com)
- How SOPA Would Kill Art & Creativity Online (readwriteweb.com)
- Here’s Why GoDaddy Backed Down on SOPA (news.dice.com)
- With Everyone Busy Opposing SOPA, Sister Bill “PROTECT IP” Might Enjoy a Free Pass (techie-buzz.com)
- Why Rackspace Opposes the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (rackspace.com)
- Namecheap to Donate $1 to EFF for Every Domain Transfer on December 29th (namecheap.com)
- Mashable Staff Debate Head-to-Head on SOPA (mashable.com)
- Opposing SOPA, Still Leaving GoDaddy (howardgreenstein.com)
- The #1 Connectivity Topic for 2012 is NOT digital rights! (Benoît Felten at fiberevolution.com)
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