Find a Lobbyist from our directory...
SEARCH
Help

Thought Leadership

Stop Online Piracy Act

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011. Representative Lamar Smith is the originator of the SOPA with bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill enables U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.

 

Brief Introduction

The proposed bill will allow the U.S Department of Justice to take legal action against websites accused of copyright infringement. Thereafter, depending upon the requests, the actions could include barring business transactions between the infringing websites and advertising networks/payment facilitators such as PayPal. In addition Internet Service Providers would be required to block access to such sites. Unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content would be deemed illegal. Sentencing could be a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment. Furthermore the bill also gives immunity to Internet Services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement.

 

Contents

The bill would authorize the U.S. Department of Justice to seek legal action against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction alleged of infringing on copyrights, or allowing or assisting copyright infringement. 

The bill consists of a process for intellectual property rights holders to seek relief if they have been harmed by a site dedicated to infringement. However, there are terms and conditions as follows,
  • The rights holder must find out the identity of the website which is in violation of the law. Thereafter a notification, in writing, must be provided to the related payment facilitators and ad networks mentioning the identity of the website.
  • The payment facilitators/ad networks must then forward that notification followed by the suspension of services to the identified website. However, the site can provide a counter notification that would explain how it is not in violation of the law.
  • If such a counter notification is provided then the rights holder can sue for limited injunctive   relief against the site operator.
  • The rights holder can also sue if the payment or advertising services fail to suspend service in the absence of a counter notification.

Other Provisions

Some other provisions include the increase in penalties for streaming video and selling counterfeit drugs, military equipment or consumer goods. In addition unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content would be adjudged a felony. Furthermore the bill provides immunity to those who comply with the act and take voluntary action against websites who are infringing.


Advantages of SOPA

  • Protecting Revenues for content creators is considered to be one of the major advantages of the law. The enforcement of the SOPA would prevent the flow of revenue to rogue websites and ensure that American innovators profit from their own innovations.
  • Protection against counterfeit drugs is another advantage of the law. On occasions patients are unable to indentify forged websites selling drugs which are misbranded or counterfeit.

 

Disadvantages of SOPA

  • A Center for Democracy and Technology paper states that in certain cases although only a small portion hosts or links to some infringing content the bill targets the entire website.
  • The Electronic Frontier Foundation expressed concern that open source software projects found to be aiding online piracy may be shut down under SOPA.
  • Pirate websites can reappear under different names. Therefore, even though the law is being introduced to prevent piracy it would be largely ineffective.
  • Deep-packet inspection would allow Internet Service Providers to analyze all the content that is being transferred to and from the users thus invading the consumers’ privacy.
  • The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) has developed some protocols DNNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) for ensuring internet security. The bill would harm the usefulness of this security system. The DNS system is based on trust and the DNSSEC has been developed to prevent malicious redirection of DNS traffic. Therefore, other forms of redirection will break the assurances from this security tool.
  • The Public won’t have much knowledge of the law. Therefore the possibility of holding anybody accountable is almost negligible. In addition copyright law is made privately hence it is hard for the public to know the laws’ contents and harder to protest about its operations. 

Article categories