SOPA Breakdown
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Brandon Aubrey, Staff Writer
January 26, 2012
Filed under World
On January 18th, 2012, many heavily populated websites such as Google, Wikipedia and Reddit, went on a “blackout” in protest of the SOPA bill. The bill, Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA for short, is Congress’s answer to online piracy. With over seven million signatures on a petition protesting SOPA, it’s obvious that Americans would be outraged if the bill passed. But what does the bill mean?
The bill was introduced by Republican Representative Lamar S. Smith in October 2011. It was meant to protect U.S. copyrights being infringed by websites outside of the United States. SOPA would allow the U.S. government to censor any websites that are “dedicated to theft of U.S. property.” SOPA defines “theft of U.S. property” as a website that “engages in, enables, or facilitates … the sale, distribution or promotion of goods, services, or materials bearing a counterfeit mark.” (H.R.3261 Section 103)
This was a large factor in the blackout protests on the 18th. The wording of the bill would allow government action unto sites that “enabled” piracy. This could mean anything as small as even linking to copyrighted material, such as a song, movie clip, or photograph. By this wording, any link to any copyrighted material, no matter how small, could shut an entire website down.
For example; if a Facebook user were to post, say, a link to a photograph of the cover of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, the entire website could be taken down. The same goes for every website in which links can be posted, including YouTube, Reddit, CNN, and Yahoo among countless others.
SOPA would go through with these actions by several means. First off, they would force advertisement networks to stop posting ads on the website of alleged infringement. This means lack of revenue for the accused website,causing them a tremendous amount of money. Secondly, the government would force search engines, like Google, Yahoo! and Bing, from linking to the website, significantly decreasing the site’s traffic. Lastly, the web address (www…) would no longer be connected with the accused website. This means that no users could even visit the site without entering the IP address, which is a very troublesome and tedious process just top access a website. These actions together would effectively wipe out any accused website.
Another controversial part of SOPA is the aftermath of an accused site. The site, now severely injured, only has a slim chance of being able to sue the accuser back for damages. The wording in SOPA only holds accusers accountable when they “knowingly materially misrepresents” the bill. This means that the accuser could then claim that they were not “knowingly misrepresenting” the bill. So under SOPA, a copyright holder could accuse a site like Facebook of “enabling” piracy, say by means of a user posting a questionable link. If later, it is proved that the accusation is inaccurate, meaning the violator actually had the rights to use the copy written material, Facebook couldn’t even sue back. The accuser could easily say they were unaware that the accused had the rights to the content, and then be off the hook.
Now, let’s say SOPA passed. A website like Facebook would then have to undergo the incredibly large task of making sure not 1 user out of it’s entire 800,000,000 posted any sort of link to any sort of copywritten material. Even if this seemingly impossible task were to be completed by Facebook, the bill could still potentially take the site down, under some strategically specific wording.
The bill states that any site taking “actions to avoid confirming a high probability” of “theft of U.S. property” (H.R.3261 Section 103) could become a target for censorship. This would mean that if Facebook didn’t tell the government literally everything that happened on their website, they could be shut down for doing nothing illegal.
Under SOPA, any website that “facilitated or enabled” the “theft of U.S. property” (H.R.3261 Section 103) could be destroyed. If they tried to sue back, SOPA could easily protect the accuser if they weren’t “knowingly materially misrepresenting” the bill. And even if a website complied with SOPA’s demands, they would still have to go far out of their way to inform the government what they were doing with their own personal business. This is basically why the blackouts happened, and why Americans were so outraged with SOPA.