Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act is seemingly going ignored by most traditional media outlets. Granted, it only affects Internet websites, it could still be argued that it is the greatest violation of free speech and the previously unregulated Internet. The potential of SOPA passing would create a list of ‘blacklisted’ websites that are deemed to be infringing on copyrights. According to Mashable, “Private companies who allege that a site is unlawfully publishing their copyrighted content could, with a judge’s signature demand that ad networks and companies such as PayPal and Visa stop doing business with such sites. Internet Service Providers would need to prevent Americans from visiting them.”

While Democrats and Republicans are embroiled in a political mud-slinging match over the implications of SOPA, lost in the shuffle is the heart of the matter: whether or not copyright and intellectual property rights can/should be enforced on such a large scale. Until recently (1982) Copyright was purely a civil matter, regulations came in the form of infringing parties being fined. Following 1982, the Copyright Act was amended to make willful infringement of a copyrighted work “for commercial advantage or private financial gain” a criminal offense (17 U.S.C. 506 (a)). (As quoted in Baker, Electronic Media Law and Regulation Reader 2010-2011 edition). Recently, this had been intensified by trade associations such as RIAA and MPAA and their well publicized battles and licensing of content to sites such as Pandora, Netflix, Blockbuster, AOL Radio etc. As copyright law has progressed and provided more protection for applications, it has always been narrowly tailored. The SOPA bill, in question, is broad, not well defined, and could actually harm those users it is trying to protect. This bill is so broad and not well defined that it will create the very thing enforcement of the first amendment is trying to avoid: the chilling effect. As Mashable put it “if enacted, [SOPA} will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure.” One key way this bill could be damaging to copyright holders is its potential to shut down aggregation services that provide additional exposure. For instance: a popular aggregator is Reddit.com (owned by Conde Nast), it features users’ self posts, as well as shared links from newspapers, magazines, and other forms of web-content. With SOPA in place, all those click through brought by the aggregator site Reddit would no longer exist because in the framework of SOPA it could be determined that Reddit is violating the copyright of newspapers on a habitual basis and thereby revoke Americans’ access to this site.

In short, SOPA at best is more government intrusion into the private affairs of its citizens. At worst, it is the widest ranging, most far reaching and intrusive initial regulatory effort by the government since the Patriot Act.