Hey guys, you can probably already guess this but some of the information
in this episode is going to be a little bit out of date.
However, we decided to go ahead with it
because even though SOPA maybe done
The future is still a wide open question.
Laws like ACTA still threaten open access
to the internet in Europe
And even here in the states, the question of how
to address piracy is far from settled
So, just getting that out there in front...
Let's do this.
Hi everyone! Looks like it's Public Service Day again here at EC
Last week, you heard us lend our voice to a
a growing cry, to ask the ESA
to withdraw its support from SOPA
the Stop Online Piracy Act.
This week, we'll be discussing why this legislation is such a threat
Now, some of you may know that the vote on this legislation
was delayed last week, and many hailed it as a victory in the battle
against SOPA and ...yeah it is a victory, but
I don't think the battle is quite as over as it looks
You see, while SOPA itself may have been delayed
there's a nearly IDENTICAL bill called PIPA
moving through the senate as we speak.
And there's nothing to say that SOPA
won't come off that shelf at some point either...
so we can't be resting easy just yet.
Now, we're going to be referring mostly to SOPA
here today, but know that most everything we say
applies to PIPA as well.
Also, some of the particular parts of SOPA
we're about to discuss have already been cut from the bill.
and that's good. I hope they stay cut.
But we're still going to bring them up here, because:
A: there's no guarantee those cut sections
won't be put back in at some point.
B: I think it's important to know
SOPA's full, original intentions going forward
So, enough talk. Let's get started!
talking...
*ahem
By now, you've probably hear a lot about both of these bills
For those who haven't, the gist is that
U.S. companies need some recourse when
dealing with foreign-based piracy on the internet
and this is a legitimate problem. Right now,
if a website's located in China
or some small pacific island,
and it's distributing material that's owned by a U.S. company,
The U.S. company really can't do a whole lot about it.
Sure, you can sue the foreign company,
but you really can't enforce the result of a
U.S. suit in these countries.
And without being to enforce the results,
all you've really done is just wasted some money,
and not really done anything to stop your works from being pirated
So, we really do need some solution for that
and that's where SOPA comes in.
SOPA was designed to allow copyright holders
to essentially shutdown a site's access to
a U.S. customer base
As well as to cut them off from many of their
principal ways of receiving funds
Unfortunaetly, this approach to solving the problem
is sort of like nuking an ant hill
Yeah, you'll get rid of the ants. But you're
probably going to create some bigger issues in the process
So, let's dive into the principal problems with this bill
First off: the bill is a complete mess
and I don't mean that from a value-judgement perspective
I'm talking about the way it's organized.
This bill is unbelievably broad
and filled with conflicting language
From our reading of it, and from all
the analysis we could find from legal scholars:
Many of the underlying issues in this bill
could probably be attributed to how poorly
it was put together, and it used to be much worse before
it went through a few revisions. As it was originally written:
SOPA more or less allowed for entire
sites to be shutdown if they didn't do enough
to prevent users from uploading copyrighted material
Like if, say somebody uploaded
a copy of Harry Potter to Youtube
Warner Bros. could have Youtube shutdown
by court order, for failing to prevent the upload from happening.
Which is a logistical impossibility.
Fortunately, the language of the bill was eventually changed
and this specific flaw was greatly diminished.
But make no mistake, this bill still had plenty of other serious problems
Until recently, SOPA had some pretty scary
provisions, regarding DNS redirecting.
Thankfully, these were also some of the bits
that got nixed recently, and permanently, I hope.
But lets look into what these provisions were and what they were trying to do
It's a more complicated issue
than we can probably do justice to here
but the short version is that the Domain Name System (DNS)
is sort of like a phone book for the internet.
When you type in a web address in a browser,
it goes and looks for that address in the Domain Name System,
and that tells it what IP to connect you to.
The original provisions of SOPA would require
Internet Service Providers (ISP)
to redirect DNS queries aimed at rogue sites
and would even require search engines to stop
linking to infringing websites.
A: That's deeply troubling from a civil liberty perspective
as this is the first time the United States
has proposed giving the government these powers
the same powers, by the way, used by
Syria and China to restrict free speech and repress dissent.
and B: It also messes with the fundamental integrity
of the Domain Name System.
For years, the Department of Homeland Security
has been trying to make this system increasingly
sacrosanct (too valuable to interfere with)
if nothings ever allowed to come between you
and the domain name system, it makes it
very hard to hijack and redirect your web query,
and very easy to detect when it does happen.
But SOPA's DNS provisions would have undone all that work
In fact, the ex-director of
the Department of Homeland Security
said that SOPA runs directly counter
to the houses own Cyber-Security efforts
and a study by the Sandia National Lab
not only questions SOPA's efficacy,
but said it would negatively impact
U.S. and Global cyber-security
and internet functionality
So again, good thing those provisions are gone
let's hope they don't come back.
One last major complaint about the bill's wording
and this bit hasn't been cut out yet:
SOPA contains something called the
"Voluntary Measures" provision
which grants blanket immunity to anyone
who cuts off a suspected infringing party,
meaning they can't be sued or prosecuted or anything.
Even if they use that power in a completely discriminatory way.
So, let's say that Comcast or some other ISP
decided that they wanted to block
all foreign-based bit torrent links.
According to SOPA, they might be immune
from any net-neutrality or anti-trust challenges.
This is even more troubling, when you consider
the fact that ISPs like Comcast, have been buying
up more and more copyrighted content themselves lately
so they have a lot of interest in protecting those properties
SOPA giving them the power to unilaterally police
the internet is a problem
and like I said before, a lot of the problems we've laid out here:
The rushed process of writing the bill
The DNS tampering and such
are also big components of
PIPA, which is actually a lot closer to passing right now
There's a lot more wrong with both of these bills
in addition to what we've laid out here
and I encourage you to read them over yourself
but we don't have a lot of time, and there's something
I'd like to cover before we go
Even more than SOPA itself
what's disappointed the most about this whole thing
is watching how the process has been handled
Throughout the crafting of this bill
there has been a display of willful ignorance
that has been jaw-dropping
and -frankly- disgusting.
Shortly before dismissing the expert claims
that SOPA might do harm to the internet,
Representative Mel Watt said:
"As one who acknowledged in his opening statement...
that he was not a nerd
and didn't understand a lot of the technological stuff,
I'm not the person to argue about the technology part of this."
And that sort of brazen display of ignorance
was a running theme throughout the hearings
statement after statement was made that
included comments to the effect that
neither the speaker, nor the companies they
represented, had any idea
of the actual consequences of the bill
but they were certain that it wouldn't be as bad
as people were saying.
In fact, during the hearings on the bill
only one witness for the opposition
was allowed: Google's Lawyer
and she was treated radically differently
than any of the host of witnesses in favor of SOPA
Berated throughout her testimony,
she was essentially dismissed as having only:
"Pirate-Loving Nerd Concerns"
In fact, the advocate for the AFLCIO
went so far as to say: "The First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks."
Which -by the way- is madness.
If you're a member of the AFLCIO, please write them.
There is no way the AFLCIO, of all groups,
should be in favor of SOPA.
This is not how democracy is supposed to work
We as citizens, as members of a democratic society
are supposed to be informed, but the entire reason for having
a representative democracy
where we elect senators and congressman
rather than voting on everything ourselves
is to have people whose job it is
to do nothing but study policy
and understand its ramifications inside and out
That's their entire job
and right now, many of our representatives have failed us
So, write them. Let them know that this is not okay.
Let them know that your vote
or if you're too young, the votes of everyone
you can possibly make listen
depends on their desire to really understand
the issues they're voting on. Issues that affect your life.
When every group that was willing to spend time
to actually think about this bill
from the ACLU to the Heritage Foundation
From Ron Wyden to Ron Paul
From the CATO Institute to the Department of Homeland Security
has come out against this bill
the least we can ask from our representatives
is that they do the same.
Thanks for watching. Spread the word, we will see you next week.