January 18, 2012

  • What Is SOPA Anyways, in English

    I'd heard vaguely of SOPA referenced here and there, but my first real run-in with it was when I tried to access Wikipedia, and found it blacked out in protest.

    That was when I decided SOPA was SERIOUS BUSINESS (because things on the Internets are SERIOUS BUSINESS). It's a bill currently being debated in the House of Representatives. A bit of running about the Internets turned up a great many explanations of the form:

    The bill would authorize the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. After delivering a court order, the U.S. Attorney General could require US-directed Internet service providers, ad networks, and payment processors to suspend doing business with sites found to infringe on federal criminal intellectual property laws. The Attorney General could also bar search engines from displaying links to the sites.
    The bill also establishes a two-step process for intellectual property rights holders to seek relief if they have been harmed by a site dedicated to infringement. The rights holder must first notify, in writing, related payment facilitators and ad networks of the identity of the website, who, in turn, must then forward that notification and suspend services to that identified website, unless that site provides a counter notification explaining how it is not in violation. The rights holder can then sue for limited injunctive relief against the site operator, if such a counter notification is provided, or if the payment or advertising services fail to suspend service in the absence of a counter notification. ((Google-cached) Wikipedia)

    and

    The bills would give the Justice Department the power to go after foreign websites willfully committing or facilitating intellectual property theft -- "rogue" sites like The Pirate Bay. The government would be able to force U.S.-based companies, like Internet service providers, credit card companies and online advertisers, to cut off ties with those sites. (CBS News)

    and suchlike. Eventually, I became cross and confused, and accosted Pesto over Gchat, which turned out this interesting little exchange (edited only for capitalization, punctuation, and one typo):

    3:54 AM me: Yipes yipes yipes; yipes yipes yipes!
     Pesto: Yipes yipes yipes? Yipes yipes yipes?
     me: What are some specific actions that would become possible under SOPA that aren't possible now? What are some that would no longer be possible?
      What does it all mean, in English?
    3:55 AM Pesto: You tell a registrar that one of the websites they host is hosting copyrighted material, and they have to take it down.
     me: Oh.
      Is that it?
    Pesto: (Pending a lawsuit to determine such niceties as whether you actually have a copyright or whether the site was actually hosting copyrighted material.)
    3:56 AM me: Oh.
      . . . There isn't already that?
     Pesto: No. Currently they have to notify the website, and the website has 24 hours to take down the copyrighted material.
    3:57 AM (The registrar takes down the whole website.)
     me: Oh dear.
    3:58 AM Pesto: The differences:
    -The whole website goes down, not just the copyrighted material;
    -Just having copyrighted material on the website is enough, not just not taking it down within 24 hours;
    -The trial comes afterwards to determine if everything was done right, with the whole website down in the meantime.
     me: What if the website removes it? Can it go back up in the meantime?
    3:59 AM Pesto: There must be something to prevent this, since even Lamar Alexander (R-TX) couldn't be that stupid, but you could tell GoDaddy (still xkcd's registrar) that xkcd is hosting material that infringes one of your copyrights, and they'd legally be required to take down all of xkcd until a lawsuit determines you're lying.
      Only if the person who claims the copyright says so.

    (Pesto's writing is always near-perfect, and all but one of the edits had to be in my (much shorter) portions of it.) So I thought about it a bit, and then I came to this conclusion:

    4:03 AM me: Oh dear. If someone said something that got my site taken down, I'd likely play Tit for Tat and file a counter-claim against their site,
      and pretty soon large portions of the internet are down (pending judgment).


    I was speaking hypothetically. I doubt anyone would be interested in taking down my blog of rants. But suppose someone really dislikes my blog. (Maybe they don't like polyamory, or maybe I'm going to hell because I think church is stupid.) So they complain to Xanga, and they say, that dragon in the background? I drew that, and wobster109 is copyright-infringing upon it!

    Under the old system, I'd have a day's time to remove it. In this case, I'd be skeptical that this person actually owns the dragon image, and I'd refuse. Then we'd get into a legal battle, and in the end it would be decided what I'm to do about it.

    Under SOPA, I don't even know if I hear about it. Xanga is immediately required to take down my page, and Google must stop turning it up in any searches, and then I have to file a counter notification. It seems (from the Google cache of Wikipedia) that Pesto's aforementioned measure to prevent this is for the accused site to file a counter notification. And then we get into a legal battle. All the while, my blog stays down, until the thing is resolved.

    And then, I'm very cross, and I Google my opponent, and I find that (s)he has a church site or something. Because I'm already cross, I quickly convince myself that getting this church site taken down will be a net benefit to the world, and then I file a counterclaim.

    This is sounding like something I'm not very happy about. How will a site survive if it is down for the time of a legal battle? How long will they take to resolve once challenges start appearing?