Why is pipa and sopa good

Ironically, SOPA would not only institute the same practices as these regimes, but would essentially outlaw the tools used by activists to circumvent censorship in countries like Iran and China as well. The standard for immunity is incredibly low and the potential for abuse is off the charts. Intermediaries will find themselves under pressure to act to avoid court orders, creating a vehicle for corporations to censor sites— even those in the U.

And as Public Knowledge has pointed out , not only can this provision be used for bogus copyright claims that are protected by fair use, but large corporations can take advantage of it to stamp out emerging competitors and skirt anti-trust laws:.

While the amendment requires that the action be taken in good faith, the blocked site now bears the burden of proving either its innocence or the bad faith of its accuser in order to be unblocked.

PIPA and SOPA also still allow copyright holders to get an unopposed court order to cut off foreign websites from payment processors and advertisers. As we have continually highlighted , copyright holders already can remove infringing material from the web under the DMCA notice-and-takedown procedure. Yet the proponents of PIPA and SOPA want to give rightsholders even more power, allowing them to essentially shut down full sites instead of removing the specific infringing content.

While this provision only affects foreign sites, it still affects Americans' free speech rights. As Marvin Ammori explained , "The seminal case of Lamont v.

Postmaster makes it clear that Americans have the First Amendment right to read and listen to foreign speech, even if the foreigners lack a First Amendment speech right.

But even without it, this section would still force many intermediaries to become the Internet police by putting the responsibility of censorship enforcement on those intermediaries, who are usually innocent third parties.

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Email required Address never made public. Name required. Follow Following. Social Media Collective Join 2, other followers. An open letter to Washington speaking out against the legislation was signed by founders of Craigslist, eBay, Google, Mozilla, Twitter, and Wikipedia, among others.

In the middle are companies at the intersection of media and technology. Many video game publishers have stayed silent on the matter while their trade group, the Entertainment Software Association, supports the bills. The Business Software Alliance originally supported the bill, but withdrew its support after deciding that the legislation went too far. Both bills have taken a hit in the last week, as their authors have decided to remove the provisions that require Internet service providers to block the domain names of infringing sites.

SOPA, which has yet to pass out of the House Judiciary Committee, is reportedly stalled , as lawmakers continue to work on the bill.

Representative Darrell Issa R-California has proposed an alternative bill that is far more narrow in its focus. If you can't force overseas sites to take down copyrighted work, you can at least stop U. You can also make it harder for U. Internet users to find and access the sites. The proposed bill's text says that a site could be deemed a SOPA scofflaw if it "facilitates" copyright infringement.

Sites like YouTube, which publishes millions of user-uploaded videos each week, are worried that they would be forced to more closely police that content to avoid running afoul of the new rules. The bill requires every payment or advertising network operator to set up a process through which outside parties can notify the company that one of its customers is an "Internet site is dedicated to theft of U.

Filing false notifications is a crime, but the process would put the burden of proof -- and the legal cost of fighting a false allegation -- on the accused. As the anti-SOPA trade group NetCoalition put it in their analysis of the bill: "The legislation systematically favors a copyright owner's intellectual property rights and strips the owners of accused websites of their rights.

Who supports SOPA, and who's against it? In general, media companies have united in favor of them, while tech's big names are throwing their might into opposing them. The bill's supporters dismiss accusations of censorship, saying that the legislation is meant to revamp a broken system that doesn't adequately prevent criminal behavior.

But SOPA's critics say the bill's backers don't understand the Internet's architecture, and therefore don't appreciate the implications of the legislation they're considering. In November, tech behemoths including Google GOOG , Fortune and Facebook lodged a formal complaint letter to lawmakers, saying: "We support the bills' stated goals. Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.

Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities [and] mandates that would require monitoring of web sites.