Wikipedia to shut down Wednesday in SOPA protest

Wikipedia to shut down Wednesday in SOPA protest

Anger grows against online-piracy bill

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has announced that the "encyclopedia anyone can edit" will go dark this Wednesday in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act, aka SOPA, that's dividing Washington DC – not to mention pitting online content providers against ISPs, search-engine sites, civil libertarians, and others.
Wales tweeted on Monday that the English-language version of Wikipedia would go down at midnight this Wednesday, Eastern standard time (5am in the UK), and come back up in 24 hours.

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Obama Administration Responds to We the People Petitions on SOPA and Online Piracy

Obama Administration Responds to We the People Petitions on SOPA and Online Piracy

The White House has responded to two petitions about legislative approaches to combat online piracy. In their response, Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff stress that the important task of protecting intellectual property online must not threaten an open and innovative internet.

Combating Online Piracy while Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet

By Victoria Espinel, Aneesh Chopra, and Howard Schmidt

 

Thanks for taking the time to sign this petition. Both your words and actions illustrate the importance of maintaining an open and democratic Internet.

 

Right now, Congress is debating a few pieces of legislation concerning the very real issue of online piracy, including the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the PROTECT IP Act, and the Online Protection and Digital ENforcement Act (OPEN). We want to take this opportunity to tell you what the Administration will support—and what we will not support. Any effective legislation should reflect a wide range of stakeholders, including everyone from content creators to the engineers that build and maintain the infrastructure of the Internet.

 

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

 

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small. Across the globe, the openness of the Internet is increasingly central to innovation in business, government, and society and it must be protected. To minimize this risk, new legislation must be narrowly targeted only at sites beyond the reach of current U.S. law, cover activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws, and be effectively tailored, with strong due process and focused on criminal activity. Any provision covering Internet intermediaries such as online advertising networks, payment processors, or search engines must be transparent and designed to prevent overly broad private rights of action that could encourage unjustified litigation that could discourage startup businesses and innovative firms from growing.

 

We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security. Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.

 

Let us be clear—online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation's most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs.  It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews, and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders. That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response.  We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of legitimate American values.

 

This is not just a matter for legislation. We expect and encourage all private parties, including both content creators and Internet platform providers working together, to adopt voluntary measures and best practices to reduce online piracy.

 

So, rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself: Where do we go from here? Don’t limit your opinion to what’s the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what’s right. Already, many members of Congress are asking for public input around the issue. We are paying close attention to those opportunities, as well as to public input to the Administration. The organizer of this petition and a random sample of the signers will be invited to a conference call to discuss this issue further with Administration officials and soon after that, we will host an online event to get more input and answer your questions. Details on that will follow in the coming days.

 

Washington needs to hear your best ideas about how to clamp down on rogue websites and other criminals who make money off the creative efforts of American artists and rights holders. We should all be committed to working with all interested constituencies to develop new legal tools to protect global intellectual property rights without jeopardizing the openness of the Internet. Our hope is that you will bring enthusiasm and know-how to this important challenge.

 

Moving forward, we will continue to work with Congress on a bipartisan basis on legislation that provides new tools needed in the global fight against piracy and counterfeiting, while vigorously defending an open Internet based on the values of free expression, privacy, security and innovation. Again, thank you for taking the time to participate in this important process. We hope you’ll continue to be part of it.

 

Victoria Espinel is Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget

 

Aneesh Chopra is the U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President and Associate Director for Technology at the Office of Science and Technology Policy

 

Howard Schmidt is Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff

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Conyers: Stopping Online Piracy Act Urged by Unions, Businesses, and Scholars

For Immediate Release
Date: Thursday, December 15, 2011
Contact: Matthew Morgan – 202-226-5543

Conyers: Stopping Online Piracy Act Urged by Unions, Businesses, and Scholars 

(WASHINGTON) – Today, the House Judiciary Committee is considering H.R. 3261, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA), a bill to combat online intellectual property theft and protect American jobs and consumers.  House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) released the following statement.

“Prior to the bill’s passage, I am urging the Committee to adopt Mr. Smith’s manager’s amendment.  The amendment contains a number of significant changes, including language that ensures domestic websites cannot be construed as ‘rogue sites’ for the purposes of the rights-holder initiated remedy.  Additionally, the manager’s amendment addresses any due process and free speech concerns by removing the statutory notification provision from the rights-holders’ process and ensuring that a federal court is involved at every juncture in that process. 

“Passing this bill is vital to preserving American creativity and artistry in the digital age.  Online property theft costs our economy billions of dollars, and millions of American jobs depend on strong intellectual property enforcement.  Today’s markup is a victory for American artists and our economy.

“As the markup moves forward, it is clear that a great deal of misinformation has been disseminated about what is actually in the original bill and manager’s amendment.  To say that Domain Name Server Security Protocols, or DNSSEC, will be wholly gutted by the bill is false.  The manager’s amendment makes it abundantly clear through the additional savings clauses and clarification language in Section 102 that no action by the federal bench and Attorney General can undermine the architecture and security of the Internet.  The notion that the U.S. government, in protecting American jobs and property, is censoring its citizenry like China and Iran is preposterous. 

Free Speech and Due Process are core pillars of our Democracy that I would never allow to be trampled – in this bill or any other. “I would like to thank my colleagues Howard Berman, Mel Watt, Lamar Smith, and Bob Goodlatte for their commitment and leadership on intellectual property issues.”
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Will Congress Push Google To Tweak Its Algorithm To Punish Pirate Sites?

Will Congress Push Google To Tweak Its Algorithm To Punish Pirate Sites?

Mar 14, 2011 

Judging by today’s hearings (March 2011), some members of Congress are willing to consider radical measures to rid the internet of “rogue” websites accused of piracy. Among them: getting search engines like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) to tweak their search results, and ordering ISPs to block certain websites from U.S. viewers altogether. Until several months ago, Congress had never even discussed taking steps like these. The fact that they are now on the table is probably a function of several factors, including aggressive lobbying by the entertainment industry and a proliferation of illegal content online.

Congress first started considering the idea of allowing federal law enforcement to block websites in September, when Sen. Patrick Leahy introduced the controversial COICA bill in the last Congress. Now the House of Representatives is considering a similar proposal, although no bill has yet been introduced.

SEE ALSO: Congress Wants To Shut Down ‘Rogue’ Websites, But Verizon Wants Limits

That debate is taking place against a backdrop in which the government has already begun getting more aggressive with piracy. Since the middle of last year, immigration and customs officials have seized more than 100 domain names of websites they claim were flouting copyright and trademark laws.

Highlights from the hearing included:

Hollywood spokesman describes a “shadow economy” of illicit content. Frederick Huntsberry, the chief operating officer of Paramount Pictures, described how just four or five clicks from a simple Google search consumers are likely to come into contact with websites that stream content from Paramount and others without permission. Huntsberry said the big problem is the flourishing “cyberlocker” sites, which are encouraging users to upload movies and other content by offering rewards. Huntsberry estimated that one site alone, MegaUpload, earns annual profit between $40 million and $300 million.

Congress needs to pass a law to “level the playing field” between legitimate providers and pirate sites, said Huntsberry.  “We have reached the limits of self-help,” he said, noting that Paramount sent over 40 million “infringement notices” last year, but it didn’t dent piracy much. (It isn’t clear exactly what Huntsberry meant by an “infringement notice,” since later in the hearing he said Paramount sent 1.5 million copyright takedown notices.) Piracy is stealing American jobs and tax revenue, he added.

Sympathy for the cause but frustration at lack of detail. At least one Congressman was clearly sympathetic to Huntsberry’s overall cause but annoyed by the lack of detail in the proposal. Huntsberry and other witnesses should have brought a specific proposal to the table telling Congress what it should do, said Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan). “I’m disappointed in all the witnesses,” Conyers said.

“We need the ability for [law enforcement] officers to go after rogue websites,” said Huntsberry. “It is today impossible to even discover who the owners are of these sites, or where they’re served.”

Another witness, analyst Daniel Castro of The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, gave Conyers some of the specifics he was looking for: Congress should simply create blacklist of sites, then force ISPs to block them and tell search engines to remove them from lists of search results. “The federal government should work with industry to create a master list of all these sites,” said Castro. “You could require service providers and financial networks to stop doing business with these sites.”

Ready to tweak search results? In his presentation, Huntsberry showed how simple searches for normal search terms—like “stream” or “watch movies online”—still brought up many websites the entertainment industry considers “rogue” sites. That clearly had an impact on the panel, and a few different members, including Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) and Rep. Sandy Adams (R-Fla.), asked about the possibility of giving search prioritization to “authorized” media options like Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX). For example, typing a search for “stream movies” in Google makes the top link a site called Solar Movies, which Huntsberry singled out as a site full of links to pirated content, including just-released films like Paramount’s The Adjustment Bureau.

Most of the panel seemed to support the idea of cracking down on ‘rogue’ websites, but a few had criticisms. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) again emerged as one of the few Congressional opponents of a simplified system for taking down websites accused of piracy. Earlier this month, Lofgrencriticizedthe government’s seizures of websites; today, Lofgren expressed concern that a website-takedown law wouldn’t leave room for fair use or other legitimate uses of copyright material. And she also implied she was concerned about legislators ordering around search engines and ISPs. “If we move into designing technology by the U.S. government, that, too, will move offshore,” she said.

Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) had some concerns about what kind of due process should be involved with removing a website. Both Huntsberry and Castro said that it wasn’t important to let the accused address a judge before their websites were taken; allowing them to come back a day or two after the seizure took place is good enough, they said. Watt was clearly uncomfortable with that proposal. “If you look at physical goods, they are seized without court review,” noted Castro. “I wasn’t too hot on that process, either,” responded Watt. Even if the goods are unlawful, the accused should have an opportunity to make their case before their property is taken, Watt said.

Acting Regitrar of Copyright Maria Pallante testified that shutting down a website “dedicated to infringement” would not violate the First Amendment. But “even the worst of the worst should receive notice,” she said, and relief provided to copyright owners should be “narrowly tailored.” Pallante didn’t take a position on whether the government should tweak search results, saying only that it’s “a harder question.”

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SOPA bill won't make U.S. a 'repressive regime,' Democrat says

The first House of Representatives hearing devoted to a controversial online copyright bill began in an unusual way: with politicians defending themselves from charges that the proposal goes too far.

It's "beyond troubling to hear hyperbolic charges that this bill will open the floodgates to government censorship," Rep. Mel Watt, a North Carolina Democrat, said during a House Judiciary committee hearing this morning.

Rep. Lamar Smith, who says the "problem of rogue websites is real, immediate and widespread"

(Credit: U.S. House of Representatives)

Claiming that the Stop Online Piracy Act, orSOPA, will transform the United States into "a repressive regime belittles the circumstances under which true victims of tyrannical governments actually live," said Watt, a SOPA sponsor.

SOPA, which was introduced last month in the House to the applause of lobbyists for Hollywood and other large content holders, is designed to make allegedly copyright-infringing Web sites, sometimes called "rogue" Web sites, virtually disappear from the Internet. (Here is a CNET preview of the Motion Picture Association of America's remarks on piracy and job loss.)

"The notion that this bill threatens freedom of information is insupportable," said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the committee's senior Democrat and another SOPA sponsor.

These complaints are a sign that a last-minute campaign by opponents of SOPA may be working. Google, Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, and other Internet companies who oppose the measure took out a full-page ad in the New York Times; Mozilla turned its home page blackat midnight in protest; and a slew of other groups publicly came out against the bill yesterday.

SOPA's supporters are surely not delighted that today has been dubbed American Censorship Day, with Web sites including Wikimedia (as in, Wikipedia) charging that SOPA is an "Internet blacklist bill" that "would allow corporations, organizations, or the government to order an internet service provider to block an entire website simply due to an allegation that the site posted infringing content." Tumblr "censored" its users' content streams, andreported that its users are averaging 3.6 calls per second to Congress through the company's Web site.

Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and chairman of the committee, charged that Google opposed his SOPA bill because it profited from piracy.With a bit of HTML fromAmericanCensorship.org, a Web site supported by the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge, hundreds of Web sites have "censored" themselves to protest SOPA. (Even Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat from Silicon Valley, has joined the fight-censorship protest.)

Google has "disregarded requests to block advertisements from rogue pharmacies, screen such sites from searches and provide warnings about buying drugs over the Internet," Smith said. "Given Google's record, their objection to authorizing a court to order a search engine to not steer consumers to foreign rogue sites is more easily understood."

SOPA is so controversial -- EFF calls it "disastrous" -- because it would force changes to the Domain Name System and effectively create a blacklist of Internet domains suspected of intellectual property violations. Civil liberties groups and the ACLU have criticized this approach; so have free-market and libertarian groups including TechFreedom and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

A Senate version of the bill called the Protect IP Act, which a committee approved in May, was broadly supported by film- and music-industry companies. Google chairman Eric Schmidt was sharply critical, as were prominent venture capitalists, civil liberties groups, andtrade associations representing Web companies.

Rep. Lofgren from California said during this morning's hearing that it was a mistake for SOPA's backers to dismiss criticism from people and companies who would be affected by it.

"It hasn't generally been the policy of this committee to dismiss the views of the industries that we're going to regulate," Lofgren said. "I understand why cosponsors of this legislation aren't happy about widespread criticism of this bill," but attacking the messenger isn't the answer.

Lofgren also accused Smith, the panel's chairman, of deliberately stacking the composition of the panel in favor of SOPA. Of the six witnesses invited, "five are in favor and one is against," she said. "That's not a balanced panel."

Katherine Oyama, Google's copyright counsel, who was the lone witness allowed to testify against SOPA

(Credit: U.S. House of Representatives)

The lone dissenter among the witnesses was Katherine Oyama, Google's copyright counsel, who joined Google after stints in the Washington offices of the Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale law firm and as Vice President Joe Biden's associate counsel.

SOPA's supporters were not gentle in their questioning of Oyama, prompting one wag tonote on Twitter that: "I'm surprised that nobody asked Katherine Oyama if she was a communist." Rep. Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican, suggested that Google's executives "sent you to the lion's den" instead of daring to show up themselves.

Oyama said that Google and other Silicon Valley companies are critical of SOPA because "it would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that could require monitoring of Web sites and social media."

A better approach, Oyama said, would be a law that attempted to cut off the flow of funds to piratical Web sites. "We would publicly support legislation like what I described, the follow the money approach," especially if it had "a good definition of rogue site that doesn't sweep in legitimate U.S. Web sites," she said.

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