Tom's Hardware's take on SOPA
tomshardware.com
tomshardware.com
False. It's the opposite actually. A site continues to have existing safe harbor protection UNLESS it does this. Even Congress knows you can't put this type of burden on sites.
"It would deny site owners due process of law, by initiating a DNS blacklisting based solely on a good faith assertion by an individual copyright or intellectual property owner."
False. Individuals and corporations cannot DNS blacklist, or block from Google results. That's only allowed based on a request from the Attorney General, requires approval of a Judge, and only applies to foreign companies that explicitly and solely exist for the purpose of copyright infringement.
In short, it's the worst article I've ever seen on Tom's Hardware. And like watching something on CNN when you clearly know more about it than they do, I'm left to wonder if they're this wrong on everything, or it's just a rare case of them talking about something they know absolutely nothing about.
But I do see why we're so worried about politics affecting the web. We're not good at it and we're too lazy to actually read the proposals. We sure are great at moving incorrect information around, though!
The bill breaks down into two main sections.
Section 102 covers foreign sites only. It grants the government the power to tinker with DNS and remove sites from Google search results. It only applies to sites registered overseas that have no US points of contact. In other words, it's an attempt to deal with sites that moved overseas to avoid the DMCA. This is the core of why the bill exists. Debate the DNS technical issue all you want, but since Tom's Hardware isn't overseas, none of this applies to them.
Section 103 extends the DMCA to allow individuals to send takedown notices to payment providers and ad networks. Again, I can't cite something that isn't there, but you can read the bill (it's really rather short) and see that it explicitly does not mention DNS. That stuff requires action by the Attorney General and separate approval by a Judge (section 102).
Both section 102 and 103 powers further limited ONLY to sites that "primarily designed or operated for the purpose of, has only limited purpose or use other than" copyright infringement (17 USC 501), circumventing copyright (17 USC 1201), or trademark infringement (18 USC 2320).
Is Tom's Hardware a site that is primarily designed for the purpose of copyright infringement? Not at all. The bill doesn't even apply to them.
There are certainly parts of the bill worth tweaking and debating, but it's going to be hard to make progress on that in the total absence of facts.
I also think it was a huge mistake for PG to boycott and uninvite people from the demos over SOPA.
If a company stands up and expresses an opinion which matches its business interests during the debate over an unpassed bill -- that somehow renders them unworthy to talk to entrepreneurs who have a different opinion? The bill is in flux and the debate is heated (and, as shown above, largely uninformed).
If anything, the way to fix some of these idiotic, outdated copyright laws is to combine great tech with the IP assets held by the old guard and open up new opportunities. But PG doesn't want the two sides even talking while the debate is under way? That's premature and shortsighted.
So any site can continue to operate as long as they pointedly don't police user content? Considering that would make the legislation entirely ineffective, I suspect it'll get conveniently ignored. It would also then remove the ability of sites to enforce their own terms of service on user content, for fear of losing protection. (Consider that YouTube already lets copyright holders police user content, primarily because they got sued and more or less forced to. That would then make them lose their safe harbor.) And in any case, that would still force non-US sites to adhere to US regulations or get blocked, which remains a serious problem given the set of regulations the US would like to enforce on sites.
> False. Individuals and corporations cannot DNS blacklist, or block from Google results. That's only allowed based on a request from the Attorney General, requires approval of a Judge, and only applies to foreign companies that explicitly and solely exist for the purpose of copyright infringement.
Oh, and that makes it OK then? That process seems likely to become a rubber stamp, especially for requests made by the companies that bought and paid for this legislation in the first place.
And considering that the congresscritters that approve the legislation often don't bother reading it before doing so, and rely on summaries instead, I'd hardly fault Tom's Hardware for relying on the general summaries provided by other technical sources concerned about this legislation. SOPA has also undergone numerous changes and amendments since its introduction, none of which make it acceptable, but many of which make the details somewhat less concrete. The article got the major points right, and the details close to right.
So why shill for it?
It extends the DCMA's definition of service providers to include Ad Providers and Payment providers (not DNS, not tinkering with search results). Under VERY LIMITED circumstances, with explicit penalties. So if a site is overseas, devoted solely to pirated content, and is using Google Ads and PayPal to make money -- you can at least send a takedown to the US Companies involved and cut off the revenue if you can't get the content down.
In this case, it also extends Safe Harbor to include Google and PayPal, further protecting them.
To me, this is a sane and sensible extension of the DMCA that reflects 13 years of bad guys coming up with ways to avoid it.
in any case, laws don't work that way. you can't just get the sections you like. you get the whole thing.
And you're right: laws don't work that way. But debate over pending, proposed legislation most certainly does.
This article really brings it home.
This could open up a new channel for attacks against web sites. Forget about those that are just posting content with the intent of sharing. What about those that simply post/upload copyrighted content with the sole intent of bringing your site down.
Another thing that occurred, was that there is so much of this going on today, that unless people drastically change their habits, or courts are very selective with who they prosecute, every owner of every site on the web will end up in court.
So if SOPA passed today, every site on the web won't end up in court, but a big rightsholder with good crawling technology like Getty (the stock photo company with a litigation machine already in place) has a whole new way to prosecute-en-masse... this time with the ability to cut off payments and advertising for domains that would've simply ignored their threats in the past.