On January 24, 2012 the vote will be held in the House of Representatives of the United States of America for the approval of the SOPA bill, named for its acronym in English (“ Stop Online Piracy Act”Or Stop Acts of Online Piracy). This controversial law would be achieving what we could never imagine, the potential union of the main Internet portals to make a general strike on January 23, that is, according to cNet for that day the servers of the main portals (including a: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter, Linkedin, Amazon, among others) would show a black screen in which they would publish anti-censorship warnings, requesting users to contact the political sphere to ask for a vote against the law.
Now, you may wonder why a United States Law may affect those of us outside the United States, if it will ultimately apply only to that territory. In turn, you may be in full agreement with limiting online piracy. So what is the problem?.
Let's first put the case in context. This law has been promoted by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America., PhRMA), together with some legislators as a solution to content piracy over the Internet. It is basically a legal framework for content available on the Internet within the United States. This framework will function as a filter, censoring sites that post copyrighted content (Copyright) without written permission from their authors. The main objective is to stop the piracy of movies, songs, images, software and all kinds of free content online.
However, large Internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Creative Commons organization have been against it. Large Silicon Valley companies assured in a letter that the SOPA Act invades the privacy of users and "poses a serious risk to the development of innovation and job creation, as well as to cyber security" in the country. Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google, said that this law would put the United States "on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world" (eg, China, Iran or Syria).
Where are the risks that the law is approved?
According to Christina Gagnier, a legal expert at the Huffington Post, the legal system has lagged far behind when it comes to technology. Terms such as "piracy", "copy", "remix" or "cover" are easily confused, making the interpretation of the law extremely delicate.
The explanation of the entire SOPA Act is quite long and complex, however, we can indicate that SOPA will create a regime where the first step can involve a federal litigation to block an entire site when it is assumed that it supports piracy. The costs of these litigation could force any non-profit or low-budget site (eg Wikipedia and its free knowledge movement) to contest the removal. All websites, national or international, may not have the resources to challenge US court proceedings, even with false accusations.
The crime would be classified as such simply by having a link to a site that violates the law, which will penalize not the violation of copyright, but any indication of being related to it. The cost will be a litigation, not a simple notification.
This has the consequence that large portals and sites based on Web 2.0, that is, in the interaction between millions of users with free participation in virtual communities, is potentially blocked because any user could cause the violation of the Law when, for example, you post a video on YouTube singing a song that is copyrighted (copyright), or when you write a cooking recipe on a blog that someone else says they have the rights to, or when someone places a simple link web (link) to another site on the Internet without having any idea that the site is violating any copyright, or when someone posts content in an online discussion forum that has a part that another considers to be their property, that is,it will cause self-censorship of portals and websites around the world since most Internet connections go through the United States in some way and / or reside on servers located in the United States.
This self-censorship will have very high costs to be able to have systems and human personnel to continuously monitor and filter what is being published by virtual communities and / or social networks, making the possibility of starting a business on the Internet more expensive, as well as subscription to services online. In turn, it will restrict the possibility of exchanging, sharing or lending any cultural work as it has traditionally been done in society.
What will SOPA entail for those who are classified as suspected of violating the law (without requiring a court order):
1. It orders Internet access providers (ISPs) to block DNS servers from accepting requests from websites (local and foreign) that host illegal copies of videos, songs, photos, software, etc.
2. Orders web hosting providers (Hosting) to suspend their hosting services to sites suspected of breaking the law and / or linked to those suspected of doing so.
3. It forces search engines like Google to modify the search results to exclude those websites (local and foreign) that host illegal material.
4. Causes online payment providers like PayPal to cut off funds from such sites.
5. Prevents services like Google AdSense from accepting advertising funds from sites hosting illegal material abroad.
6. Domains ending in.com,.net and.org may be disabled from the United States if there is a claim for copyright infringement against them, regardless of the local laws of the site's country of origin.
Finally, although we agree that acts of piracy should be reviewed to control them, this should be done with modern laws, which are not under an outdated or ambiguous legal framework, which are very clearly written and in turn where the law is taken into account. opinion of all participants in the Internet scenario in such a way that its misinterpretation or implementation does not limit freedom of expression and / or entrepreneurship.
NO TO THE SOUP LAW…
Success for all…
