Why oppose sopa

So is Google, Facebook and Twitter. I here one of my senators is voting on the side of Hollywood, even co-sponsored the bill. But then again, I guess Hollywood has clout too. Thanks for the comprehensive breakdown of SOPA and how it is going to impact us all.

We have crazy EU laws to fight as well cookie law anyone? Very similar bills and are equally dangerous. Make sure to let your law makers know that you are against both bills.

The gent is a tad annoying, but his message gets at the truth behind SOPA, which everyone needs to understand. The concept behind it makes it sound like a good idea, but it covers up a lot of the damage a bill like this could do.

After several years of college I understand that copyright infringement is a growing problem. However, shutting down websites for no proven reason and shutting off financial accounts without proof of wrong doing is going too far. I thought our laws were based on the idea that people are innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until they can prove they are innocent?

That is indeed the ideal and the concept just might endure if we all raise enough noise to kill this silliness. That being a reasonably unfettered Internet. Problem with democracy if you can vote with your money, right? When you have the kinds of mega dollars poured into lobbying and influence that the entertainment industry has, you need mega dollars to counter it. Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft have the mega dollars, they need to step up to fight for the interests of the tech industry.

Requests for blacklisting have to be decided by a court, and you get the option to take representation with you and fight your side. The claimaint has to prove that you, the site owner, is using the site to illegally distribute copyrighted material for your own profit — clearly not going to happen in the examples you posted. Renegade, you might want to do some deeper analysis. Having 5 days notice before your ad network or payment processing is shut down amounts to almost no notice when trying to obtain legal counsel and submit a meaningful response.

Also, read the broad language of the bill crafted by Hollywood lobbyists with no input from the technology world. Effectively, and among many other things, SOPA wants to amend a significant portion of existing law by rushing through another bill without tempering the overly broad language.

I make my living off intellectual property, so I have no problem with the ability to protect those rights. But this is not the way to do it. No — the 5 days notice is after the court action has been decided. I think site owners should have seen this coming — they resisted the original attempts to target users that uploaded copyright content, they raged when users who downloaded pirated material were fine, they fought against efforts to close filesharing networks down, and they rallied against the idea of ISPs monitoring content….

Because the original bill works as I outlined above, and the process is still draconian to most businesses and individuals who publish online. Renegade, you seem to be saying that business owners will have the right to embroil themselves in Kafkaesque legal tangles with giant megacorporations like Viacom. If they can, I think they will. Companies whose copyrighted material is valuable enough to steal have enough money to protect that copyright.

Companies who are small enough to use blogs and social media as their main sources of promotion do not have the resources to protect themselves in court, no matter how spurious the accusation. No small business can afford to be accused of copyright infringement because of what someone else posted on their site. Not once, and certainly not more than once. This bill puts the onus on the small business and on the government, instead of on the big business, whose problem copyright infringement is in the first place.

Big businesses are very fond of saying that the market should dictate business matters, and that the government should not intervene. But when they have to pay to avoid some of the hazards that accompany being a big player in the market, suddenly they want government intervention, and to force individuals to handle their problem for them. But neither do I believe it is my job to enforce those copyrights. It is the job of the company. Trust me, if my personal material were used without my permission, you can bet that every big business in America would be telling me I have to fight that battle on my own.

I have artist and graphic designer friends who have had their work stolen and it becomes prohibitive, in both time and money, to hold the infringing party accountable.

They get a free pass basically. Sites like Ebay and Etsy claim to be just a venue, but lots of revenue dollars are created from items sold without a proper licensing agreement. The person making the item is making money, and the site is too, with no compensation to the artist or copyright holder. I think SOPA will help them very little, and it will do a lot of damage. For example, by shutting down Etsy.

I just made this point above, but you just named five companies who actually employ legal teams full-time to ensure their copyrights are protected. If this bill passes, you can bet that your friends, whose work is surely worth equal protection, will still struggle to get their copyright protected. Their complaints will not be heard above the voices of major businesses whose power is already immense. This bill will not help them. It will, however, make it possible for Disney to employ a few less lawyers.

Which must be nice for Disney. Manoel, see the reply I made above to Blog Tyrant. SOPA is expressly written to go after sites outside the U. The people who write these bills are lobbyists and lawyers for the media industry. They want the language to be overly broad and oppressive, because it makes their lives easier. The politicians who put their names on the legislation are beholden to these interests because of campaign contributions and other powerful influence factors.

Perhaps another example of how the Supreme Court decision on campaign contributions spelled the end of the USA as we know it? After all, the entertainment industry seem to be doing most of the pushing for it, and yet they are the ones sharing all their content more than individuals via YouTube, Facebook etc.

Joi Ito. Joichi "Joi" Ito is an entrepreneur with a focus on internet and technology companies. Ethan Zuckerman. Published On 17 Jan Most Read. Afghan mosque hit by blast during Friday prayers, 3 killed. Belarusian airline stops flying Middle East citizens from Turkey. While groups and individuals debate publicly, some are working behind the scenes. Microsoft, one of the biggest elephants in the room, has remained quiet about the bill so far — but as CNET reports, the company is lobbying against the bill in its current form, after it strongly endorsed PIPA earlier this year.

BSA President Robert Holleyman says that "valid and important questions have been raised" about the bill, and that it's unsatisfactory in its current form. To add more confusion, other alleged proponents of SOPA are now coming out of the woodwork in opposition to the bill: as TechDirt claims , a number of law firms and companies have asked to be taken off of the House Judiciary Committee's official list of groups supporting SOPA.

If you don't want to rely on Congress' list, you can check out this crowd sourced list of active SOPA supporters. There's no doubt that the battle over SOPA will continue through next year, and given the wildfire that's spreading on the web, the debate has no end in sight. For opponents of the bill, the greatest source of strength is not an unexpected one: the open web they're fighting for has given their message an opportunity to be heard.

With GoDaddy's reversal, it also appears to be a tool that can provide activists with tangible results. Of course, the same web allowed a "free Justin Bieber" campaign to go unchecked, but then, that might be the point: for the time being, it's still a place where people can share their ideas, their disagreements, and their inner weirdness without fear of censorship.

Unfortunately, it's also still a place where you can steal a movie with just a few clicks. Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week.

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Tablets Smartwatches Speakers Drones. Accessories Buying Guides How-tos Deals. Health Energy Environment. YouTube Instagram Adobe. Kickstarter Tumblr Art Club. Film TV Games. Fortnite Game of Thrones Books. Comics Music. Filed under: Web Policy Features. SOPA: the public debate New, 28 comments. What are the alternatives? One option, of course, is that Congress does nothing and leaves the current laws in place.

Alternative legislation has also been proposed. It also beefs up the enforcement process. It would allow digital rights holders to bring cases before the U.

International Trade Commission ITC , an independent agency that handles trademark infringement and other trade disputes. OPEN's backers had posted the draft legislation online and invited the Web community to comment on and revise the proposal.

SOPA supporters counter that the ITC doesn't have the resources for digital enforcement, and that giving it those resources would be too expensive. Print Comment.

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