Online Piracy Paper
SOPA/PIPA
Cesar Vega
Florida International University
CGS 3092 Section U01 – Spring 2012
Abstract
The main topic of this document is about the relationship between the STOP ONLINE PIRACY ACT and PROTECT IP ACT. These bills were created to give power to the U.S. law enforcement agencies to fight the online piracy; these acts, created opposition parties against the proponents with a variety of opinions that will be discussed in this document.
SOPA/PIPA
1 INTRODUCTION
The SOPA and PIPA bills were proposed to protect the intellectual properties of artists, musicians, filmmakers etc., blocking unauthorized streaming of copyrighted material, infringing websites, search engines, and Pay-Online companies such as PayPal or MasterCard. These acts could, in actuality, violate freedom of speech, expression and innovation in the intent to protect the author’s copyrights.
This paper is organized in the following manner, Section number two will discuss about the meaning of the SOPA and PIPA acronyms, it will explain what the content of the acts are, as well as their similarities and differences. Section number three will discuss the main polemic problems created due to the creation of these acts and it will revise different points of view from experts in the matter. Section number four will discuss some of the cases and opinions from users; it will include an analysis of the recent news and events, which will eventually lead to conclusions about the pros and cons of the bills. Lastly, section number five will finalize this paper with an ethical analysis on the act’s proposals.
2. Background and Significance
SOPA, which stands for “Stop Online Piracy Act”, was first introduced by the U.S. representative Lamar S. Smith in order to create a way to stop dedicated theft of U.S. property; the act would stop the provision of any kind of support and services to infringing foreign websites and protect with immunity for taking voluntary action to sites dedicated to theft of intellectual property [3], and those that endanger public health [2].
PIPA, which stands for ‘‘Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011’’ or the ‘‘PROTECT IP Act of 2011’, was created in order to enhanced law enforcement against rogue websites that operates overseas [5].
The protecting of intellectual property is a key part of the engine that moves American economy, and it is critical for job development. Companies that rely in this kind of material responded to a national security survey where 67% from 7,818 businesses detected a cybercrime in 2005; 11% detected cyber theft and 24% detected other cyber security issues. This companies represent 36 economic industries in the country where monetary losses where accounted for $867 millions in 2005 and the amount keeps growing within the years.
Cyber theft is responsible for half of the losses; for this reason the President’s National Strategy is up to secure cyberspace and is directing to the department of justice to take action in this matter and come with a better plan to stop any type of cybercrime or any electronic crimes. Protecting the intellectual property is a critical move for the U.S. Government in order to guard the nation’s welfare and job formulation [6].
Similarly, counterfeit goods sold online creates a great impact on American economy, providing the customers with low quality products or in some cases bogus products that do not generate any revenue for tax paying companies and that could be dangerous to the consumers themselves. Online theft in America is a fast growing criminal activity that hurts trade marks companies and decreases the opportunity of investment in research and development.
Due to the ease of this crime the authors can remain undercover operating overseas to avoid domestic laws, it is difficult to produce a bill that satisfies all the parties involved and the ones that are directly affected when a new law is imposed. For these reasons, the US Congress postponed the law after thousands of websites, including Wikipedia, protested against the bills; millions of emails and phone calls to the congress followed by online protests have created a great concern to the Congress [7].
The following subsection wills discus the details of the SOPA and PIPA bills, the way they are carried on and the implications towards freedom of speech and expression.
2.1 SOPA and PIPA Content Details
Senator Patrick Leahy introduced PIPA along with eleven co-sponsors on May 12th 2011. But after the Congress revised the bill, another senator decided to create yet a more effective bill. Consequently, SOPA was created with it numerous variations and more power to enforce the law on the illegal websites; with this bill they now will have the power to cut services that U.S. base websites provided to the infringing websites either overseas or locally [11].
SOPA and PIPA share the same goals but they are somewhat different, SOPA is the excelling version because PIPA lacks the power to make search engines, such as Google, to remove illegal websites forms their database indexes [10]. In this section, SOPA and PIPA will be analyzed together because of its similarities but PIPA is only utilized to protect intellectual property within the U.S. laws; it cannot be used outside U. S. territory or jurisdiction.
The SOPA act was created in order to give power to be able to stop services to illegal websites that operate illegally overseas. This policy is a law that can go against any website before the owner of the site can prove their innocence beyond a reasonable doubt. After the implicated website is down, the damage could be thousands perhaps millions of dollars, and by the time they prove their innocence it might be too late to get back in business, or even recuperate some monetary losses.
SOPA works in a rather uncomplicated manner. The government cannot shut down any website that operates over seas, simply because U.S. laws do not carry on the power outside the country or their own jurisdiction, therefore, the way law enforcement works is acting on the local companies that give services to these illegal websites, for instance, search engines such as Google or Bing, ad networks, payment services websites, such as, PayPal or credit card processors, and DNS servers [8].
There are servers in the U.S associated with other servers, which associate the domain name to the server that hosts the website overseas, the way SOPA works by issuing a court order to act on the local services websites, and if they do not follow the orders these website can actually be in trouble to the point to be block from the internet. The services websites would then have to cut immediately any relation with the illegal website that is being reported.
Cutting the illegal site from the U.S. services websites sounds reasonable except for the fact that possibly the site could be legal; for example, any legal website that can use content from an illegal website would be an infringe website, as stated in the bill in the section 103 (a)(1)(b)(ii) [4], This section declares that any website that facilitates and enables any type of goods or services to the illegal websites will be in violation of the section 501 of title 17, section 1201 of title 17 and section 34(D) of the Lanham act or section 2328 of title 18 the United states code, where in these violation penalize the sale distribution or promotion of goods and services to illegal websites.
3. Ethical View
The problem with the violation code is that legal websites could be forbidden in an unfair way; hence, creating several loses for the owners. These bills are supposed to protect the intellectual property but websites such as YouTube and Flicker, where users could upload illegal material that violates the intellectual property, could be affected because after users upload copyrighted material, the entire website would become illegal [9] and it could be forbidden from the web unfairly.
Online security is a huge concern as well because PIPA and SOPA undermine the security of the online users in the section 102 (c)(2)(a)[9] which states that SOPA allows court orders to block domain name servers known as DNS, which are the providers of the internet protocols (IP) addresses, and when the site is block by blocking the IP the user will get an error when users try to reach it, at this point professional hackers could take this to their advantage. It is a common task for malicious hackers to put up online fake websites and phishing sites to steal the consumers’ money.
The Internet service providers (ISP) cannot guarantee total security of their users any more due to the court orders. The DNS blocking method is not effective because infringers can put the browser plugins from phishing websites and alternate servers to expose the legal websites and their consumers [9].
The intentions of the SOPA and PIPA bills are fair but this bills have to be revised and perhaps subject to changes constantly for the new trends of technology; otherwise, these bills will become obsoletes with the new technologies that appear each year. The main problem here is that technology evolves so fast as the new cybercrimes evolves together; in other words, for each new technology that appears there is a new type of crime waiting t be invented for criminal minds.
4. USERS
The SOPA and PIPA acts grants immunity to the Internet Service providers, advertisers, advertising networks, search engines and payment networks, in case these companies make a mistake shutting down a legal website by mistake, this mean non of this companies make a lawsuit from any of the website company owners. In the case that a legal website is blocked, many consumers would be harmed and the Internet Service Providers and other companies could use this power to compete in the market shutting down from the web their competence.
The ethical issue in these bills is the way a website such as YouTube or CNN that offers uploading services could actually look like an illegal websites because it is violating the U.S code on the bill [9]. Websites like YouTube are contacted by the owners of copyrighted material to get the material down out of the tube website but this is different from what the SOPA and PIPA bills had proposed.
Imagine a world with out this websites that provides distinct services to the users. Imagine a world with out Facebook; it would be like going backwards in the world of technology, keeping the great and innovated companies from growing and investing in research and innovation. A website that is taken down by a misrepresented violation cannot fight back because of the immunity, where even a small producer could upload his own material and then say the website is violating his/her intellectual property with the main intentions to get the site down for his/her personal convenience.
Section 103 (b)(ii) [4], mentions details about websites that refuse to confirm a high probability of the suing of the U.S. directed site. This websites would then be in violation of this sections, in another words the companies could not even protect their right to keep their material in secrecy, which could be key for this company to keep their secretes from the competition.
On the surface, SOPA and PIPA sounds about right but inside there are many isues with these bills, these violates the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution, freedom of speech; people would not be able to share information and express themselves in the same way as they do now and they would be afraid to say, post, write or upload anything on the internet because of the ,ere thought of getting in trouble due to the bills.
Copyright and trademark owners support the bills in order to protect their intellectual property but the bills create many ethical problems between users of the Internet and intellectual property owners; for example, freedom of speech is being threatened when law enforcement agencies want to protect our children from child pornography, because this appears like a good thing or the right thing to do, the way they this is been handled such as watching information about the internet history to used against the users, that is the main concern of the public [12].
Internet Service Providers would be obligated to comply with the U. S. Government giving up all their users’ private information and browsing history and with those information users cold be found guilty. Consequently, they would have to prove their innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, and there would not be more privacy for these users who are the main affected population if the bills were to be approved by the U.S. Congress.
In 2007 a woman was killed by imitated drugs that she purchased online from an illegal website. The drugs contained high metal toxicity levels that ultimately poisoned her [13]. The Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) investigated the case and they had found out the woman had consumed a counterfeited drug called Serotism, which is a human growth hormone used to treat HIV wasting. Serious cases like this should be taken into consideration, but when the products are digital products and virtual, the rules should be changed.
5. CONCLUSIONS
SOPA and PIPA could become laws later on but for now there is a lot of work still needed to be done with these bills; there are many drawbacks that could affect many companies, SOPA and PIPA talks generally about protection of intellectual property but they also could be used to detriment many companies and users, and for this particular reason these bills should be revised with the intend of satisfying all parties involved.
Protecting the American intellectual property is very crucial because it is what drives a massive part of the economy. Counterfeit goods are also a huge part of the marked that should be looked over because this could be very harmful, as it is in the drug industry. A way has to be found, to protect intellectual property and at the same time to protect the consumers, perhaps making the intellectual property more inexpensive and more accessible to the users would be a better way to deal with online piracy. If the digital products such software, music etc., are not expensive anymore; I would not be worth the effort to try to get it illegally and more people would pay for it, making the earnings even for the authors like they were getting the full initial price from just a few people who buy their material.
It is clear and evident, that the way these bills intend to protect the intellectual property but these bills still need to be more fair to companies that could be affected by a misrepresentation of their website’s content. Protecting the intellectual property is good for everybody because it promotes progress to the country and generate millions of jobs for Americans and creates research that generate advance in technology, the same technology that makes our planet a better place to live in.
REFERENCES
[1] The Library of Congress THOMAS (n.d.). The library of congress thomas . Retrieved from 112th Congress 1st session H. R. 3261 SOPA BILL
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr3261ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr3261ih.pdf
[2] The Library of Congress THOMAS (n.d.). The library of congress thomas . Retrieved from SEC. 105. IMMUNITY FOR TAKING VOLUNTARY ACTION AGAINST SITES THAT ENDANGERS PUBLIC HEALTH.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c112:1:./temp/~c112cVsWwc:e55205:
[3] The Library of Congress THOMAS (n.d.). The library of congress thomas . Retrieved from SEC.104 IMMUNITY FOR TAKING VOLUNTARY ACTION AGAINST SITES DEDICATED TO THEFT OF U.S. PROPERTY.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c112:1:./temp/~c112cVsWwc:e55205:
[4] The Library of Congress THOMAS (n.d.). The library of congress thomas . Retrieved from The act “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011’’ or the ‘‘PROTECT IP Act of 2011”.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c112:1:./temp/~c112ZZk4YT::
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s968is/pdf/BILLS-112s968is.pdf
[5] The Library of Congress THOMAS (n.d.). The library of congress thomas . Retrieved from PROTECT IP Act of 2011 sec.3
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c112:1:./temp/~c112ZZk4YT:e4785:
[6] (n.d.). In http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/ascii/cb05.txt. Retrieved March 8, 2012
[7] BBC news. (2012, January 20). Bbc news. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16655272
[8] Pepitone, J. (2012, 01 17). Cnn money. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/17/technology/sopa_explained/index.htm
[9] The consumerist [Web log message]. (2012, January 18). Retrieved from http://consumerist.com/2012/01/consumerist-is-against-sopapipa-and-thats-all-were-writing-about-today.html
[10] Retrieved from http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223590/Sen._Leahy_criticizes_knee_jerk_reaction_to_PIPA_SOPA_
[11] Retrieved from http://publicknowledge.org/e-parasite-stop-online-piracy-act?gclid=CM77gMOOra4CFYuc7Qodr2ItSg
[12] Letman, S. (28 J). Global research. Retrieved from http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28930
[13] “NRM: BC Woman Killed by Fake Drugs Bought Online.” National Review of Medicine. Web. 20 Feb. 2012. <http://www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com/issue/2007/07_30/4_policy_politics_13.html>.
Cesar Vega 