That is not my greatest concern with this section, however. I simply wanted the context to be clear before bringing it up. Back in the definitions under which these rules are operating is the definition of a site against which actions should be taken. In the first section, it was a “foreign infringing site.” Here, actions are taken if an “internet site is dedicated to theft of U.S. property.” Since this regards private copyrights, you may already be asking where exactly the U.S. gets off calling them U.S. property. The answer, I suspect, is that we are living in the era of “tax expenditures,” and politicians have now transferred to openly discussing our money and property as though it belonged to them.

We’ll leave aside this disturbing philosophical stance for the moment, though. There are two conditions under which a site qualifies as being “dedicated to theft of U.S. property.” One is that it must be U.S. directed, which, as I mentioned at the beginning, includes not just foreign sites but most domestic sites. The other is a choice of two conditions. One possibility is that it appears to be made specifically for the purpose of breaking certain laws — dealing generally with copyrights owned by the actual U.S. government (the only law that has any business being in this section), circumventing copy protection, and counterfeiting. The other possibility? Here I’m going to pull out a blockquote, because it has to be seen to be believed:

(I) is taking, or has taken, deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation of section 501 or 1201 of title 17, United States Code.

Sections 501 and 1201 are the first two laws I mentioned previously. Feel free to look at page 26, line 3 if you think I made that quote up. And in case the problems with the statement aren’t immediately clear, I’d like to do a few thought experiments with that sentence.

First, what constitutes “deliberate actions”? If it never occurred to me that the U.S. copyright holders would consider my site as violating these laws, and I decide not to notify them on that basis, it’s arguably a deliberate action. Second, note that avoiding “confirming a high probability” of your site being used for illegal activities means, under this bill, that you are stealing. Whether the site actually is used for those purposes is immaterial, evidently.

What if I do not believe my site is used for illegal activities? Or I believe it could be used for illegal activities, but the probability of it happening is low? Answer: according to this section, I am automatically considered to be stealing. You don’t need to be a lawyer to see an obvious catch-22. This section happens to restrict suits to copyright holders, but it’s a small consolation when crony capitalism is rife: if the government wanted to exploit this power, it certainly could.

In the interest of completeness, I’ll note that promoting the use of the site for illegal activities is listed as an alternative way to fulfill the second part of that biconditional.

Now, the punch is pulled slightly on page 30, since this section actually requires identification of the specific way in which the website’s activities will result in irreparable loss or damage to copyright holders. Don’t put down your pitchforks and torches yet, however. Bear in mind that this in no way settles whether this will allow people to make claims that if an infringement were occurring, they would be losing revenue. This section is still dangerous, any way you slice it.

I should mention, since someone is sure to, that this section also contains a process for counter-notifying in order to limit the injunctive effects prior noted. I have two comments on that. One: how very generous of them to institute punishment first, then appeal. Two: the way the bill is written, it’s a devil’s bargain. You’ve got to consent to U.S. jurisdiction, to begin with. You also need to hand over quite a bit of personal information to the U.S. government. In the end, you’re throwing yourself at the mercy of the U.S. government and legal system, which might sound like a bargain in Sharia-laden England, but is still a risky move. I strongly suspect, and I think the writers of the bill likewise feel, that a website owner is more likely to just abandon the U.S. market.

There is also some extended discussion of procedures if a counter-notification was found to be in error, as well as a section on procedures for dropping or modifying the suit that are similar to sections of the same kind early in the first title. For the sake of brevity, having seen nothing of any particular interest as I read them, I have skipped them here.

The next section deals with immunity from suit being provided for companies that take action against foreign infringing sites or sites that steal “U.S. property.” Actually, this section gives very broad powers to any company that chooses to go vigilante on Uncle Sam’s behalf. As prior mentioned, this type of relationship is worrisome. We’ve seen the U.S. government use influence on specific companies in order to get certain results before — that sort of dealmaking is why certain companies are specifically excepted in Obamacare. Crony capitalism could just as well be leveraged here, with the U.S. government leaning on companies to “voluntarily” cut access to foreign companies in return for benefits, and the U.S. government covering for them when questions are raised as to why. It’s just one more way that this bill could lead to censorship.

Title One is rounded out by some porky provisions against sites involved in misbranding or counterfeiting of prescription medication. What this is doing in a piracy bill eludes me. It’s clearly substantially different from copyright infringement, which is the major focus of the bill. If a site is distributing counterfeit prescription medication with a misappropriated brand name, I feel that only a government bureaucrat would focus on the latter aspect.

23 Comments, 21 Threads

The Federal Government already has the power to take action against criminal web sites. There is an agency that is tasked with constant monitoring, since security breaches can be devastating to any organization that has an internet component.
See IC3 for example:http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx

I am concerned by this legislation, since the Federal Government has given itself unbridled authority to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to whomever, or TO IGNORE SAME WHENEVER IT WANTS, OR BENEFITS IT.

I’ve had an email account hijacked that has been used for spam ads. It could be used for more extreme criminal activity, and I wouldn’t know it until I was charged for violating some law, or it was shut down without notice, for some violation.
Complaining to the email provider did not resolve anything. In fact, the email provider seemed not to care because it was free advertising for the provider. Blocking fraudulent traffic only works for a short time. They’ll just hijack another account to use, or create another IP address.

At this point, giving any more power to the U.S. Congress is feeding an insatiable monster. It’s going to be hard enough throttling the beast it already is.

our pestilence of a congress is composed primarily of lawyers feathering their cushy jobs. these creepy crawlers and their giant head need to be able to silence the net this year when needed. fast and furious would never have seen the light of day had not bloggers and commenters kept injecting the truth into the smoke/obfuscation thrown up daily by the enemies of truth, the msm. calling groups/people nasty names (teabaggers, birthers) and shaming tactics are old hat. everybody and their mother have seen it, done it, tired of it. now the truth about our fraudulent fortulitous foundling frivolous fool of a fruitcake will need to be silenced. putting together disastrous ambiguous legislation is something these congresscritters are actually good at. get a bill that means nothing/anything, and enforce it to mean whatever. just watch the coin in my left hand and …

I realize that there is a great deal of peer pressure on the web to get people to not use all caps under any circumstances, but the adherence to this prejudicial rule rendered your post to be less easily understood by me. Please, in future feel free to make use of all caps when it is appropriate so that people like me CAN understand your posts.

The first thing we should do is pass a resolution banning the cute, misleading, and outright dishonest names for these bills. I don’t know who comes up with SOPA, or Megan’s Act, or Net Neutrality, but that’s half the problem with these bills. People think they mean one thing, not knowing that either it’s a small provison of a bill with larger nastier things, or it’s complete newspeak (like Net Neutrality).

Personally, I would like all the official bill names to sound like a doctorial thesis title (they are equally dense to the average reader). SOPA becomes “The Proposal to Ban Independent Internet Bloggers from Quoting Sources, as a Copyright Infringement, Even if Said Sources are Cited.”

Obviously, the media and others would come up with some shorter nickname, but it might actually better describe the bill than it’s official name. Generally some misleading name that the sponsors of the bill came up with to make it more likely to pass.

So let’s say a foreign site exists simply to publish anything that’s sent to it- whistleblower leaks, songs, cellphone videos, whatever. And somebody sends them a video clip or written material or just some kind of idle conjecture about current events that the AG doesn’t want US citizens to know about. All the AG has to do is browse the site for an unauthorized song or something similar and they can shut down access to the site? Am I missing something?

It is much more than that. The increased paperwork compliance, the threat of fines and jail time will make it more likely that this site would completely change their habit of punishing everything and either shut down or go in a new direction. At the very least it will make the cost of doing business online more expensive and it will make sites that provide access far more cautious.

If either piece of legislation passes, the harm could be felt most by independent artists and the websites that make it possible for them to express their work online.

Take Amazon, for example. Any writer can publish a book for Kindle. I would not be surprised to learn that in some cases some have infringed on the copyright of published works. In this case Amazon would be the facilitating site, certainly international in scope. So if the legislation creates burdensome paperwork, It will be the independent voices that will be silenced if the time and expense of the facilitating sites makes it infeasible to carry any tittles except those from publishing conglomerates.

Take sites such as WordPress that make it possible for any person to publish a blog. Certainly some are likely to infringe copyright in any number of ways. Will all suffer as a result of the facilitator – the host site – unknowingly permuting the infringement to occur?

The increased burden placed on website hosting companies is likely to increase the cost of maintaining a website for everyone.

Let us say while giving a live interview to one of the big TV networks the President says something particularly stupid. (I know, this is a stretch, but play along for the sake of my example.) Later, while repeating the interview, the network judiciously omits this very stupid comment.

A blogger just happens to have recorded the original interview and cannot resist sharing the very stupid comment with readers.

The powerful network claims infringement of their live performance and demands the clip be removed.

This could be interpreted to make covering a song without specifically approaching the copyright holder illegal

If so, this radically changes the situation which the performing rights organizations (ASCAP, BMI) have controlled for decades. Mounting plays is a different situation, and does involve the copyright holder. Have the alleged lawyers who’ve drafted these bills have any cognizance of performing arts laws? Seems they don’t.

The bill would also like to establish an intellectual property attaché for each region

Well, this is the Obama administration, and the more Democrat fonctionnaires on the payroll the better.

One glaring problem with the section highlighted here is that a common law term already exists, but was not here used, to describe what the section should be seeking to prohibit: willful blindness. Likewise, facilitating the commission should have the same standard as “Accessory Prior to the Fact.” A gun dealer is not liable for crimes committed with the guns he sells UNLESS he knowingly sold a weapon to someone who expressed intent to commit a crime with it.

How about Congress just quits with the law-making? I mean, it’s been three years since we’ve had a budget. I think they need to focus. And the only way we have is to threaten to vote against. In my case, that brings in worse than before.

We have enough laws. More than enough. Time to stop the stupid. I guess that means nuke DC. It’s gonna happen anyway – not literally, but when the money runs out, the rats will leave to seek easy money elsewhere. We will be left with the husk of a country.

We should never judge a law, based on how it will affect us today. Government will grow these regulations far beyond the size and scope envisioned today. Federal income tax was never expected to rise above 6%. The EPA was created to stop pollution and now considers the air we exhale to be destroying the planet. We should be terrified that laws passed will allow indefinite detention and blocking of websites. These laws are great tools for an honest broker. But in the hands of a President who would rather be dictator lord only knows.

Some 40 years from now, these laws could bring horror on the people, or everything could be flowers and lollipops. However it is rarely to the peoples benefit.

In order for this to work, they’ll also need a way to go back and sanitize all the archive sites, Google caches, wayback machine records and so forth. Youtubes of old political speeches can probably be deemed to be in violation.

Yeah, this is a bad bad bad… bad Bill. The thing about all this is, I think half the people voting for it, if not more, really have no idea what they are voting for. The RIAA and MPAA lobbyist whisper sweet nothings about protecting intellectual property, probably let them into a few backstage parties, and viola, they are all for it. Who couldn’t be for protecting intellectual property? Meanwhile a host of alphabet groups, government and civilian, are salivating for the law to go into effect. Organizations like RIAA and MPAA will immediately crush any non-sanctioned entertainment, and the government agencies will be, as they continue to be, the truncheon against speech perceived to be subversive.

I agree with whoever said we need a referendum on laws. Maybe if you could make it so that anyone who was going to vote on a bill would have to be present while it’s read aloud, word by word, there would probably be less of them then, and surely they wouldn’t be as long, and as full of erroneous vote buying crap as they are.

On your query:
One thing I have seen mentioned in relation to both SOPA and PROTECT-IP is that they supposedly allow large companies to sue smaller competitors for having insufficient defenses against infringing sites, even if they do not directly hold the copyright. While I could see such a thing coming about as a result of a tit-for-tat arrangement between government and a large enterprise, I could not find any specific line of text that demonstrates it. If anyone can, I’d be happy to add discussion on it.

You addressed the answer earlier in the article:
The weasel words: “facilitating the commission.”

I just found out about these bill a couple of days ago and have searched the Internet reading every post I could find. It seems lately that contacting our senators, congressmen, etc., do not seem to work. If this is a consumer driven industry and world then why can we not express our disapproval of government control and big business control by consumerism? We would have to stop going to the movies and concerts. Stop buying music, DVD/CD’s, movies, etc. Do not rent videos, etc. Is that the way to change the world? Consumers pay big business and big business pays the politicians. We would only be giving up things for pleasure, not for things that substain our lives. Could we do it? In the interest of protecting our freedom of speech and right to information, I think we could.