In case you missed it, our Assoc. Director in the Office of Government Relations, Corey Williams created this helpful PIPA, SOPA and OPEN Act Quick Reference Guide (pdf). If you’re just looking for tl;dr – The ALA will continue to voice strong opposition to PIPA and SOPA, while further analysis of the OPEN Act is needed.
Tag Archives: coica
There isn’t a fight between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and there never has been. Every new technology that Hollywood has decried as being terrible has eventually turned out to be a massive boost to Hollywood’s profits and ability to make, promote, and distribute its works. If that’s a “fight,” then it’s an odd one, in which we in the tech community keep providing all of the weapons Hollywood needs to succeed… only to see you frequently aim them at your own foot before finally working out how to use them properly.
[T]his is the worst piece of IP legislation we’ve seen in the last decade — and that’s saying something.
Rojadirecta argues that, because ‘there is no way to communicate the availability of these alternative sites on the .org or .com domains … the vast majority of users will simply stop visiting the sites altogether.’ This argument is unfounded — Rojadirecta has a large internet presence and can simply distribute information about the seizure and its new domain names to its customers.
Apparently the judge in the Puerto 80 case did not get the memo explaining how effective domain name seizures are in deterring access to rogue sites.
We already have copyright laws. Strong ones. If sites appear to be hosting illicit content, by all means let us bring them to trial and decide the issue before a judge. COICA’s unfettered power would actually be very attractive to a repressive Elizabethan regime transposed to the internet age. Mr Turow’s tangled analogy leads him in a very different, and more disturbing, direction than he imagines.
Jamie Boyle responds to Scott Turow’s recent argument about Shakespeare and copyright.
However, in writing laws to target the bad actors, Congress cannot afford to forget that the primary uses of the Internet are activities protected by the First Amendment, not civil or criminal violations.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), in his statement for the record of today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act. A much-needed antidote to the tone of the hearing, which was quite hostile toward the Internet, despite the occasional lip service to the value of online expression.
Conservative tech policy goal: ramp up IP enforcement
This is an excellent post at Ars Technica calling into question some core assumptions involved in the “conservative” view of tech policy expressed by Marsha Blackburn at the State of the Net conference earlier this week.
I would just add that it is very strange to say the FCC’s simple net neutrality rules constitute “regulating the Internet,” while extraordinary measures like COICA are just “traditional protection of private property.” In reality, it’s the other way around. Net neutrality rules are simple rules of the road that create a healthy, fair, and open market for ideas as well as for products and services. They are equivalent to the basic law-and-order rules that conservatives favor in the physical world; even pols who want to abolish the department of education agree that we need public roads.
COICA, on the other hand, lets government truly “regulate the Internet” by deciding which sites are visible to Internet users, and doing so in a way that is likely to block more speech and commerce than is necessary to enforce copyright law.
Opposition to network neutrality and support for COICA do make sense if your goal is to favor big incumbent businesses over small businesses, non-profits, and users. While this is often the preference of established politicians, it seems inconsistent with the view of government espoused by conservatives and the ascendant ‘tea party’ movement. In theory, these groups are opposed to the government playing favorites in the market, support fundamental liberties like free speech, and are suspicious of bailouts. Their principles should lead them to exactly the opposite conclusions from those drawn by Rep. Blackburn: they should support net neutrality, and oppose COICA.