The Obama Administration Keys in on SOPA & PIPA

The Obama administration has officially voiced its opposition toward parts of both the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) as well as the Protect IP Act (PIPA). In the official response of the Obama administration made via the blog from “WhiteHouse.gov,” Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cyber-security Coordinator for National Security Staff stress “that the important task of protecting intellectual property online must not threaten an open and innovative internet.” In their response, Espinel, Chopra, and Schmidt address the concerns Americans have with these bills and also have sough to reassure the content nad business community that nothing will be passed until all sides have met a suitable agreement: “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cyber-security risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

The Stop Online Piracy Act was introduced by U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith a Republican from Texas and aims to greatly increase the ability of U.S. law enforcement to combat the online transferring of copyrighted intellectual property. Since most websites that are committing this piracy are outside of the U.S. jurisdiction the bills main objective is to put the power in the hands of U.S. internet provides which would give them the ability to block access to transgressing domain names; said internet provides would also have the ability to sue U.S. based search engines, directories, blogs, and even forums in order to have links to these violating websites removed entirely. Also, the bill gives corporations as well as the government the ability to cut off funds to infringing websites by having U.S. based advertisers and payment websites cancel their accounts.

There is no doubt that online piracy is a big issue especially within both the film and music industry that are pushing for more action to be taken, but the concerns voiced indicate that lawmakers are using an axe here where a scalpel may be more appropriate. Deep opposition to these bills was made known by websites such as the online encyclopedia site Wikipedia, internet browser Mozilla, and the news sharing site Reddit, as well as several thousand others. These websites let their stance be known via a 24-hour content block on their sites to symbolize what could possibly come to fruition if these bills were passed; in other words, enabling content creators to block sites they accuse of copyright infringement short of proper hearings and due process. Other websites also voiced their opposition, albeit in a far less radical way when compared to the content blocks of the aforementioned websites. Google for example featured anti-SOPA content on its home page in order to spread awareness of the upcoming legislation.

Many interests are being balanced. Internet freedom, speech and expression rights, due process and hearings, and the rights of content creators. It goes without saying that online piracy is a very large and very real problem in the world today and there is demand for a different approach to the extant legal regime, but this proposed solution engendered too much opposition to justify. No doubt, legislative efforts will continue by all interested parties. Stay tuned.

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