SOPA would prove detrimental to internet business and ineffective at combating piracy

By Alec Lautanen
Executive Opinion Editor

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), brought before the United States House Judiciary Committee on November 16th, aims to reduce internet copyright infringement through increased government control and restriction over various sites. This bill, if passed, will only prove to stifle new internet businesses and effectively censor the web.

While the protection of intellectual property is a prudent issue, SOPA’s methods will not contribute to this goal. SOPA’s ambiguous wording gives the entertainment industry the power to censor and sue potentially infringing web sties with the backing of the Department of Justice, a combination that would ultimately be harmful to internet commerce and free expression.

SOPA, which is essentially a re-write of a 2010 act that failed to pass, builds on limitations proposed in a United States Senate Bill, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP Act).

In addition to blocking sites, SOPA would allow the United States government to require American companies to cancel advertising or service contracts with suspect websites.

One of the key faults in this bill is the power it gives to corporations and individual copyright holders to sue sites for not regulating the posting of copyrighted material. By providing such qualitative grounds for lawsuits, SOPA would be detrimental to new search engines and social media sites that do not yet have the means for strict content control.

SOPA won’t only be detrimental to business, it will be ineffective as well. Any site that is marked as blocked could still be easily accessible by entering its Internet Protocol (IP) address instead of the actual name of the site, making the restrictions virtually useless against illegal downloaders.

This act would also inhibit creativity and free expression on the internet. Sites such as deviantART and Flickr, which are meant to showcase user-produced art and photography, could easily be restricted and censored for isolated incidents of copyright infringement, even though the majority of content is original.

By requiring American search engines to remove links to infringing websites, SOPA will create disjointed search results and differing domain name accessibility in the United States than in other nations. This discrepancy would lessen global web stability and security according to David Dagon, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech.

The entertainment industry and its copyright holders have already been given many tools to combat online piracy. Prior bills, including the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the 2007 PRO-IP Act, currently allow companies to take down individual files and posts as well as sue peer-to-peer sharing websites like Napster.com. By more thorough use of these tools, SOPA would not be needed.

The internet is one of America’s most important business tools as well as a central hub for communication and expression. If SOPA is passed, an online culture will be created that is conducive to none of these traits and the American spirit of entrepreneurialism on the web will surely fade.