SOPA, PIPA and Online Advocacy
Many sites around the Internet today are limiting access to their content, or taking down their sites altogether, in response to upcoming legislation about online regulation. These bills, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA for short, in the Senate) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA for short, in the House of Representatives), attempt to address the piracy or counterfeiting of US copyrighted materials.
As a long-time supporter of open-source web development and the distribution of fair use political media, Texas Impact believes that SOPA and PIPA threatens the participatory advocacy environment that can be built online and limits the tools available for small advocacy organizations to make a difference in political life.
SOPA and PIPA would give the Attorney General and intellectual property owners the ability to force domain name hosts (such as GoDaddy), search engines (like Google) and payment facilitators (like Amazon Payments or Paypal) to deny services to infringing sites and take proactive steps to block future interactions with those sites. This censoring requires just a court order on the part of copyright holders and appears to be a system of injunction and removal of sites without due process. Further, opponents are concerned that vague definitions of facilitating infringement in the bill can lead to reputable sites (from youtube.com to texasimpact.org) being targeted by these kinds of pre-due-process activities merely for having a link (in, say, a comment) that points to a site that encourages or likewise facilitates infringement.
Vague definitions and the potential for site-wide blocking will produce a chilling effect on sites that rely on user-generated content, limiting commentary and discussion through forums or blog comments and undermining the fair use jurisprudence that protects video posts on Youtube, a process at the heart of Lege TV.
Texas Impact's grassroots advocacy work online is built on the freedoms of fair use and political commentary through discussion and multimedia content production. SOPA and PIPA, under the guise of thwarting piracy and deterring sales of counterfeit medications, would have the unintended consequence of limiting the freedom of advocacy groups to pursue those goals.
For more information on the Stop Online Piracy Act, the PROTECT IP Act, and opposition to the bills, please visit Google's Information Page or The White House's Response to Petitions on We the People.
