Reading SOPA Jan 16 2012
Yesterday, while appearing on Up with Chris Hayes, Richard Cotton, NBCUniversal Executive Vice President and General Counsel, repeatedly claimed the SOPA was exclusively dedicated to fighting websites outside the United States that are wholesale dedicated to the theft of intellectual property. At one point he said “This legislation would not effect a single site in the U.S.” I was curious to see how much truth there was to Cotton’s statement, so I gave the text of the bill a read.
The bill actually has several sections, all mostly related to preventing theft of U.S. Property online. The two sections of the bill that are primarily related to what everyone is talking about seem to be 102 “ACTION BY ATTORNEY GENERAL TO PROTECT U.S. CUSTOMERS AND PREVENT U.S. SUPPORT OF FOREIGN INFRINGING SITES,” and 103 “MARKET-BASED SYSTEM TO PROTECT U.S. CUSTOMERS AND PREVENT U.S. FUNDING OF SITES DEDICATED TO THEFT OF U.S. PROPERTY.”
While I’m certainly not a legal scholar, it would seem that Mr. Cotton did not read the bill terribly closely. His claim that it only applies to foreign sites that are wholesale involved in copyright infrigement conflates pieces of these two sections of the bill.
Section 102 deals with foreign sites involved in any sort of intelectual property infrindgement, not just sites that are dedicted wholesale to IP infindgement as Cotton suggests. The section outlines a set of powers that allow Attorney General to serve notice to search engines to remove links to these foreign sites, and payment network providers and advertising services to stop servicing the sites.
Section 103 applys to any “Internet site is dedicated to theft of U.S. property.” This appears to be the section of the bill where Cotton got the part about ‘site that are wholesale dedicated to piracy.’ However, this section of the bill appears to apply to any site that is used by users in the U.S., whether it’s foreign or domestic.
103 is also a particularly scary part of the bill. It grants powers to intelectual property holders to submit notices to payment service providers and internet advertising services, requiring that they cut off their services to sites ‘dedicated to theft of U.S. property.’
To clarify– a holder of intelectual property can claim that essentially any website is dedicated to the theft of U.S. property, and that they are being harmed by the site. The IP holder formalizes this claim into an official notice as outlined in 103(b)(4), and delivers it to any payment service providers or internet advertising service that are servicing the site. Those companies are then required to stop all services to site within 5 days (for exact details on what this entails checkout 103(b)(1) and 103(b)(2)).
No court judgement is involved in IP holders serving these notices. However, if one of the providers elects to ignore the notice, then the IP holder can get a court order to force them into halting their services to the site.
Claiming that SOPA will not effect a single U.S. based website is simply false.