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Stop Online Piracy Act Supports Blacklisting, Says EFF

Posted by Soulskill on from the by-any-other-name dept.

hessian writes with this quote from the Electronic Frontier Foundation about the Stop Online Piracy Act: "Of course the word 'blacklist' does not appear in the bill's text — the folks who wrote it know Americans don't approve of blatant censorship. The early versions of PROTECT-IP, the Senate's counterpart to SOPA, did include an explicit Blacklist Provision, but this transparent attempt at extrajudicial censorship was so offensive that the Senate had to re-write that part of the bill. However, provisions that encourage unofficial blacklisting remained, and they are still alive and well in SOPA. First, the new law would allow the Attorney General to cut off sites from the Internet, essentially 'blacklisting' companies from doing business on the web. Under section 102, the Attorney General can seek a court order that would force search engines, DNS providers, servers, payment processors, and advertisers to stop doing business with allegedly infringing websites. Second, the bill encourages private corporations to create a literal target list—a process that is ripe for abuse."

6 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. I really don't get it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So much time and effort is spent on failing to try to stop the potential loss of hypothetical profit. Even if you're pro-copyright, I still don't understand it. It seems to be treated as some kind of national emergency that must be 'corrected' right now. So many draconian laws being rushed through (and made in secret) just to stop such a small thing.

    1. Re:I really don't get it. by fightinfilipino · · Score: 4, Insightful

      i think it's a lot simpler than anyone's thinking. yes, government would love to have these powers. but the bottom line is that the US is no longer a manufacturing powerhouse. our economy is gasping breaths on service industries and intellectual property creation, two things where the US can still claim a measure of global superiority. of COURSE the government is going to do everything it can to prop up its two biggest cash cows.

    2. Re:I really don't get it. by blahplusplus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "I still don't understand it."

      Read all about the enclosure movement. It's the same drive for profit and power that brought both slavery and capitalism into existence, human beings once they become rich think it's their right to be rich in perpetuity and hide behind vague language and con artistry under the guise of noble ideals or fairness.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

      The drive to enclose is currently happening to games right now with MMO's and DRM. I imagine we'll start to see trojan horse of trusted computing rear it's head sooner or later or it will be slowly phased in. If I remember correctly Nintendo (and other companies I can't remember at the moment) is behind this kind of act and others like it as well.

      We really need a revolt against this kind of bullshit.

    3. Re:I really don't get it. by jonwil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Notice that its not the content creators that are pushing for this, its the content distributors (although many of them are also creators).
      Its not about piracy, its about the fact that the Internet (as it stands now) increasingly has the power to remove the content distributors as gatekeepers of the worlds content. And the big distributors are fearful that they will lose control over how content is distributed, what content is distributed and what content gets promoted (and what content does not)

  2. Scary by inhuman_4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It sounds like they wrote this legislation intending for it to be abused. Does anyone seriously think that this will stop piracy? That they won't simply move to another country?

    This is just a pretext for giving the government the authority to censor the internet. The corporations will abuse this like crazy, using the broadest interpretation of "infringement" they can. Probably also be used a revenge tool between entities like the patent trolls we see more and more of.

    Once the mechanism is in place for censorship you can be sure the government itself will start blacklisting things they don't like. Probably with gag orders attached so no one knows what is being blacklisted. Just like warrantless wiretaps.

    The American people oppose blacklists for a very good reason, this is just an attempt to use fancy wording to achieve the same ends.

    1. Re:Scary by sirlark · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Piracy? What about the wikileaks payment embargo? Doing something like that to the next 'threat to national security' will not only be much easier, i.e. won't require voluntary action on the part of payment processors, but will also be legal and not open to challenge.