http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_ActThreat to online freedom of speechAccording to the EFF, proxy servers, such as those used during the Arab Spring, can also be used to thwart copyright enforcement and therefore may be made illegal by the act.[21]
On Time's Techland blog, Jerry Brito wrote, "Imagine if the U.K. created a blacklist of American newspapers that its courts found violated celebrities' privacy? Or what if France blocked American sites it believed contained hate speech?"[22] Similarly, the Center for Democracy and Technology warned, "If SOPA and PIPA are enacted, the US government must be prepared for other governments to follow suit, in service to whatever social policies they believe are important—whether restricting hate speech, insults to public officials, or political dissent."[23]
The AFL-CIO's Paul Almeida, arguing in favor of SOPA, stated that free speech was not a relevant consideration, because "The First Amendment does not protect stealing goods off trucks."[24]
Negative impact on web hosting servicesJournalist Rebecca MacKinnon argued in an op-ed that making companies liable for users' actions could have a chilling effect on user-generated sites like YouTube. "The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar", she says.[25]
The EFF has warned that Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo all seem likely to shut down if the bill becomes law.[26] According to critics, the bill would ban linking to sites deemed offending, even in search results[27] and on services such as Twitter.[28]
Christian Dawson, COO of Virginia-based hosting company ServInt, predicted that the legislation would lead to many cloud computing and Web hosting services moving out of the US to avoid lawsuits.[29]
Conversely, Michael O'Leary of the MPAA argued at the November 16 Judiciary Committee hearing that the act's effect on business would be more minimal, noting that at least 16 countries block websites, and the internet still functions in those countries.[30] Denmark, Finland and Italy block The Pirate Bay after courts ruled in favor of music and film industry litigation, and a coalition of film and record companies has threatened to sue British Telecom if it does not follow suit.[31] Maria Pallante of the US Copyright Office said that Congress has updated the Copyright Act before and should again, or "the U.S. copyright system will ultimately fail." Asked for clarification, she said that the US currently lacks jurisdiction over websites in other countries.[30]
General threat to web-related businessesA news analysis in the information technology magazine eWeek stated, "The language of SOPA is so broad, the rules so unconnected to the reality of Internet technology and the penalties so disconnected from the alleged crimes that this bill could effectively kill e-commerce or even normal Internet use. The bill also has grave implications for existing U.S., foreign and international laws and is sure to spend decades in court challenges."[32]
Art Bordsky of advocacy group Public Knowledge similarly stated that "The definitions written in the bill are so broad that any US consumer who uses a website overseas immediately gives the US jurisdiction the power to potentially take action against it."[33]
On October 28, 2011, the EFF called the bill a "massive piece of job-killing Internet regulation," and said, "This bill cannot be fixed; it must be killed."[34]
Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, spoke out strongly against the bill, stating that "The bill attempts a radical restructuring of the laws governing the Internet," and that "It would undo the legal safe harbors that have allowed a world-leading Internet industry to flourish over the last decade. It would expose legitimate American businesses and innovators to broad and open-ended liability. The result will be more lawsuits, decreased venture capital investment, and fewer new jobs."[24]
Lukas Biewald, founder of CrowdFlower, stated that "It'll have a stifling effect on venture capital... No one would invest because of the legal liability."[35]
Booz & Company on November 16 released a study, funded by Google, finding that almost all of the 200 venture capitalists and angel investors interviewed would stop funding digital media intermediaries if the House bill becomes law. More than 80 percent said they would rather invest in a risky, weak economy with the current laws than a strong economy with the proposed law in effect. If legal ambiguities were removed and good faith provisions in place, investing would increase by nearly 115 percent.[36]
Threat to users uploading contentLateef Mtima, director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University School of Law, expressed concern that users who upload copyrighted content to sites such as YouTube could potentially be held criminally liable themselves, saying, "Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the bill is that the conduct it would criminalize is so poorly defined. While on its face the bill seems to attempt to distinguish between commercial and non-commercial conduct, purportedly criminalizing the former and permitting the latter, in actuality the bill not only fails to accomplish this but, because of its lack of concrete definitions, it potentially criminalizes conduct that is currently permitted under the law."[37]
An aide to bill sponsor Lamar Smith has said, "This bill does not make it a felony for a person to post a video on YouTube of their children singing to a copyrighted song. The bill specifically targets websites dedicated to illegal or infringing activity. Sites that host user content—like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter—have nothing to be concerned about under this legislation".[37]
Threat to internal networksA Center for Democracy and Technology paper says that the bill "targets an entire website even if only a small portion hosts or links to some infringing content."[38]
According to A.M Reilly of Industry Leaders Magazine, under SOPA, culpability for distributing copyright material is extended to those who aid the initial poster of said material. For companies that use virtual private networks to create a network that appears to be internal but is spread across various offices and employees homes, any of theses offsite locations that initiate sharing of copyright material can put the entire VPN and hosting company at risk of violation.[39]
Answering similar criticism in a CNET editorial, RIAA head Cary Sherman wrote: "Actually, it's quite the opposite. By focusing on specific sites rather than entire domains, action can be targeted against only the illegal subdomain or Internet protocol address rather than taking action against the entire domain."[40]
Threat to open source softwareThe Electronic Frontier Foundation expressed concern that open source software projects found to be aiding online piracy may be shut down under SOPA.[41] Of special concern is the web browser Mozilla,[21] which has a plug-in, MAFIAAFire Redirector, that redirects users to the new location for domains that were seized by the U.S. government.[42] In May 2011, Mozilla refused a request by the Department of Homeland Security to pull MAFIAAFire from its website, asking "Have any courts determined that the Mafiaafire add-on is unlawful or illegal in any way?"[43][44]
Ineffectual against piracyEdward J. Black, president and CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, wrote in the Huffington Post that "Ironically, it would do little to stop actual pirate websites, which could simply reappear hours later under a different name, if their numeric web addresses aren't public even sooner. Anyone who knows or has that web address would still be able to reach the offending website."[45]
An editorial in the San Jose Mercury-News stated, "Imagine the resources required to parse through the millions of Google and Facebook offerings every day looking for pirates who, if found, can just toss up another site in no time."[46]
Weakening of Digital Millennium Copyright Act protections for websitesAccording to some opponents, its requirements would overturn the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) process requiring copyright owners to submit notices of infringement to websites and ask for the infringing material to be taken down, thus protecting hosting websites that act in good faith to remove infringing content from their sites.[38][47] "If any website sets itself up in a way that does not actively log or monitor user behavior, a rights holder can always allege that the site is "avoiding confirming" the use of the site for infringement. That rights holder allegation is sufficient to put the website at major risk of losing access to payment and ad networks," said CDT lawyer David Sohn.[48]
Provider suspensions will likely target entire accounts, said the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the bill's provisions "grant them immunity for choking off a site if they have a 'reasonable' belief that a portion of a site enable(s) infringement, (and) give the payment processors a strong incentive to cut them off anyway."[26]
Law professor Jason Mazzone wrote, "Damages are also not available to the site owner unless a claimant 'knowingly materially' misrepresented that the law covers the targeted site, a difficult legal test to meet. The owner of the site can issue a counter-notice to restore payment processing and advertising but services need not comply with the counter-notice".[49]
Goodlatte added, "We're open to working with them on language to narrow [the bill's provisions], but I think it is unrealistic to think we're going to continue to rely on the DMCA notice-and-takedown provision. Anybody who is involved in providing services on the Internet would be expected to do some things. But we are very open to tweaking the language to ensure we don't impose extraordinary burdens on legitimate companies as long as they aren't the primary purveyors [of pirated content]".[50][51] The DMCA provision known as safe harbor protects YouTube[52] and other sites such as social networks hosting uploaded user material from liability, provided the sites promptly remove infringing material brought to their attention, removing "the risk that the few users among millions who post copyrighted material, libelous statements or counterfeit goods would subject the site to business-crushing legal liabilities."[53]
The MPAA's O'Leary submitted written testimony in favor of the bill that expressed guarded support of current DMCA provisions. "Where these sites are legitimate and make good faith efforts to respond to our requests, this model works with varying degrees of effectiveness," O'Leary wrote. "It does not, however, always work quickly, and it is not perfect, but it works."[16]
Deep-packet inspection and invasion of privacySOPA would allow judges to order internet service providers to block access to certain websites to customers located in the United States by checking those customers' IP address, a method known as IP blocking. There have been concerns that such an order would require those providers to engage in "deep packet inspection", which involves analyzing all of the content being transmitted to and from the user, and which could lead to an invasion of those customers' privacy.[54][55]
Negative impact on DNS, DNSSEC and internet securityThe Domain Name System (DNS) servers, most often equated with a phone directory, translate browser requests for domain names into the IP address assigned to that computer or network. The bill requires these servers to stop referring requests for infringing domains to their assigned IP addresses.
Andrew Lee, CEO of ESET North America, has expressed concerns that since the bill would require internet service providers to filter DNS queries for the sites, this would undermine the integrity of the Domain Name System.[56] On November 17, 2011, Ars Technica reported the appearance of a new anonymous top-level domain, Dot-BIT (.bit), outside of ICANN control.[57]
Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), whose district includes part of Silicon Valley, has called the bill "the end of the internet as we know it."[58]
Americans may simply switch to offshore DNS providers such as CloudFloor who offer encrypted links, said David Ulevitch, the San Francisco-based head of OpenDNS. U.S. entrepreneurs might also move offshore. "We can reincorporate as a Cayman Islands company and offer the same great service and not be a U.S. company anymore", he said.[59]
Internet securityA white paper by several internet security experts, including Steve Crocker and Dan Kaminsky, wrote, "From an operational standpoint, a resolution failure from a nameserver subject to a court order and from a hacked nameserver would be indistinguishable. Users running secure applications have a need to distinguish between policy-based failures and failures caused, for example, by the presence of an attack or a hostile network, or else downgrade attacks would likely be prolific."[60]
DNSSECThere have been concerns raised that SOPA would harm the usefulness of the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), a set of protocols developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for ensuring internet security. A white paper by the Brookings Institution wrote that "The DNS system is based on trust," adding that DNSSEC was developed to prevent malicious redirection of DNS traffic, and that "other forms of redirection will break the assurances from this security tool."[61]
On November 17, Rep. Lofgren released and posted to her website a technical assessment she requested from Sandia National Laboratories of the House and Senate bills. Neither would effectively control piracy and they would delay implementation of DNSSEC, her statement said, summarizing Sandia's response.[62] Sandia National Laboratories is an agency of the US Department of Energy that does nuclear, computer, and military research.
The Sandia letter mostly agrees with a white paper criticizing the DNS provisions of the Senate bill. It disagrees with the contention of harm to DNSSEC implementation because, it says, DNSSEC remains so far mostly unimplemented although the need for it is clear.
House cybersecurity subcommittee chairman Dan Lungren told Politico's Morning Tech that he had "very serious concerns" about SOPA's impact on the Internet security protocol, DNSSEC, adding "we don't have enough information, and if this is a serious problem as was suggested by some of the technical experts that got in touch with me, we have to address it. I can't afford to let that go by without dealing with it."[63]
Lack of transparency in enforcementBrooklyn Law School professor Jason Mazzone warned, "Much of what will happen under SOPA will occur out of the public eye and without the possibility of holding anyone accountable. For when copyright law is made and enforced privately, it is hard for the public to know the shape that the law takes and harder still to complain about its operation."[49]