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Why are my favorite websites down today?
You've probably noticed that a number of high profile websites are offline today. Wikipedia, Craigslist, WordPress, Reddit, The Mozilla Foundation and others elected to take their enormously popular websites offline for up to 24 hours, and replace their front pages with information about this horrible legislation. Google has put the doodle on the right up as their homepage logo today as their contribution to the day of action.
We have vehemently opposed SOPA, PIPA, and the Senate version of the bill, ProtectIP (which Vermont's Senator Patrick Leahy not only supports, but is a sponsor of) from their introduction. We are no fans of stealing Intellectual Property or creative works. We don't condone the illegal use of someone else's work in any fashion. However I am a firm believer in the rule of law, and even more importantly the tenets of Due Process.
Legislation such as SOPA and ProtectIP unnecessarily short circuit the due process that we all have a responsibility to protect. Because while there are sites that exist primarily to steal or redistribute illegally obtained work, there's absolutely no need to short circuit the process of having law enforcement go before a judge, to get an injunction or a warrant. The fact of the matter is that at the end of the day, these are financial crimes, and they real impact is limited to stealing money. No one is getting hurt. There's no 'ticking time bomb'. No one's life, or livelihood, or liberty is at stake, or at risk if the offending site isn't taken down immediately. It's theft. Of money. And while that's a serious crime, it's certainly not one that should drive legislation that chips away at all of our 5th and 14th amendment rights to due process. And it most certainly doesn't justify the guilty-until-proven innocent stance that the legislation takes.
And the unintended consequence of this law is that the site owners, hosting operators and even ISPs that serve websites can potentially be held liable, or taken offline, if someone downstream of them is determined to be hosting 'finringing content'. For small operators and ISPs, this is an especially difficult position to be in - it effectively puts them in the position of being judge, jury and executioner of their customers, so that they themselves don't get shut down. Unfair? I certainly think so.
In the most amazingly hypocritical statement I've seen in a while, Chris Dodd, the former US Senator from Connecticut and current Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the organization that is the driving force behind the legislation, issued this statement blasting the blackout as a "stunt" to "punish elected and adminstration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals". In a statement laden with face-palm worthy irony, he says
"It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests."
Um, what? "rely on their information"? But this legislation has the genuine potential to allow law enforcement, with a simple judicial order (no trial, no due process), to take sites like Wikipedia, Scribd, YouTube, and any other site that shares user submitted information, down. Offline. With (and here's my favorite part of the law) *no legal recourse* if they're taken down wrongly. That's right - if your site is taken down wrongly, and you fight and win, you *can't sue for damages*. Whoops, says law enforcement and the accuser. We were wrong. Our bad, we're sorry. The reality is that the"stunt" is in fact a scary illustration of what the Internet will look likeshould this steaming pile of legalese be allowed to pass.
So today, get out there (even if it's just on the 'net, or the parts of it that are working today) and educate yourself on this legislation, and regardless of where you come down on the issue, get involved!
-Rubin
Sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16612628
http://blogs.csoonline.com/1902/chris_dodds_strange_response_to_sopa_pipa_protests
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16608314
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41911.pdf
