The Stop Online Piracy Act: a war on theft ... or free speech?
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Louis Kroeck, a copywright lawyer with Anstandig, McDyer & Yurcon.
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There's little controversy over the need for the U.S. government to rein in a shadow industry that's made the idea of paying for the latest "Batman" movie or Justin Bieber album laughable to a large segment of the world.
But, despite general support for the ultimate goal, a congressional bill meant to combat websites that traffic in copyrighted intellectual property has triggered intense opposition from critics who say it could end up damaging innocent companies in the process.
The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, has run into a firestorm of controversy since it was introduced in October by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas.
Under the act, the Department of Justice would be permitted to take action against websites in foreign countries, called "foreign infringing sites." Those actions would include issuing a legal injunction to have a website's domain name erased from DNS servers in the United States, effectively shutting the site down for American users.
DNS servers are used to translate domain names from words into the numbers of the Internet Protocol addresses where the sites actually exist. There are 13 DNS Root Servers in the world that store a database of every IP address and its corresponding domain name. Ten of the 13 root servers are located in the United States.
Additionally, once the Justice Department takes action against a foreign infringing site, Internet service providers, search engines and Internet advertising agencies would be required to comply with orders to remove the website's domain name from DNS servers, to remove links to the site from available search results and to halt any form of advertising for that site.
The Justice Department would submit court orders giving companies five days to cut contact with the foreign infringing sites. Penalties for failing to comply include the possibility of injunction to shut down the service provider, search engine or Web advertising agency.
First Published January 8, 2012 12:00 am
