MIT Media Lab opposes SOPA, PIPA
I’ve been working with friend (and boss) Joi Ito to help the Media Lab put up a statement about our collective opposition to SOPA and PIPA. Joi and I are both posting this piece on our personal blogs, and a shorter piece from the Media Lab site leads to both these posts. As we get ready to post, it seems like the tide in the battle is turning, and major concessions are being offered by bill sponsors. That’s good news, but SOPA and PIPA are still worth our close attention – there are powerful forces advocating for their passage, and as we try to document below, the harms of the legislation would be serious and pervasive.
SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act – and a sister bill, PIPA – the Protect IP Act – seek to minimize the dissemination of copyrighted material online by targeting sites that promote and enable the sharing of copyright-protected material, like The Pirate Bay. While this goal may be laudable, entrepreneurs, legal scholars and free speech activists are worried about the consequences of these bills for the architecture of the Internet. At the MIT Media Lab, we share those concerns, and we oppose SOPA and PIPA as threats to innovation on the Internet.
To limit access to rogue sites, SOPA and PIPA would:
- supersede the “notice and takedown” method of policing for copyrighted material on Internet services and require service providers to police content uploaded by users or prevent users from uploading copyrighted content
- require Internet Service Providers to change their DNS servers and block resolution of the domain names of websites in other countries that host illegal copies of content
- require search engines to modify their search results to exclude foreign websites that illegally host copyrighted material
- order payment processors like PayPal and ad services like Google AdSense to cease doing business with foreign websites that illegally host copyrighted content
Major internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and others, oppose SOPA and PIPA because it changes the liability rules around copyright infringement. Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998, companies are protected from charges of “contributory infringement” on content uploaded by users, so long as the company follows a procedure and remove infringing content when an alert process is followed. SOPA substantially alters this system, and internet companies worry that without protection from contributory infringement, user-generated content sites like YouTube and Twitter would not have come into existence. The burden of reviewing user-submitted content – every blog post, every video, every image – would be impossible for a company to manage, and companies would have likely stuck with the Web 1.0 model of publishing edited, vetted content instead of moving to a Web 2.0 model where users create the content. Several internet companies took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to express their concerns about SOPA and PIPA.
Free speech advocates, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, worry that SOPA may provide powerful new tools to silence online speech. Confronted with uncomfortable political speech, repressive governments often seek to silence dissent by reporting content as defamatory, slanderous or copyright infringing, hoping the companies hosting the speech will remove the content. SOPA accelerates the process of copyright removal, with a mechanism that permits copyright holders to obtain court orders against sites hosting copyrighted materials and have those sites rapidly blocked. Scholars of online censorship, like Rebecca MacKinnon at the New America Foundation, worry that SOPA may be popular with the Chinese government as with the copyright holders who are lobbying for the bill.
US law already permits the seizure of domestic domain names that are used for piracy, and the US seized 150 domains in November. SOPA is an attempt to enforce copyright provisions across international borders by prohibiting American internet users from accessing certain foreign websites, like The Pirate Bay. In effect, it would create a firewall to prevent users from accessing prohibited intellectual property, much as China’s “great firewall” limits access to politically sensitive information.
Harvard legal scholar Lawrence Tribe believes that SOPA is likely unconstitutional, as it can remove constitutionally protected speech without a hearing, a form of “prior restraint”. In a memo sent to members of Congress, he points out that SOPA proposes a system where a single instance of prohibited material could lead to the blocking of thousands of unrelated pieces of content.
Internet experts have observed that, beyond being dangerous to innovation, harmful to speech and potentially unconstitutional, SOPA and PIPA are unlikely to work. Countries that block access to prohibited websites by altering the domain name system – as Vietnam does in blocking access to Facebook – find that millions of users are able to circumvent this form of censorship. Millions of Vietnamese users have become Facebook users by entering that site’s IP address into their browsers, or configuring their computers to use an uncensored DNS server. It’s likely that dedicated US users of The Pirate Bay and other sites will do likewise. Effectively blocking access to sites like The Pirate Bay might require US ISPs to install powerful and expensive “deep packet inspection” software, a cost that would inevitably be passed onto their users.
The progress of the bills was slowed in late 2011 by widespread online activism opposing SOPA and PIPA. Hearings are likely to resume early in 2012, and opponents of the bills are facing off against organized lobbying campaigns by the music and film industries who support the legislation. On November 16, 2011, participatory media company Tumblr took strong online action against SOPA, redirecting requests for content on the site to a page that urged users to call US representatives and oppose the bill – their daylong campaign generated more than 87,000 calls to Congress. Internet community site Reddit plans a site-wide “blackout” on January 18th to inform users of the potential harms of SOPA and PIPA. Wikipedia is considering doing the same.
In the spirit of these protests, the MIT Media Lab has linked this blogpost to all our site pages, encouraging anyone interested in the work we do to learn more about SOPA and PIPA. More information and resources follow below. We believe that SOPA and PIPA would make it harder for Media Lab students, researchers and faculty to do what we do best: create innovative technologies that anticipate the future by creating it. We hope you’ll join with us in opposing these bills and, if you are a US citizen, in letting your representatives know your concerns about this legislation.
- Joi Ito, director, MIT Media Lab
Selected resources on SOPA and PIPA
Liz Dwyer, “Why SOPA Could Kill the Open Educational Resource Movement“, Good Magazine
Julian Sanchez, “SOPA: An Architecture for Censorship“, Cato Institute
Dan Rowinsky, “What You Need to Know about SOPA in 2012“, ReadWriteWeb
“Internet Blacklist Legislation“, Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF’s email campaign against the legislation and EFF guide to meeting with your representatives.
January 15th, 2012 at 3:28 pm
[...] thorough, cogent explanations of what the bills would do and why they are so harmful to innovation, free speech, and the security of the [...]
January 15th, 2012 at 5:04 pm
[...] ese anuncio publicado en el New York Times en noviembre de 2011. La información sobre SOPA está aquí (en inglés). Tweet This entry was posted in Uncategorized by carocr. Bookmark the [...]
January 15th, 2012 at 5:28 pm
I don’ know SOPA in details, but for me regarding piracy, if the basic principles are :
1) against piracy centers and not end users (always centers in piracy due to the need for catalogs and search amongst other things, “peer to peer” also a lot of hypocrisy in the terms and everybody knows it)
2) No monitoring at all of end users flow, or collection of their IPs, a formal complaint required from somebody about a user acting as a center
3) All procedures are legal and public
Then it clearly is the right way to do it, not to forget that if piracy doesn’t create any revenues for authors and creators, it does create some (and not a little) for some people :
http://owni.fr/2011/12/14/secret-megaupload-streaming-kim-schmitz-david-robb/
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10626044
Note : above more developed below (but in French) :
http://iiscn.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/piratage-hadopi-etc/
And “zero piracy” doesn’t matter in anyway (not more than school kids exchanging files), problem is when it becomes the default and easiest access method for works and publications.
But on this, in order to have a real “user experience” added value in buying instead of pirating, and this in a non quasi monopolistic environment (or with just 2 or three “monsters”), clearly something like below would be needed :
http://iiscn.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/concepts-economie-numerique-draft/
And a little cartoon :
http://iiscn.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/vestale-sous-contraintes-exercice-ludique-en-courrier-10/
January 16th, 2012 at 8:19 am
[...] officially taking a position against SOPA and PIPA. This is a longer blog post co-authored with Ethan Zuckerman describing the issue in more detail.SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act – and a sister [...]
January 16th, 2012 at 11:22 am
[...] de la mano de su director Joi Ito. Una declaración o carta abierta donde no dudan en denominar a SOPA y PIPA como “la gran amenaza a la innovación en la red”.La carta, a diferencia del resto de denuncias públicas que hemos estado reproduciendo a lo largo [...]
January 16th, 2012 at 11:43 am
[...] MIT Media Lab contra SOPA: “Crear, innovar y anticiparnos al futuro sería más difícil” ene 16th, 2012 | Por laislabuscada | Categoría: Tecnología Hablar del MIT Media Lab es hablar de innovación, de proyectos de investigación donde la tecnología es el epicentro de su génesis. Quizá sólo por esta razón vale la pena escuchar las palabras del equipo de la mano de su director Joi Ito. Una declaración o carta abierta donde no dudan en denominar a SOPA y PIPA como “la gran amenaza a la innovación en la red”. [...]
January 16th, 2012 at 11:48 am
[...] Pues bien siguiendo el tema de sopa, encontré un gran artículo en ALT1040 en donde traducen parte de una nota expuesta por Joi Ito, director, MIT Media Lab, la cual puedes leer en el siguiente enlace LINK [...]
January 16th, 2012 at 4:52 pm
[...] Hablar del MIT Media Lab es hablar de innovación, de proyectos de investigación donde la tecnología es el epicentro de su génesis. Quizá sólo por esta razón vale la pena oir las palabras del equipo de la mano de su director Joi Ito. Una declaración o carta abierta donde no dudan en denominar a SOPA y PIPA como “la gran amenaza a la innovación en la red”. [...]
January 16th, 2012 at 11:12 pm
[...] un serio riesgo para la industria. Sitios web de importancia como eBay, Mozilla, Huffington Post MIT Media Lab, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Wikipedia y Craiglist, formalmente se han opuesto a estos [...]
January 16th, 2012 at 11:25 pm
[...] Oddly, he says he will remain a co-sponsor of the bill, but wants to amend the … …My heart’s in Accra » MIT Media Lab opposes SOPA, PIPA SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act – and a sister bill, PIPA – the Protect IP Act – seek [...]
January 16th, 2012 at 11:27 pm
[...] otro de los que se suman a los opositores de la SOPA son el Media Lab del MIT, quienes emiieron el comunicado siguente: Como muchos de ustedes deben saber, existen dos proyectos de ley que están siendo considerados [...]
January 17th, 2012 at 8:16 am
[...] MIT y [...]
January 17th, 2012 at 10:05 am
[...] un serio riesgo para la industria. Sitios web de importancia como eBay, Mozilla, Huffington Post MIT Media Lab, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Wikipedia y Craiglist, formalmente se han opuesto a estos [...]
January 17th, 2012 at 11:12 pm
[...] un serio riesgo para la industria. Sitios web de importancia como eBay, Mozilla, Huffington Post MIT Media Lab, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Wikipedia y Craiglist, formalmente se han opuesto a estos [...]
January 17th, 2012 at 11:13 pm
[...] Hablar del MIT Media Lab es hablar de innovación, de proyectos de investigación donde la tecnología es el epicentro de su génesis. Quizá sólo por esta razón vale la pena escuchar las palabras del equipo de la mano de su director Joi Ito. Una declaración o carta abierta donde no dudan en denominar a SOPA y PIPA como “la gran amenaza a la innovación en la red”. [...]
January 18th, 2012 at 3:37 am
[...] the SOPA/PIPA measures. (Here are some from our friends at TechPresident, the smart folks at the MIT Media Lab, and the veteran activists at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Oh, right, and of course, [...]
January 18th, 2012 at 4:57 am
[...] Freedom Foundation. From Google. From Mashable. From Craigslist. From Threat Level. From MIT Media Lab. And We need to talk about piracy (but we must stop SOPA first) Advertisement [...]
January 18th, 2012 at 5:17 am
[...] MIT Media Lab opposes SOPA and PIPA. [...]
January 18th, 2012 at 7:30 am
[...] MIT Media Lab opposes SOPA, PIPA (ethanzuckerman.com) [...]
January 18th, 2012 at 9:58 am
SOPA act: USA #1 on the web NO more!
Web is complex, piracy stop Nerver worked.
Old media stinks and is gone anyway
Only stupids politicians go along, ending USA #1 last hope
Triggering a western spring/summer!
January 18th, 2012 at 2:25 pm
This is just terrible….SOPA is the equivalent of curing a headache with a guillotine. It may stop piracy, but it would shut down our economy and unconstitutionally erode our most basic freedoms in the process.
I just hope that everyone realizes how important this is and does their part to save the internet & our economy! …here is another good video that explains the consequences of SOPA pretty well:
http://www.peeje.com/peeje-goes-strike-stop-web-censorship-bills-congress-209/
1,000s of more websites have joined the force and went dark today, we need EVERYONES help!!!!
January 18th, 2012 at 8:26 pm
[...] Cerf: cnet.co/rVp6uq ; Cory Doctorow y Boing Boing: bit.ly/AiPPwU ; el MIT Media Lab bit.ly/A30DdR ; Tim O’Reilly que apaga las web de O’Reilly Media oreil.ly/wnbLkw ; Public [...]
January 18th, 2012 at 10:00 pm
[...] of political protest. Also see internet and human rights activist Ethan Zuckerman’s blog for further context and an explanation of why the MIT Media Lab opposes these bills.China, infamous for their methods of controlling online activity and digitally guiding online [...]
January 19th, 2012 at 1:55 am
[...] Some free speech advocates have warned that SOPA/PIPA would be used to stifle political speech, and this is undoubtedly one of the charges that has led to China comparisons. Consider this language from Ivan Sigel and Rebecca MacKinnon, which seems slightly inflammatory: The problem is that the bills’ legal and technical solutions are very similar to mechanisms that authoritarian regimes use to censor and spy on their citizens. [...]
January 20th, 2012 at 7:35 pm
[...] And now let’s hear from Ethan Zuckerman of MIT’s Media Lab: [...]
January 25th, 2012 at 6:25 am
[...] other things. Joi Ito, as you see above, is the director of the MIT Media Lab. The article is licensed under CC BY 3.0. Yogri Mhatre’s photographs can be found on [...]
February 6th, 2012 at 12:49 pm
[...] troubling. Ethan Zuckerman and Joi Ito of the MIT Media Lab have a good blog post (“MIT Media Lab Opposes SOPA, PIPA“) explaining some of [...]
April 1st, 2012 at 2:28 pm
[...] MIT Media Lab opposes SOPA, PIPA (ethanzuckerman.com) [...]
August 30th, 2012 at 6:37 am
[...] en el desarrollo e inovación de contenidos y tecnología digital- que ha calificado a SOPA, en un comunicado oficial, como “la gran amenaza de la innovación en la [...]