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When a piece of freedom-busting legislation has bipartisan support, you know we're in big trouble. As one humorist wrote, “Bipartisan support is when your ex and her lawyer agree you have a problem.”
The latest pile of bipartisan waste working its way through the bowels of Congress towards its ultimate destination is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Ostensibly designed to prevent online piracy of movies and music, it will do nothing of the sort.
Remember, this comes from the same marketing department that brought you the Patriot Act, the Social Security Act, and the Communications Decency Act. What's next, the My Mom is Great Act? Who could be against patriotism, the security of society, or decent communications? Who likes online piracy? The devil is in the details.
SOPA gives the Department of Justice the authority to force firms to stop doing business with websites that take “deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability” of copyright infringement. Everybody got that?
Once you sift through the jargon, you learn some basic things. SOPA is designed to allow copyright holders who believe a website isn't working hard enough to protect their copyrights to force the DOJ to shut them down, not only through “cease and desist” orders to advertisers, but also through messing with something called the Domain Name Service registry, or DNS.
DNS software is the part of the Internet that turns web site names, like “gazette.com” into Internet protocol (IP) addresses, like 141.242.248.38. If you use your computer to surf the web, you use DNS. SOPA thinks “shutting down” a website means removing the site's name from DNS. This means that teenagers who stay up past their bedtime to visit “www.stolenmovies.com” will get a “site not found” message. And perhaps a knock on the door from the local constabulary.
As an aging computer geek, I actually know something about DNS. I'm helping to write a new version of it. Anybody who knows anything about DNS knows that removing a DNS entry doesn't do jack. There's nothing to stop rogue websites from registering under a different name and resurfacing in hours, or even minutes. Nor, realistically, do sites even need names. Any tech-savvy teen (and who among them isn't) can get a listing of rogue sites by IP address alone. It's just not that tough. Except maybe for most of the members of Congress.
None of these pesky details matter in Washington. Nor does, apparently, the presumption of innocence, or the ability of American citizens to clearly understand whether or not they might be breaking the law. It's about the sheer hubris of believing government can accomplish anything people want just by passing a law. That's a fatal conceit, whether made by the right or by the left.
I believe in the rights of creators to their creations. I respect the rights of everyone to their property, provided they obtained it honestly. If I could wave a magic wand that would stop intellectual property theft and punish those responsible, with no other negative consequences, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
But unfortunately, I can't, and neither can Congress. SOPA, just like the Communications Decency Act and numerous other attempts to make the Internet behave, will not accomplish its intended objectives. In fact it will make things worse. In the words of one of the few Congressmen who picked up his clue phone when it rang: “Butchering the Internet is not a way forward.”
Barry Fagin holds a PhD in computer science from Berkeley, and is senior fellow in technology policy at the Independence Institute. He was a plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the constitutionality of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
The latest pile of bipartisan waste working its way through the bowels of Congress towards its ultimate destination is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Ostensibly designed to prevent online piracy of movies and music, it will do nothing of the sort.
Remember, this comes from the same marketing department that brought you the Patriot Act, the Social Security Act, and the Communications Decency Act. What's next, the My Mom is Great Act? Who could be against patriotism, the security of society, or decent communications? Who likes online piracy? The devil is in the details.
SOPA gives the Department of Justice the authority to force firms to stop doing business with websites that take “deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability” of copyright infringement. Everybody got that?
Once you sift through the jargon, you learn some basic things. SOPA is designed to allow copyright holders who believe a website isn't working hard enough to protect their copyrights to force the DOJ to shut them down, not only through “cease and desist” orders to advertisers, but also through messing with something called the Domain Name Service registry, or DNS.
DNS software is the part of the Internet that turns web site names, like “gazette.com” into Internet protocol (IP) addresses, like 141.242.248.38. If you use your computer to surf the web, you use DNS. SOPA thinks “shutting down” a website means removing the site's name from DNS. This means that teenagers who stay up past their bedtime to visit “www.stolenmovies.com” will get a “site not found” message. And perhaps a knock on the door from the local constabulary.
As an aging computer geek, I actually know something about DNS. I'm helping to write a new version of it. Anybody who knows anything about DNS knows that removing a DNS entry doesn't do jack. There's nothing to stop rogue websites from registering under a different name and resurfacing in hours, or even minutes. Nor, realistically, do sites even need names. Any tech-savvy teen (and who among them isn't) can get a listing of rogue sites by IP address alone. It's just not that tough. Except maybe for most of the members of Congress.
None of these pesky details matter in Washington. Nor does, apparently, the presumption of innocence, or the ability of American citizens to clearly understand whether or not they might be breaking the law. It's about the sheer hubris of believing government can accomplish anything people want just by passing a law. That's a fatal conceit, whether made by the right or by the left.
I believe in the rights of creators to their creations. I respect the rights of everyone to their property, provided they obtained it honestly. If I could wave a magic wand that would stop intellectual property theft and punish those responsible, with no other negative consequences, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
But unfortunately, I can't, and neither can Congress. SOPA, just like the Communications Decency Act and numerous other attempts to make the Internet behave, will not accomplish its intended objectives. In fact it will make things worse. In the words of one of the few Congressmen who picked up his clue phone when it rang: “Butchering the Internet is not a way forward.”
Barry Fagin holds a PhD in computer science from Berkeley, and is senior fellow in technology policy at the Independence Institute. He was a plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the constitutionality of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
