Websites flexing muscle in push against online piracy bills
The temporary shutdown by thousands of Internet sites is the latest salvo fired in a battle against Hollywood's efforts that has Washington lawmakers caught in the middle.
By Jim Puzzanghera and Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times. January 18, 2012
Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles—
Until this week, entertainment industry executives thought they had the votes for new federal legislation cracking down on foreign websites that traffic in pirated movies and music and cost them billions.
They lined up support from the powerful pharmaceutical industry and labor unions, and organized an impressive bipartisan coalition in Congress.
Then Silicon Valley struck back and appears to have outflanked Hollywood.
The result was on full display Tuesday night as Wikipedia, Craigslist and other popular sites shut down for a threatened 12- to 24-hour strike, said to be the Internet's first such stoppage. As many as 10,000 others had also threatened to go dark.
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, said the strike was meant to protest the legislation's "frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world." Visitors to Wikipedia's English-language site and others participating in the strike were met with a page urging them to write to Congress to oppose two proposed bills.
The swelling online opposition persuaded the White House to call over the weekend for lawmakers to remove the legislation's most controversial provision, which would have required U.S. search engines and payment networks to block access to websites focused on pirated materials. Supporters of the legislation say it would target foreign websites trading in stolen intellectual property, including movies and music. Critics say it would unfairly penalize legitimate websites too, such as the online classified ad service Craigslist or the photo sharing service Flickr.
Congressional sponsors are expected to remove the site-blocking provision, and to try to forge a compromise that focuses largely on cutting off the money to foreign piracy websites.
While Hollywood and other backers focused their firepower inside the Beltway, tech giants such as Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., along with websites and online activists, made a broader case and took it mainstream.
They successfully shifted the debate from piracy to Internet freedom, calling the legislation a threat to free speech that could stifle the massive Web economy. And they waged an unprecedented online campaign to slow the momentum of the fast-moving bills and endanger their passage.
"It was assumed by everyone that the content owners were going to get what they asked for," said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law. "What's happened is that the opposition campaign has gone viral. It's not just Silicon Valley speaking up, it's the public at large."
USC media professor Marty Kaplan said the Motion Picture Assn. of America is partly at a disadvantage because tech companies have a higher "brand appeal" in the general public.
"In the fight between a message that says, 'The sites you love will be shut down' and 'The expensive content you love won't be available,' I think Silicon Valley wins that argument," Kaplan said.
Although all sides agreed foreign piracy sites are a problem and preached the need to find consensus, that could be difficult given the inflamed rhetoric.
"It's time to move forward on a narrowly crafted bill," said David Hirschmann, president of the Global Intellectual Property Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a major backer of the legislation. "Whether the politics in an election year will allow for that, I still don't know yet."
The proposed legislation aims to cripple foreign-based websites that trade in pirated or counterfeit material by cutting off money from U.S. credit card companies and ad networks as well as removing the sites from search engine results and in some cases blocking access.
Opponents said the legislation risks entangling legitimate websites and adding onerous legal costs to Internet start-ups.
"The definitions and language and provisions are extremely broad and extremely vague," said Erik Martin, general manager at Reddit. "It would seem to be written without anybody who knew the technology."
But supporters of the legislation said opponents are mischaracterizing it and criticized the protests.
Former Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, now chief executive of the MPAA, called the strike a "gimmick" and "PR stunt." House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said Wikipedia and other sites participating in the blackout were "promoting fear instead of facts."
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FROM WIKIPEDIA'S HOMEPAGE DURING THE BLACK OUT:
Imagine a World
Without Free Knowledge
For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia. Learn more:
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FROM CRAIGSLIST'S HOME PAGE DURING THE BLACK OUT:
STOP PIPA (Senate 968) & SOPA (HR 3261)
Imagine a world without craigslist, Wikipedia, Google, [your favorite sites here]...
News Corp, RIAA, MPAA, Nike, Sony, Comcast, VISA & others want to make that world your reality.
80 Members of Congress are in their sway, 30 against, the rest undecided or undeclared.
★ ★ ★ Please take a minute to tell your Members of Congress you OPPOSE PIPA & SOPA ★ ★ ★
PS: corporate paymasters, KEEP THOSE CLAMMY HANDS OFF THE INTERNET!
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