Categories: SecurityWorkspace

SOPA Is Gone But The US Internet Dictatorship Is The Real Problem

President Barack Obama will be relieved that the death throes of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) copyright act have removed him from the uncomfortable position of being between the rock’n’roll of Silicon Valley and the hard players of Hollywood. Faced with elections in November, he was well aware that SOPA and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) threatened to split his support among the two most influential forces in California.

Consequently, the President appeared to be trying to put off his walk along the piracy gangplank by delaying the political processes. “Keep ‘em guessing” seemed to be the policy that would see him through the stump , the US equivalent of UK hustings. It looks like SOPA has fallen into the abyss but it will surely rise again in some modified form.

SOPA – dead or alive

The saga of the end of SOPA started on Saturday when a blog on the We The People site was posted by three influential members of the US government staff. They wrote: “While we believe that online piracy by foreign Websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

The responders to the US SOPA petition were Howard Schmidt, the Obama administration’s cyber-security co-ordinator; Aneesh Chopra, federal CTO for the United States; and Victoria Espinel, the US intellectual property (IP) enforcement co-ordinator. Such high-level criticism led to the Act’s sponsor Lamar Smith withdrawing the controversial requirement for ISPs to block infringing Websites. But the final blow was delivered by Republican Eric Cantor, Majority Leader in the House (Congress), when he announced all SOPA action would cease.

SOPA was highly controversial because it was loosely cast and its intention was to prevent IP theft, particularly relating to film and music. It was aimed at “foreign” sites that host or promote IP theft by offering copyrighted material without paying royalties to the originators, or for providing links to such material.

It stands as an example of governments’ failure to understand the nature of the World Wide Web resulting in them using a sledgehammer to knock home a panel pin. Pushed by the “Hollywood studios” (a term that covers primarily the film and music industries), politicians were bending over backwards to fulfill their every whim. The consequence was a Draconian draft that made the equally-powerful Silicon Valley set angry.

Under the original proposal, sites like Google whose searches reveal links to copyright-infringing sites could theoretically have been blocked or, at least, have to block searches to offending sites. This caused an outburst from Google against SOPA – a call which was taken up by other Websites and the threat of mass blackouts of services in protest.

The root of the problem is that the US is not only concerned about what it sees as a misuse of the Internet but also a deeply ingrained sense that it still “owns” the Web. When the original Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) handed over the military internetworking system that became the Internet to the world, the US theoretically gave up all controlling rights.

Ownership of the Internet

The problem is that the Internet is still largely controlled by the US and any actions taken under SOPA would have blocked services the US of which did not approve from the rest of the world. Governments have to come to terms with the fact that the Internet, like their internal legal systems, has boundaries. Even the Chinese government’s stranglehold on what its citizens can access is limited to the Chinese state but SOPA, in its latest form would affect the world.

This is something the US does not seem to grasp. The laws it passes must not limit the human rights of other countries and influence their laws. Like 19th century Britain, the US sees itself as the “policeman of the world” using its financial might to push its views on other nations.

Almost 10 years ago, the US requested the extradition of Gary McKinnon, a self-confessed hacker who penetrated various American government sites between 2001 and 2002. The problem is that there is a dispute over where the actual crime took place. McKinnon was in the UK and but the sites he attacked were in the US. Should it be the UK legal system or the US system that judges the case?

Similarly, and perhaps more controversially, Julian Assange is being sought for extradition to face charges relating to the WikiLeaks disclosures of US government emails. He did not steal the messages but he decided to publish the embarrassing information. The US claims that this put lives at risk but there are no reports of anything other than diplomatic compromises resulting from these disclosures.

Web of litigation

Now, we have the case of Richard O’Dwyer (pictured) who ran a links site, TVShack, and has just been marked for extradition. The likelihood, as in the McKinnon and Assange cases, is that the judicial system will have to deal with escalated appeals against the decision. O’Dwyer is probably the most difficult of the cases to judge because his site, currently under the control of the US government, offered links to UK material as well as US films and TV programmes. It has also been singled-out from at least ten other UK sites offering similar services.

O’Dwyer, a Sheffield student, did not host any illegal downloads on his site but merely offered links to where downloads could be found. The same sites could be discovered with Google or any other search engine though, admittedly, O’Dwyer’s syte is more obviously directed to copyright infringement. The argument remains that, if a crime was indeed committed, it was executed on British soil and should surely be dealt with under British law.

There is a deeper issue of the one-sided extradition agreement that exists between the UK and the US because the same would not be true of a US citizen offending the UK in a similar way.

The question of IP infringement is a hot potato which no-one knows how to grasp. Rather than a knee-jerk reaction, the laws need careful thought. The UK government is in disarray when it comes to Internet regulation and Ofcom is notably uncomfortable with the Digital Economy Act (DEA), our more liberal version of SOPA.

It is a battle between personal freedom versus corporate interests. In the US, it is likely that the corporates will win through in the end but the endgame is not so clear-cut in the UK and the European Union. The basic concern is how much US law will shape, or impinge upon, European freedoms.

Eric Doyle, ChannelBiz

Eric is a veteran British tech journalist, currently editing ChannelBiz for NetMediaEurope. With expertise in security, the channel, and Britain's startup culture, through his TechBritannia initiative

View Comments

  • Offering links to sites is one thing, hosting the data and delivering it is another. One is freedom of speech, the other is piracy.

  • The reason they are always complainting about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the
    rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow
    people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take
    over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).
    It's all based on the fact that we're competition.
    We've proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are.

    And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech.
    We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws
    should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

  • America should not have the power over people who they do not govern. They should put the interests of the people before those of the corporations that run the intricacies of their government. The Case of O'Dwyer is one that should not even be considered by the UK Judiciary system, He should NOT be extradited to the US for posting links to sites that HE doesn't own. This is another bill that the US is putting in to control and manipulate their own Constitution and the Liberties and Constitutions of other Countries. Anarchy will ensue if America continues like this.
    We are Anonymous, We are Legion, We Never Forgive, We Never Forget. Expect Us.

  • If i pointed someone in the direction of a gun shop, them that person bought a gun, and shot someone, i am not guilty of any offence, if i point someone to pirate sites,according to america, i am, kind of odd that isnt it?By the same token, everyone who drives a car is a potential killer, and should be rounded up for posession of a lethal weapon?
    America is getting to be an overbearing nanny to the world, driven by the rich in their persuit of more,and prepared to ride roughshod over anyone in their way,Richard o Dwyer has done nothing more than showing someone the way, be it to a gun shop or a pirate site, he has not commited an offence himself.Garry Mc kinnon should not of been able to access their defence computers, the fact he did means they should be employing him, not prosecuting him.All dinosaurs eventualy die off, the record industry is a dinosaur, hollywoods marketing models are a dinosaur, change comes, they need to evolve.

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