SOPA and its Implications for Indy Media

The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, is a new bill that hopes to stop online copyright infringement by cracking down on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr. Under the bill, companies and copyright holders could order court injunctions that ask for the immediate removal of websites which allegedly "encourage" piracy.

If passed, SOPA would completely change our Internet experience as we know it. According to an article on the Huffington Post, the bill would mean that all websites with user-generated content would have "no choice but to pre-screen every posting to comply with the law." The implications of this requirement are tremendous: According to statistics on Twitter, the service handles over one billion tweets every week. 

SOPA has gained national attention since Internet giants like Google, Yahoo, and Facebook announced their disapproval of the proposed legislation. Regardless of the objection, court decisions are already being made based on the bill's standards. Last month, a Nevada judge ordered the immediate shutdown of over 228 websites, asking that their "domain names [be] transferred and their listings [be] removed from search engines."

The case centered around fashion company Chanel, which "investigated 228 sites it suspected of counterfeiting goods, ordered from 3 of them, internally confirmed the counterfeit, and then extrapolated from that. The judge ordered all 228 domains to be seized." The above news article on this case offers an interesting point:

"It is unclear how and why this Nevada judge purports to exert powers over hundreds of separate defendants internationally and order relief from parties only tangentially related to the case, such as search engines."

Internet censorship at its finest? I certainly believe so. It seems not only unfair, but illegal for a judge to punish all 228 domains for the actions of three, especially because neither Chanel nor the court confirmed that the remaining 225 domains were counterfeiting goods for profit. It is easy to see how this cases parallels to SOPA's jurisdiction: under the bill, any website which is even suspected of participating in piracy or copyright infringement will immediately be served a cease-and-desist order.

For the sake of the Internet, freedom of information, freedom of speech, and freedom from censorship, I sincerely hope that SOPA is left on the Senate room floor.