Using forceful arguments about the ongoing threat of Internet piracy, Hollywood and its allies are pushing legislation through Congress that would ensnare and criminalize legitimate Internet sites on unproven allegations of content theft. The “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act” [PROTECT IP Act, S. 968] was rushed out of the Judiciary Committee by voice vote last May and may soon be voted on in the Senate. A House bill may be dropped any day.
Supporters of the bill, including the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), led by former Senator Chris Dodd, argue that film studios are losing money on rogue, mainly offshore, websites that steal and sell their movies. According to one umbrella group, Creative America, which represents proponents of the bill, more than 500,000 movies are stolen every year worldwide. This is a compelling argument.
It's the cure that is the problem. The PROTECT IP Act would allow copyright owners – movie studios and other content providers – simply to accuse a website of infringement, which could lead to that site being shut down by court order and entire links to the site being wiped clean from the Internet. Any website with a hyperlink, such as Twitter, Facebook or a blog, would be subject to liability. More, non-infringing sites could be inadvertently shut down under the proposal. Indeed, the law is so far-reaching that it would force Internet providers like Comcast to block all access to the allegedly illegal site.
The potential for abuse by the notoriously litigious content industry is clear. Last year, when the government sought to shut down one child pornography site, it ended up affecting some 70,000 legitimate sites for several days, even notifying visitors that the sites – many of which were business sites – were purveyors of child pornography.
For instance, the bill is so broadly written that, in theory, it would allow any copyright owner to shut down a legitimate retail website, such as Amazon or Best Buy, by alleging that one product being sold on the site could “enable or facilitate” an infringement. It could even allow any content owner to block access to the Patent Office website if it receives and posts a patent application for a product that is believed to use content without permission.
Giving government the power to arbitrarily shut down websites is a tool that requires narrow, well-defined parameters. Without any real process safeguards, there will exist the potential for abuse, and all it takes is one instance to set a dangerous precedent. You can imagine a copyright owner attempting to shut down social media sites, like Facebook, on the flimsy charge that users have provided links to “stolen” content. Nothing is more in opposition to America’s free-speech heritage.
What’s more, the PROTECT IP Act will hurt American innovation. Despite our current economic troubles, the United States continues to lead the world in Internet innovation and related technologies. Companies like Google, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and others are the new engines pulling our economy – but every one began as an Internet start-up, dependent on venture-capital funding and a regulatory environment that didn’t give competitors the power to put them out of business. The PROTECT IP Act would bestow that power on old-guard media companies with a business interest in slowing the digital revolution.
In fact, 130 entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs and executives who have been involved in 283 technology start-ups, sent a letter to Congress recently warning that the PROTECT IP Act threatens their work to continue creating and building the companies of the future.
Arguing that the bill will ensnare innocent victims, the signers point out: “While the bill will create uncertainty for many legitimate businesses and in turn undermine innovation and creativity on those services, the dedicated pirates who use and operate ‘rogue’ sites will simply migrate to platforms that conceal their activities.”
Thankfully, political leaders concerned about liberty, innovation and due process have stood up in opposition to this proposal. Senator Ron Wyden, a moderate Democrat from Oregon, has courageously put a hold on the Senate bill because of his concerns about the bill’s infringement of free speech and stifling of innovation.
“This is a question of whether the content sector can use the government as club to go after the innovation sector and everything it represents,” said Wyden at a recent Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. “This is a cluster bomb where you should be going in with a laser, and the collateral damage to innovation and freedom is huge.”
Additionally, Tea Party leaders like Michelle Bachman have said it is inconsistent with Tea Party values. Consumer groups, legal scholars, venture capitalists, leading entrepreneurs, Internet scientists and YouTube users have all joined in opposition.
Certainly, we must protect intellectual property. But we must also preserve liberty and encourage innovators to push the envelope. The advocates for this well-meaning proposal need to balance the competing American values of free speech, innovation and copyright protection.
The solution to this problem need not give one side the power to put the other side out of business. The Internet – the product of innovation and entrepreneurs – is the key to our future. It must not be inhibited by new and dangerous weapons given to entrenched old industries.
Gary Shapiro is president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the U.S. trade association representing more than 2,000 consumer electronics companies, and author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream.”
