SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) Wajdi Al-Quliti
Director of IT Departement, OIC
There are currently major controversies on the draft of resolution submitted by one of the U.S. Congressmen, Representative Lamar Smith, on October 26th 2011; the socalled SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). It is not clear yet what will happen, but for now the Internet will remain free in the United States until the end of next January, as members of the U.S. Congress postponed the deadline on this particular discussion of the bill, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which in the opinion of its authors intends to help in the fight against “electronic piracy”. But many CEO’s of large companies and Internet users believe that the law will restrict the freedom of Internet use in the United States, and the censorship might result in technical damage to the Internet. SOPA act is expected to replace the current Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In the United States today, if SOPA is approved, there will no longer be a need to review the official bodies as it would be possible to ask the owners of the site that publishes pirated materials, or go to court to appeal against that directly. The warning will be from SOPA and it gives 5 days to remove the materials or it will be censored. This act is welcomed and supported by Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Dell and Intel. On the other hand it faces huge objection from Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Mozilla, eBay, Linkedln, AOL, and Zynga. GoDaddy, one of the biggest domain providers companies in the world, supported the SOPA act. Consequently, within 24 hours it faced a huge storm of account cancelations and domain transfers to competitor companies. Later, GoDaddy withdrew from supporting this act and said it “will stand by
society’s decision”. But this doesn’t change much and GoDaddy will continue to suffer from the reaction. It is not a coincidence to find support of SOPA from producing companies that suffer from electronic piracy, as well as to find protests by companies that operate on the Internet like YouTube and others, because they are aware of the amount of problems behind this new act. According Russian Voice News, Evegny Yushuk, who is a member of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, explains the core of the discussion. “This may lead to serious abuse, because at present courts are considering data provided by both sides. Their verdict is based on the correct interpretation of the law. And the new bill allows onesided acting. It opens the way for various provocations. It gives the opportunity to provoke the situation. Then it is possible to cite it and demand whatever they want.” On the other hand, to clarify further what the main objective of this act, here are Lamar Smith’s e-mail responses to the public and his justifications for crucial points and reasons for SOPA: “These foreign websites are called “rogue sites” because they are out of reach of U.S. laws. Movies and music are not the only stolen products that are offered by rogue sites. Counterfeit medicine, automotive parts and even baby food are a big part of the counterfeiting business, and pose a serious threat to the health of American consumers” “While some critics of online piracy and counterfeiting legislation acknowledge that intellectual property should be protected, they oppose every proposal to effectively reduce the theft of intellectual property and the counterfeiting of American products.” In the coming days, SOPA will irritate many people, leaving the consequences to each individual’s interpretation, many question marks will arise. The SOPA act, if passed by Congress, will cause many arguments and disputes among the government, big companies, and users. From my point of view, even if SOPA passes in Congress, it will not proceed as mentioned in the draft, but rather will be exposed to drastic changes and amendments to satisfy all parties.
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