That Damned SOPA Bill

[heidi]

I've been dealing this week with annoying dentistry, weirdly scheduled PTSA meetings, clients whose credit cards are not appreciated by the PTO website and the fun of trying to figure out what type of entity to be for INTA next year, and, of course, re-reading reviews of Philosopher's Stone that were posted in FictionAlley Park a year ago today (well, a year ago this month as some people saw it early) but I needed to take a few minutes today to address the SOPA act that's currently being debated* in committee in Congress, for clients, and in a post that's going up on FictionAlley this afternoon.

This is a slightly revised version of that post (Updated on November 17, 2011):

You may have seen this image on the internet today:

And you may wonder why a site like FictionAlley cares about an act designed to stop piracy; FictionAlley doesn't allow links to downloads of the Harry Potter books or films!

But the thing is, the "Stop Internet Piracy Act" is written in such a way that it gives any owner of any copyright, trademark right, right of publicity or other intellectual property rights the ability to shut down a site's ability to accept donations made via credit card companies, PayPal or Amazon, or bar a site from hosting Google or Groupon ads or being part of the WBShop or Amazon Affiliate programs just because they think that one icon, one User Profile, one piece of fanart, one fanvid or one fanfic infringes on their content - regardless of whether that story, icon, vid or art is transformative, or created pursuant to fair use.

"Fair use is a lawful use of copyright." That's what the Northern District of California said in Lenz v. Universal Music back in 2008. So much of what we do on fansites - from the discussions and reviews to art and fic and vids we host and link to - is fair use, but there's no Fair Use provision in SOPA.

"Think about this for a second: think how many bogus DMCA takedown notices are sent by copyright holders to take down content they don't like," writes TechDirt's Mike Masnick. "With this new bill, should it become law, those same copyright holders will be able to cut off advertising and payment processing to such sites. Without court review."

Donations are vital to fansites; if they can't accept financial support from users and visitors, many will not be able to keep the site online; it costs between $20 and $1000 per month for servers at fansites of various sizes. Ads are vital to other sites - Googleads, the BlogHer network, store associateships, etc.

If SOPA passes, and one copyright-holder who doesn't agree with the law of Fair Use complains to PayPal or Google or Amazon, it is likely that at least some sites will lose the ability to accept donations from users like you, and many will be unable to use ad revenue to keep the sites online.

And fandom-run sites are just a small portion of the internet, in the grand scheme of things. YouTube hosts fanvids, parodies and reviews, Tumblr and LiveJournal host every type of content that can be created, and Google links to everything. One person can choose to abuse the provisions of SOPA and damage each of those sites for everyone - or the sites themselves may curtail certain services, or limit what they allow people to share, discuss and distribute.

That's not an Internet that any of us would recognize.

If you live in the US, please send a letter to your Representative, or click here to visit the EFF's website and have an email automatically sent to your representative.

*Not the right word when only one of the six entities testifying before Congress is an Internet-purposed company!

ETA: More discussion here; this post is also on Tumblr.


Feel free to use any of this on your own LJ/DW/Blog and link back if you wish (but it's not necessary).

Comments

[nightfalltwen.livejournal.com]

I have to say that I wish I could write to a USA congressman. I really hate that the United States has it in their head that they can dictate what every other country in the world does on the internet. And people outside of the states have absolutely no say.

:(

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Realistically, if this passed and wasn't vetoed, and made it past court challenges, non-US financial entities would spring up to support non-US sites. But it would make it extremely difficult for sites to accept donations or be paid for hosting ads, etc., The law is way too overbroad and over-reaching for the "ill" it's trying to eliminate.

[hllangel]

SOPA is really scary.

Having spent a significant portion of the last seven months dealing with DMCA abuse on sites like YouTube (along with the fallout from the torrent lawsuits where it basically amounts to a shakedown), the ability to shut down sites over content that may be fair use, but which the rightsholder doesn't like is scary.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is. Look at Anne Rice - she can now tell anyone to take something down that she feels infringes on her work and they have to comply BUT they can comply after the fact! They don't have to pre-screen every single work or link on their site to make sure there is no Anne Rice-related content before it goes live!

[dreamlittleyo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this, hon. God, so many bad tingles when I think about it. (I hope it's okay that I've linked back to your post from my journal -- I feel pretty much helpless to put my thoughts into a coherent format, and you always manage to make things so concise and clear).

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Yes, please go right ahead. I'm going to go and put a Creative Commons license on it right now, actually.

Thanks for feeling like this was concise, and clear. I think in legalese enough that I sometimes wonder if I'm still able to "translate"....

[jin-fenghuang.livejournal.com]

Argh. Another one. I am so sick of legislators who cannot even find the power button on their own PC without their secretary making laws about the internet. Sadly my country proposes idiotic stuff like that too.

Good luck!

[ness-va.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about any follow through effect this bill may have on things like letting bloggers enter the US.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure the law itself has any impact on that, but I haven't read it with that issue in mind.

[ness-va.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's just one of those unpredictable follow on effects I'm curious about - but I'm certainly no lawyer! :)

[oaktree89.livejournal.com]

Here via dreamlittleyo. Saw this, signed, and facebook!signal boosted. Pretty disturbing stuff to me, even as a Canadian (I have a US address, though, so I could still write my Congresswoman).

You said this really well.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Thank you, and thanks for signal boosting!

[fantasy-fly.livejournal.com]

This is exactly what I felt but couldn't express properly because I was a little too busy being angry, scared, angry and scared. I shared your post on my Tumblr, hope you don't mind. If you do, I'll delete it.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I don't mind at all - it's fine to crosspost it anywhere you wish.

FYI, though - I have it on my own tumblr but I wasn't sure how to link right to it; if you could reblog that I'd really appreciate it.

[jesseofthenorth.livejournal.com]

Definitely boosting this. Even as a Canadian this could and mostly likely WILL devastate my enjoyment of the web. That completely aside it is another excellent example of freedoms erosion by commercial interest.

[epicallytired.livejournal.com]

it's scary in concept but how would they even pretend to try to police this policy?

There just is no way it could be done.

Hell, LJ told everyone in the QAF fandom and the HP fandom tha we were all lawbreaking pedophiles and made threats and in the end, no real changes.

Those who would profit most, large companies, the government, desperatly want to control the internet, but they've been trying since before AOL used to mail out CDs and people who want to see porn have always been at least a half a dozen steps ahead of them.

Stay vigilant. Write your congressman, but don't lose your mind. Can put it in the constitution, like prohibition, but it won't stop anyone's ability to get a drink.

Porn is the driving force behind every piece of technology after the printing press, and porn, be it fan fiction, transitive works of art, or good old fashioned nekkid people, will always be more powerful than the government.