Six Cups of Coffee

Before I start, let me say that instead of reading this, you should probably be watching the House Judiciary committee's hearings on SOPA if you're so concerned about it. 

If you can't be bo(the)red to watch, then by all means, proceed here.

SOPA, the "Stop Online Piracy Act" bill that is before the House Judiciary Committee today, is bad. I think everyone gets that. Does everyone understand why it's bad, though? 

Reading through the bill, here's what it does:

• Title I of the bill says that if the Attorney General finds a foreign web site that is providing services to US residents in the US that facilitate the theft of United States intellectual property, it must get a court order to go to Internet service providers and US-run search engines and ask them to stop resolving those domains inside the US. It cannot require them to do so if there is unreasonable cost to do so or if it is not technologically feasible to do so. In other words, if there is a court order to stop The Pirate Bay from providing links to torrents to people in the US, you won't be able to access the site anymore directly, and because payment processors can be made to stop transacting with said business, you won't be able to, say, donate money to TPB. People can debate the legitimacy of this, but my position on this is the same as speeding: I don't care if you do it, and you can debate whether it should be illegal and take steps to make it legal, but don't complain when you get a ticket; you were breaking the law. Copyright law sometimes sucks, but work on changing that if you think it impedes your life.
• Title II is the one we're all up in arms about. It makes a change to existing law to include streaming public performances of copyrighted works. What this means is that if you record yourself singing Lady Gaga's "Pokerface" on YouTube, you can be charged with piracy. It's a ridiculous amendment to existing law that already makes putting copyrighted materials available for streaming illegal; adding language to extend that to amateur performances that have no commercial gain for the person performing is ridiculous. 

There are no other titles in the bill, though there are some other propositions that aren't objectionable (like protecting people from counterfeit drug sales over the Internet). These two are the ones that people are talking about.

Now, the reason I bring this up is that while Title II is horrendous and should be stricken from the proposed legislation, there is a lot of hyperbole about what it does, and it seems to me that hurts the cause of those who are trying to bring the problem with the bill to light. When someone makes the claim (as I erroneously did in a tweet) that it censors the Internet, that you can be stopped from saying anything online, it brings ridicule to the movement to stop the bill from becoming law. 

This is not uncommon when something like this comes to public consciousness. Exaggeration of the issues at hand is extraordinarily standard when discussing proposed legislation, and it's usually found in media that doesn't highlight what the language of a bill actually says. Take, for example, this article from The Tucson Citizen with the headline "SOPA (A bill that will send you to prison for watching YouTube videos) is being voted on today". SOPA will not send you to jail for watching YouTube, and when you say things like that, no one of importance cares about anything you have to say after that. 

So, it's my hope that as we discuss things like SOPA and other legislation that affects major parts of our lives, that we stick to facts. Facts can have emotion attached to them, but facts need to drive the train, and emotional hyperbole needs to remain a small part of the cargo. Reasonable people can discuss facts on their merits, and I think--or at least hope--we're smart enough to let that atmosphere rule.