Tag: sopa

Site-blocking: can the U.S. finally get it done?

site-blocking

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has prefaced a renewed interest in site-blocking legislation to combat piracy. Will things be different this time?

When the internet industry killed the antipiracy bills SOPA and PIPA in January 2012, I was a newbie blogger but guessed at the time that those parties had totally blown their wad on that campaign. First, there was the boy-who-cried-wolf limitation suggesting that Google & Co. had deployed too much hyperbole to ever again sound the “death of the internet” alarm. Next, the general belief that “the internet” is inherently a force for good was a notion that waned perceptibly after 2012 and then fell off the cliff circa 2016. Today, neither the general public, the government, nor the press fawns over the “white knights” of Silicon Valley as they did when those bills were scuttled.

None of that addresses the fact that the “Stop SOPA” campaign was a tidal wave of disinformation, but it would be naive to think that facts would win today any more than they did twelve years ago. When new site-blocking proposals begin to make headlines, and the network of tech-funded groups howl BEWARE SOPA 2!!, it will be interesting to see whether the same, or similar, false talking points are effective in an environment that is more skeptical of Big Tech in general.

What is site-blocking and why do It?

Site-blocking today would probably work much as it was intended back in 2011. A complainant would have the burden to prove to a court that a platform is principally engaged in illegal activity (e.g., media piracy) and is operating outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement. With sufficient evidence, the complaining party(ies) would obtain an injunction to deny the platform access to the U.S. market. The basic mechanisms are not much more complicated than that, though we can expect the same network of “digital rights” groups to sharpen the rhetorical pitchforks and again stoke allegations that this process will “break” the internet or that it violates the speech right.

Of course, neither claim is true. Site-blocking is employed as a remedy throughout the democratic world where the internet still functions, and speech rights are not infringed (at least not because of site-blocking). There is no more a speech implication to blocking a criminal web platform from access to the U.S. than there would be by interdicting a cargo ship full of counterfeit electronics. On that subject, the need for site-blocking legislation today is more urgent than it was in 2011, and not just for movies and music.

Although the MPA et al. will naturally focus on sites illegally hosting and/or streaming pirated entertainment, establishing a broader rationale for site-blocking—i.e., getting past unfounded ideological opposition—will serve other business and private interests. Online predators of every type have continued to adapt since 2012; evidence shows that media piracy is integrated with a broad spectrum of cybercrime; and the U.S. lags behind the EU et al. in adopting this basic mechanism of protection.

For instance, small-business owners making creative products sold on eCommerce platforms lack the resources to combat, or the margins to absorb, the pace of counterfeiting by foreign actors. Advancements in small-batch production methods and drop-shipping offer new flexibility for counterfeiters to flood the U.S. market with cheap knockoffs, harming both legitimate producers and consumers. Meanwhile, media pirate sites are delivery platforms for malware used for cyber extortion (including sextortion), identity theft, and direct theft of private and sensitive material from personal and business networks.

So, although the MPA will likely be the most prominent advocate of site-blocking legislation, there are many disparate parties—from small-business owners to advocates fighting online sexual abuse—who may see the value in the U.S. finally adopting a remedy the EU et al. have had in place for a decade or more.

An Interesting Moment

In 2011, it was easy to spread the message that site-blocking was only about “Hollywood” protecting its wealth to the detriment of speech on the internet. It wasn’t true then, of course, but it will be interesting to see whether some form of the same rhetoric will gain traction in the coming years. Specifically, a whole generation has grown to young adulthood since then—kids who never heard the proverbial boy cry wolf the first time. Notably, Torrentfreak reports that GenZ exhibits a high rate of pirate site access, citing familiar rationales that streaming subscriptions are too expensive and/or that interest in one title militates against subscribing to the necessary channel.

But what will really be interesting to watch over the next few months will be GenZ’s susceptibility (or not) to the “Save TikTok” campaign already underway. On April 24, President Biden signed a solidly bipartisan law stating that TikTok will be banned in the U.S. unless, within nine months, owner Bytedance sells the platform and, thereby, severs all ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Bytedance, in addition to vowing it will fight the law in U.S. courts, has already launched a PR campaign, including social media messages that will tap into the same emotional triggers used during the “Stop SOPA” campaign.

As Google & Co. did in 2011/12, Bytedance will use its addictive interface to promote the message that its business interests are synonymous with their users’ rights, only this time, the rhetoric isn’t coming from Big Tech filtered through the Electronic Frontier Foundation—it’s a psyop of the CCP. The efficacy of the “Save TikTok” campaign will be telling, not only about the viability of site-blocking legislation, but about the hoped-for savvy that “digital natives” might reveal about navigating the perils of cyberspace.

In 2011, it was frightening to watch the platforms use the insidious power of the platforms to advocate the policy interests of the platforms. Now, that same playbook is being run by a foreign adversary targeting 170 million 18-29-year-olds, and it is an anxious moment, to say the least, waiting to see how they respond. Regardless, the underlying rationale for site-blocking is sound, and I hope that both copyright and non-copyright interests see it as a necessary protection of American enterprise and security.

Photo by: tommoh29

EFF, Public Knowledge, et al Celebrate Defeat of SOPA/PIPA Out of the Blue

Rumors have come to my attention—okay it was splashed all over Twitter—that an event was held yesterday called The Untold Story of SOPA/PIPA. “Defeating SOPA/PIPA didn’t happen overnight,” says the EFF’s promotional page for the event. “Advocacy groups like Public Knowledge fought long and hard for years to raise the alarms about these censorship efforts.”

Where does one begin? By commenting on the offensive or the pathetic? Perhaps the most poignant and direct offense speaks for itself. Because just this morning, I happened to see the following post by a Facebook musician friend:

So our new album, which was just released Monday and cost us tens of thousands of dollars to make and promote (which was borrowed), is already on “file sharing” sites…

Online piracy, including by foreign actors, even almost a decade since the great defeat of SOPA/PIPA, is still a major problem that still costs thousands of independent creators their livelihoods. But don’t let that spoil the party being thrown by a bunch of ivory-tower “activists,” who were in the trenches in 2011 working their index fingers raw, Tweeting and sharing batshit crazy memes and other disinformation about those bills. Or don’t forget to say a prayer for the digital-age powder monkeys of 4Chan who helped spread the word. And as for investments! Well, what about the money (whose money?) spent on SPAM bots to spread the word that SOPA/PIPA would break the internet? Sock puppets have to eat, too, y’know! (Actually, no I guess they don’t.)

The tragedy is that the real “untold story of SOPA/PIPA” is that the public was lied to about how those bills actually worked; lied to that the bills’ opponents “were all for stopping piracy, but not this way;” and lied to about how organic and grassroots the effort was to defeat the bills.  Does anyone today actually believe it was a coincidence that the Internet Association was founded concurrently with the fight against that legislation, or that Google’s lobbying expenditures went from negligible to record-setting during the same period?

Stop SOPA was one of the most successful and well-funded disinformation campaigns in internet history and, as I have said many times, it scared the hell out of me. And not because of the piracy problem. That was just an unfortunate failure for people like my friend quoted above. No, the scary part about the manner in which the legislation was defeated were the lessons the campaign taught to other powerful institutions. It was clear by the mechanisms employed that anyone with enough money could alter the course of history with a few simple lies and mediocre graphic design. I know, right? What was I thinking? That rampant disinformation might threaten democracy itself? Just my hysterical nature, I guess. Because let’s be clear: SOPA/PIPA was not defeated with information or, heaven forbid, debate in Washington. Those bills were defeated by this:

I come from an advertising and marketing background, and that right there is advertising. Very effective advertising. Plenty of my friends shared memes like this one for weeks leading up to the defeat of SOPA/PIPA. But when advertising is designed to frighten the consumer, it should be confronted with skepticism—critical thinking that social media seems especially well designed to weaken among users. How many of my friends read or had the background to understand the legislation? Almost none.

And, yeah, I know. There were articles written about those bills, too. And you could hardly see the puppet strings of collusion despite the uncanny consistency in the language being used—generalized, ominous, and populist, without bothering to mention that the key mechanisms proposed already existed in the law. Like the tweak to injunctive power against foreign piracy sites, which would not have had any effect on the ordinary function of internet activity. And since 2012, SOPA-like enforcement measures (e.g. site blocking) have been implemented in markets around the world, and still no breaking of the internet has occurred.

But I think the most galling aspect about this sad attempt to relive the glory day of January 18, 2012 (you probably forgot, right?) is that nothing about the Republic-shattering events of the last several years has chastened the “free speech” rhetoric of the EFF, Public Knowledge, Sen. Wyden, et al. That they are still eager to call SOPA/PIPA “censorship bills” with straight faces is astounding. Never mind that piracy is not a form of protected speech; but have these organizations learned nothing since 2016? Did they miss the giant sticky note that says the laissez-faire approach to platform governance has been an abysmal failure worldwide? Specifically, do they lack the introspection to recognize the methodological similarity between …

this …

… and this?

If Russian troll farms didn’t read the Stop SOPA Playbook as the ultimate guide to manipulation through social media, they certainly could have. But, again, don’t let events like the U.S. Capitol assault of January 6th ruin all the self-congratulatory fun being had at EFF and Public Knowledge. Though I do have to ask why March 17, 2021? Why the nine year and two-month anniversary of the defeat of SOPA/PIPA? Odd no? Maybe not. Are EFF and PK trying to send a signal to the IP Subcommittee that if it tries to update the failed notice-and-takedown provisions of the DMCA, they will unleash Godzilla once again? Can’t say for sure. Maybe they just couldn’t get hold of any St. Patrick’s decorations and decided to have a different kind of party.

12 Things You Could Still Do If SOPA Had Passed

photo by tomasmikula

Because today is the five-year anniversary of “Blackout Day,” the day millions of users were suckered into doing the internet industry’s bidding for no good reason, the always-relevant BuzzFeed offers us a missive published by the organization ReCreate Coalition called “12 Things You Can Do Because Congress Protected Internet Freedoms,” by which they mean backed off the passage of SOPA/PIPA on January 18, 2012.

But there’s something magical about the twelve things listed; it’s kind of like a palindrome in that it is also a list of things you would still be able to do if SOPA/PIPA had passed. Let’s not equivocate on this matter.  I mean not one of the activities mentioned was in any way threatened by SOPA/PIPA.  And you know how we know this? Because those bills didn’t expand rights or restrict exceptions like fair use under the copyright law. If you engage in any or all of the listed activities and actually infringe a copyright, you’re just as potentially liable right now as you would be if those bills had passed. For reasons known perhaps only to the folks at ReCreate, they chose the following:

1. Share puppy videos instantly to Facebook.

2. Post a breaking news clip on Twitter.

3. Review a new restaurant on Yelp.

4. Comment on an article at a news outlet like Deadspin.

5. Use Wikipedia for that history paper on Alexander Hamilton…

6. Post a funny meme to Reddit.

7. Save a healthy recipe on Pintrest…

8. Repost a motivational quote on Instagram.

9. View and share family photos on Flickr.

10. Write a political opinion blog on WordPress.

11. Post a manequin challenge on YouTube.

12. Listen to a podcast on SoundCloud.

None of these actions inherently requires the use of copyrighted works. Some are actually hard to fathom how such a use is even implied. For instance, it’s pretty tough to share your own family photos and infringe a copyright, which suggests the ReCreate folks really put their A-Team on this little project.  But, don’t kid yourself.  If your political opinion blog includes the publication of a copyrighted photograph used without permission, you’re exactly as liable right now as you were before anyone even heard of the acronym SOPA.  Those bills were aimed at foreign-based, enterprise-scale pirate site operators and required substantial, costly evidence to enforce. It would not have been legally possible for rights holders, under SOPA, to give any more of a damn about private videos and restaurant reviews than they do right now.

The remedies provided by SOPA/PIPA were based on existing practices already used by courts when providing injunctive relief—all of which have been applied in various cases, and all without destroying the internet, the First Amendment, or your ability to “share puppy videos instantly on Facebook.”  Since 2012, sites have been shut down, URLs delisted, and credit card services denied to various types of bad actors; and yet the web keeps humming along in all its mannequin-challenging, motivational-quoting, and funny-meme-making glory.  The anti-SOPA campaign was one of the most effective fake news stories of all time, and celebrating the anniversary of being fooled is well…you finish the thought.

I assumed the buzz in BuzzFeed referred to current events, but perhaps it’s a literal reference indicating that any party, no matter how stoned they are, is free to publish any nonsense they cobble together via their platform. So, I guess we should add a thirteenth item to the list that would also, sadly, still be kosher in a world with SOPA & PIPA:

13.  Click-bait bullshit could still pretend to be information.