More Threats To The Internet As We Know It

The OPEN Act was proposed as an alternative to the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), which was approved by the United States Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2011, and the closely related Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was introduced by House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) in November. After an initial description on December 2 as an outline of possible approaches authored by a bipartisan group of eleven lawmakers, a draft text was made public on December 8, 2011 in advance of a House Judiciary markup of the SOPA Act the following week. The OPEN Act seeks to stop transfers of money to foreign websites whose primary purpose is piracy or counterfeiting, whereas SOPA and PIPA also seek to require Internet providers and search engines to redirect users away from viewing the sites. The PROTECT IP Act proposed to do this by blocking domain name resolution, whereas SOPA imposes a broader requirement for network providers to "prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States" including blocking by IP address and possibly deep packet inspection.

OPEN places enforcement responsibility on the United States International Trade Commission (ITC), which currently adjudicates patent-related disputes, rather than the United States Justice Department. The ITC would be given power to collect fees from complainants and to hire additional personnel for investigations.

Proponents of the OPEN Act describe it on the the KeepTheWebOpen website as a way to protect the rights of artists like SOPA and PROTECT IP, but differing from its rivals by not introducing new internet police powers or undermining calls for open internet in closed societies, and by protecting legitimate internet businesses, social media, legitimate websites and internet innovation. They say that their proposal, but not its rivals, ensures that intellectual property cases will be resolved by intellectual property experts, and will target the actual criminals running foreign rogue websites. They criticize SOPA, but not PROTECT IP, for failing to apply due process to judging websites.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a proposed plurilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. It would establish an international legal framework for countries to join voluntarily, and would create a governing body outside international institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the United Nations. Negotiating countries have described it as a response "to the increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works." The scope of ACTA includes counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement on the Internet. Groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) oppose ACTA, stating that civil society groups and developing countries were excluded from discussion during ACTA's development in an example of policy laundering.

Canada, the European Union and Switzerland joined the preliminary talks throughout 2006 and 2007. Official negotiations began in June 2008, with Australia, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea and Singapore joining the talks. Apart from the participating governments, an advisory committee of large US-based multinational corporations was consulted on the content of the draft treaty, including the International Intellectual Property Alliance, (which includes the Business Software Alliance, Motion Picture Association of America, and Recording Industry Association of America) and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The treaty calls for the creation of an "ACTA committee" to make amendments, for which public or judicial review are not required. Industry representatives may have "consultatory input" to amendments. A 2009 Freedom of Information request showed that the following companies also received copies of the draft under a nondisclosure agreement: Google, eBay, Intel, Dell, News Corporation, Sony Pictures, Time Warner, and Verizon.

Third vid killed it: "based on the same principals". Apparently there are school system leaders in which SOPA and OPEN were based on..

Honestly I didn't watch any of the videos. I hope they covered the things they said were supposed to cover.

Actually I lied, I did watch the video about ACTA. That's what prompted me to post this. I did some research on OPEN, and at first glance it looks like it isn't all that bad. Like Kalyna said, the MPAA is against it, because it doesn't go far enough.

Hey look, few names of people who opposed SOPA.

Looking at the act, I don't see how it's a threat to the internet. Also MPAA is against OPEN whereas they were with SOPA.

OPEN sounds more reasonable to me. It just stop payment to pirating sites. This just means that they have to get money other ways to keep their sites open.

What's not good

Substantively, some of the things I don't like about OPEN:

OPEN still contemplates reestablishing a "fortress USA." Fortress USA marginally makes sense regarding the shipment of physical goods across geographic borders. It makes zero sense for digital bits zinging around the borderless network.

In particular, because OPEN would burden only US-governed PSPs and ad networks, it may drive websites—including legitimate websites who want to reduce their risk of being mistargeted—to shift their business to foreign-based PSPs and ad networks. If lots of businesses make a switch based on these concerns, OPEN could counterproductively result in net financial losses for the US economy.

Similarly, foreign websites can opt-out entirely of the ITC process by consenting to US judicial jurisdiction. I like the idea of an opt-out, but imagine if other countries offered the same quid-pro-quo of allowing US websites to opt-out of some nasty foreign process so long as the websites consent to jurisdiction in their countries. I think we’d be outraged and insulted; which is how I would expect foreign countries to view this quid-pro-quo. Cf. Venkat's recent post on Facebook v. Faceporn. Then again, other countries might think it’s a pretty good idea, leading to a proliferation of transborder quid-pro-quo jurisdictional offers.

Designating the ITC to conduct the investigations is a little odd. First, the ITC is an administrative agency, not a federal court. I don't fully understand all of the implications of administrative vs. judicial review, but I believe there are substantial procedural differences that could lead to important substantive differences. Second, the ITC has been gamed in the patent world (see, e.g., my colleague Colleen Chien's research on the ITC explaining how the ITC hears many US company vs. US company disputes), so I fear similar gaming will emerge. For example, a rightsowner chasing a rogue website could simultaneously pursue a domestic court action, a foreign court action and an ITC proceeding. How would these types of parallel proceedings play out in practice? We’re still trying to resolve the parallel proceeding problems in patents.

Like SOPA, the bill covers copyright infringement, trademark infringement *and* 1201 circumvention. I don't understand why the circumvention issue is getting equal billing or how often transborder circumventions are a real problem. Seeing how 1201 circumvention lawsuits have devolved into anti-competitive enforcements, picking up the circumvention piece could increase the risk of competitive misuse of the statute.

Again like SOPA, the definitions are vague. Consider, for example, the definition of Internet advertising service: "The term Internet advertising service means a service that serves an online advertisement in viewable form for any period of time on an Internet site." Hmm...what does that mean? Notice that the definition doesn't directly distinguish between third-party ad networks and sites that sell their own ads. I think in practice sites that sell their own ads drop out of the statute, so one possible implication is that more sites will ramp up their own ad sales. (This is doubtful, but just throwing the possibility out there). I think the focus on "viewable" is interesting; are audio-only ads excluded? And what does it mean to "serve" content? This contemplates a specific technological interaction that I don't fully understand today and will almost certainly evolve over time.

1st was good. Skipped 2nd. Had to kill 3rd when I caught that. Someone was apparently just posting things they've heard, and has less than adequate edu-ma-cation.

What are we the people supposed to do, when politicians so blatantly disregard our opinions and seek relentlessly push these kinds of bills into legislation?
The internet seems to be in danger more than metropolis these days. I have a bad feeling the public will not rally to spike these bills every time. short attention spans ftl.

What are we the people supposed to do, when politicians so blatantly disregard our opinions ...

Petition

no idea if this was mentioned but yeah, MPAA's boned now.

What are we the people supposed to do, when politicians so blatantly disregard our opinions and seek relentlessly push these kinds of bills into legislation?
The internet seems to be in danger more than metropolis these days. I have a bad feeling the public will not rally to spike these bills everytime. short attention spans ftl.

I agree with this 100%.

SOPA and PIPA might have actually just been a big ruse. They put these bills out that they know everyone will hate and then right after they fail they release new bills with slightly less restrictions.

It's like asking for a tax increase of 10% when you really just want a 5% increase.

It's actually a brilliant plan.

Do you really think all of those sites will go black again every time a new bill gets proposed? They will get one of these through soon enough.

Two, there are DOZENS of other things that politicians need to get off their *** and fix that actually need fixed before they should even be thinking about 'fixing' (and by fixing I mean breaking) the internet.

Quoted for truth.

In breaking news, you are 100% right they don't care about us. Some start out that way, but with lobbyists filling their heads and pockets, and the power they obtain once elected; they change. They become vile, pathetic excuses for a human with a baseless superiority complex. Unless people stop thinking that the "gov't knows better" than the average citizen, this is an endless cycle. An infinite loop. A path to self destruction.

Viva la resistance! >O

Should the need arise, I would gladly take on the roll of V.