The truly frightening legislative proposals known as SOPA and PIPA continue to loom in Congress, promising to put a big lump of coal in the stocking of every Internet user. So we were glad to learn that a bipartisan group of congressional represenatives has come together to formulate a real alternative, called the OPEN Act, as well as a real process for including the Internet users and innovators it may affect.You may remember that the stated goal of the Internet Blacklist Legislation was to target foreign websites who traffic in counterfeit and other IP-infringing goods. SOPA and PIPA went far beyond that goal with extreme remedies, like allowing the Attorney General to get a court order requiring service providers to “disappear” certain sites and the ability to shut down all services – such as inclusion in search, ad revenue, and payments services – to the point that a site would essentially no longer exist. Other provisions would allow private actors to force payment processors to cut off the economic lifeblood of any site where even a single page linked to infringement, even if the site’s owners comply with the DMCA safe harbors. Adding insult to injury, the bills were written without any real input from the tech community, despite many in Congress’ apparent complete lack of understanding about how the Internet actually works.To read this post on the Electronic Frontier Foundation blog in full, see:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/alternative-sopa-open-process-befitting-open-internet