Green Web Hosting, Sustainable Web Hosting and E-Commerce

By David Anderson, Principal

W.T.F.

In three little letters, I’ve just summarized my take on H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), currently being considered by U.S. lawmakers. The following is my personal opinion on SOPA, and this statement will serve as Canvas Dreams’ formal position on and opposition to its proposed legislation.

SOPA: Dangerous From The Start

SOPA was designed to fight Internet-based content and data piracy. Though the intent behind the act seem simple enough — to create a legal framework by which victims of online piracy can fight back, and fast against purported perpetrators — the language in SOPA is so vague that it threatens to do far more harm to free online data exchange, than any protection it might bring against piracy. SOPA gives anyone with enough money to buy the law, the power to have a ruling exacted upon the target of a lawsuit, and the feebly-written checks and balances aimed at protectingÂ the innocent against nefarious abuse of the legislation amounts to nothing more than an “honor system”, for those at the receiving end of said legislation likely would not be in a position to argue their defense in a U.S. court without similarly ample financial resources as those who filed the claim against them in the first place.

Based on the loosely-written text, if you find your content has been pirated, you can file a lawsuit against the owner of the website, as well as any hosting provider, network upstream carrier, or domain registrar providing service to that site, or owners of websites that link to that target site, advertisers who stand to financially gain as a result of working with that target site, and even the credit card processor managing transactions for the site, IF they do not act within days to sever ties with that website and/or shut it down completely. Even more, a judge can order the website removed from search engine results, and the domain record removed from DNS (think of it as the global phone directory lookup for domain names), all because you have filed a claim of injustice that the target site has pirated your content.

If a portion of this doesn’t sound very new, you’re right. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1996 was established as a legal framework through which a party could file a claim against a person or entity that was infringing on copyrighted material, and follow it through the legal process to force a service provider to either assist in the shut-down of that content, else the provider might find themselves implicated. The difference is that with DMCA, it focused almost exclusively on the questionable content itself (a copyrighted video, for example), whereas SOPA widens scope to include the entire website, possibly the network associated with it, possibly the service providers, and on and on, up the food chain. It is so wide sweeping, the potential ramifications are mind boggling.

Supporters Of SOPA And Justifiable Concerns

SOPA was introduced by a Representative from Texas, intended to protect those content producers, media publishers, and broadcast industry folks whose work is being actively pirated throughout the world. A quick review of the major SOPA supporters provides an immediate picture of who is really behind this legislation. It includes U.S.-based publishers, television broadcasters, movie producers, and even that international, supposed “journalism” conglomerate known as News Corporation. A link to the list of the main supporters may be found at the end of this article.

In speaking with an old friend — a videographer whose work has been pirated — I can see how one would make a convincing argument as to why SOPA might help prevent piracy. The math is simple: imagine my friend producing a video that sells 20,000 DVDs, only to find that an additional 100,000 copies have been downloaded illegally online. This means a lot of people out there may have enjoyed his work, yet he was only paid for his efforts by a slim fraction of those who paid for his work honestly. If such piracy were preventable, my friend would have a much easier time selling his product and receiving payment for hard work done honestly.

There’s no question that online piracy is a problem and needs to be addressed, and the previous scenario plays out in reality every day, and can be echoed by many producers, and certainly many more large corporations whose works are being pirated.

The Danger: Draconian Administration Of The Act

There’s also no question that my friend — a small fish in a much bigger sea of even bigger fishes — stands to lose much more as a victim of piracy, than a larger company (who has the power to benefit from this legislation). On its outside, SOPA does appear designed to defend the rights of all content producers, big and small. That is, IF you can afford an attorney. Now, who’s going to be better able to afford one? The small guy, or the mega corporation?

The matter of money — who has it, and who can afford to buy the law with it — is where SOPA goes horribly wrong. All you have to do is put together a legal team with the power to legislate for you before a judge. All that takes is a big enough check, and you can amass your own personal army to go out there, file a lawsuit against a website’s owner claiming they are pirating your works, and a U.S. judge can issue an order to put a stop to that website. And I mean, that website will be *gone*. Just look at what could happen if a judge decides a website is pirating a plaintiff’s content:

The registrar through which the domain name is managed could be notified to shut off the domain.
The hosting provider could be ordered to shut down a site deemed “illegal”.
The upstream data carrier used by the hosting provider could be ordered to cease deliver of packets (data) to and from that website.
The DNS provider (which provides nameserver resolution, much like a phone directory for websites) could be ordered to cease resolution for the domain (meaning, even if the website is live, your computer may suddenly stop being able to locate it).
The major search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) could be ordered to remove the website entirely from their search results.
The advertisers promoting your product could be ordered to freeze advertising commissions due you.
The merchant processing provider that funds credit card orders placed through your website could be ordered to freeze those funds for sales made through your site.
Any websites linking to that website could be ordered to stop linking to the site or find themselves liable as a co-defendant in the case.

All this, because someone had the money to buy enough legal representation witty enough to convince a judge that the “offending” website was committing piracy against the plaintiff. Indeed, one can think of SOPA as a U.S. version of the “Great Firewall of China” (through which the Chinese have effectively controlled and blocked their citizens from accessing “objectionable” content as declared by that government). Except with SOPA, the U.S. version would be owned by corporations who have bought the very judicial rule used to justify their monitoring, control, and blocking of any user, content provider, website service, or type of material which they alone have paid lawyers to deem as unfit for use by an American audience.

Finally, if you neither you nor your website are located in the United States, well, sorry, guess what? — your website is still at risk. The moment a U.S. citizen accesses your website’s content, your site may now be the target of a lawsuit by a U.S.-based plaintiff, all thanks, again, to SOPA’s loosey-goosey verbiage.

Feebly-Written Defense Against Misrepresentation

What if your website is unfairly targeted and shut down? What if, one moment you were going about your business and five days later, came to learn some judge had declared your activities illegal? What if you were completely innocent, yet now you’re completely offline? Certainly SOPA can’t be all that draconian, can it? I mean, there MUST be some form of defense in case you own a website that has been erroneously judged “illegal”, right?

I searched for an answer in the 78 pages of proposed legislation, and found this one, small, piece of crap excuse of a defense against misrepresentation. Section 103, subsection b), item 6:

“MISREPRESENTATIONS- Any provider of a notification or counter notification who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section–
(A) that a site is an Internet site dedicated to the theft of U.S. property, or
(B) that such site does not meet the criteria of an Internet site dedicated to the theft of U.S. property,
shall be liable for damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the person injured by such misrepresentation as a result of the misrepresentation.”

So you see, it’s not all that bad… If you happen to find that someone has cried wolf and a judge has ordered your website shut down, the domain revoked by the registrar, all references to the domain in Google deleted, all inbound links from other sites removed, your merchant account shut off, monies due you frozen and irretrievable, and basically, your entire online business destroyed, all you need to do is hire your own legal team to prove your innocence, and it will all be put back together and made good as new again. Simple, right?

I’m sorry, but SOPA is nothing more than a U.S. lobbyist’s wet dream, for any form of “legislation” that defaults to supporting an American plaintiff first without due process is NOT legislation. It is an act of war declared upon the global online community by those few in the United States with enough power to BUY the legal system and twist it as they see fit.

How do you feel about SOPA now?

In Summary

Simply put, SOPA IS BULLSHIT.

As a web hosting service provider, Canvas Dreams is a fierce defender of online rights. Our business depends on our ability to provide stable, reliable access to content our customers host with us. Were SOPA to become law, we could no longer offer guarantees of that service or its reliability, for anyone with enough money could wage an illegal “legal” campaign against our service or one of our customers, and force us to either side with the plaintiff or else find our service shut down completely.

Don’t get me wrong. Just as we fight for the legitimate rights of law-abiding Internet users, Canvas Dreams is also a fierce opponent of online piracy. Looking at the balance of the situation, however, very little good could ever come out of SOPA as it is currently written. If anything, it stands to throw into question the founding pillars of the Internet and the tenets upon which it was built — a solid architecture with reliable frameworks and rules — and replace them with subjective, policy-based judicial enforcement and purchased “rights” at the hands of corporations wealthy enough to shout louder and buy the law as they see fit. And that is something I and my company will actively fight against.

I ask you to strongly consider opposing SOPA, to contact your local representatives or members of the media, and have your voice heard on this matter.

Thank you,

David Anderson, Principal
Canvas Dreams, LLC

Â Show Your Opposition To SOPA

To help show your support against SOPA, we’ve created this simple icon you can download and display on your website. If you copy and paste the entire code block below into the HTML of your website, the icon will link to this blog article as your show of support in the fight against SOPA.