U.S. House Discusses SOPA Bill Today, As Tech Opponents Express Opposition

by Sam Dean - Dec. 15, 2011Comments (0)

The U.S. House of Representatives has set aside time today to discuss the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), as we covered here. Members of the House Judiciary Committee will debate the proposed legislation, and Judiciary chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) will reportedly try to address strong concerns from the technology community about the bill. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has said that the bill would: "....grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet's domain name system (DNS). The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to redirect or dump users' attempts to reach certain websites' URLs." With the discussion looming today, many new organizations are coming out in opposition of the bill, or firming up existing opposition.

In a post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, you can find the primary reasons why so many technology companies are opposing the bill. Effectively, it extends online censorship rights to the government that folks such as Google Chairman Eric Schmidt have labeled "draconian."

No fewer than eighty-three of the Internet's most noted inventors and movers and shakers have written a letter to Congress about SOPA, which says:

"Censorship of Internet infrastructure will inevitably cause network errors and security problems. This is true in China, Iran and other countries that censor the network today; it will be just as true of American censorship. It is also true regardless of whether censorship is implemented via the DNS, proxies, firewalls, or any other method. Types of network errors and insecurity that we wrestle with today will become more widespread, and will affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government."

It's worth reading the rest of the letter, and its authors are urging people to make their voices heard in opposition of SOPA. Mozilla is among the most vocal opponents of the bill, and has been organizing opposition.

Today's hearing doesn't decide whether SOPA becomes legislation; instead, it is a discussion session, and it's likely to lead to amendments to the bill. Still, this one is worth watching closely, because SOPA could become as influential over censorship, digital rights management and freedom on the web as the DMCA was. These are copyright bills, backed by content owners who oppose types of freedom online that many users want to have.