Some professors join fight against proposed Internet law

Critics allege the law will allow the gov’t to censor the internet.Georgetown Law professors are lending their voices to the outcry against a proposed Internet regulation law in Congress.

Two bills, one in the Senate and one in the House, are currently pending, both aiming to stop Internet piracy. The House bill is the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. The Senate bill is the Protect IP Act.

SOPA would allow the United States to go after offshore websites that offer copyright-infringing material. The government would be able to target the sites and get them taken down, a virtual death penalty of sorts, according to technology website CNET.com.

The earlier Senate Act, Protect IP, is similar, also targeting these “rogue,” copyright-infringing websites.
Supporters of these acts say the government needs to step up the enforcement of intellectual property. Writing in Forbes, tech company owner Frank Sola said, “Just as we seek to protect our borders from illegal intrusion, the time to address intrusion by those dedicated to infringing activities using the Internet is long overdue.”

Hundreds of professors in the United States have, however, spoken out against the bill, including some here at Georgetown Law. These opponents to PROTECT-IP and SOPA argue it has several main flaws: It will unacceptably redefine “the standard for copyright infringement on the Internet.”

It will “Allow the government to block Internet access to any web site that “facilitated” copyright or trademark infringement – a term that the Department of Justice currently interprets to require nothing more than having a link on a web page to another site that turns out to be infringing.” And it will “Allow any private copyright or trademark owner to interfere with the ability of web sites to host advertising or charge purchases to credit cards, putting enormous obstacles in the path of electronic commerce.”

Georgetown Law Professor Rebecca Tushnet signed a letter to the House of Represenatives - along with more than 100 other professors. She takes issue with both the structure and content of the proposed bill.

“This is a disastrously badly written bill that creates vast new uncertainties for many participants online, from payment systems to users who might not know when or why the sites they use suddenly disappear,” she said. “The law creates a new category of sites ‘dedicated to theft of U.S. property’ without defining that category, and allows private parties to cut off support to those sites by threatening third parties (such as credit card companies) without having to prove their cases in court.

“It does so, not incidentally, even though many of the sites may be directly amenable to process in the US; the law is not written, as its supporters claim, so that these new remedies apply only where it’s not possible to obtain jurisdiction over an allegedly infringing site.”

Georgetown Law Professor Julie E. Cohen also signed this letter.

The professors opposing these bills also raise Constitutional arguments against the bill.

The letter to the House of Representatives challenges what it says is a lack of due process for those targeted by  the bill.

“By failing to guarantee the challenged web sites notice or an opportunity to be heard in court before their sites are shut down, SOPA represents the most ill-advised and destructive intellectual property legislation in recent memory,” the letter says.

Further, the letter alleges First Amendment violations, by allowing speech to be suppressed without the proper protections as guaranteed by the Constitution.

PROTECT-IP has been passed in committee, but is on hold in the Senate. SOPA is still being discussed in the House Judiciary Committee and is scheduled for further markup in December.

by Cara Schenkel, 3L

News Editor