House Takes On Online Piracy

By Andrea Salazar

Silicon Valley tech giants butted heads with Congress Wednesday as the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on a bill designed to curb online copyright infringement.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would give the government tools to protect the works of American authors, artists and filmmakers from so called “rogue” websites that steal intellectual property. Under SOPA, the federal government would be able to seek injunction against foreign websites that use pirated or counterfeit products from the U.S.

Proponents of the bipartisan measure, including the Register of Copyrights at the Library of Congress Maria Pallante, argue that there is a need for SOPA because search engines do not remove infringing websites from their search results.

“If we do nothing, the film industry and those young directors who are starting out aren’t going to be able to do their craft,” Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) said. “We’re not going to have the next Adele, the next Drake because they’re not going to be compensated for their work.”

Senior Executive Vice President of Global Policy and External Affairs at the Motion Picture Association of America Michael O’Leary, along with representatives from MasterCard and Pfizer, testified in support of the bill, arguing that it would protect many jobs across the country.

“Hard work, innovation and creativity are not solely the province of people who live in Northern California,” O’Leary said. “There are people all over this country who contribute to the economy every day, who contribute to our culture…and their jobs are just as important and just as worth protecting as everyone else’s.”

However, opponents of the bill, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, are calling it an Internet killer because under the new bill, websites could too easily be shut down for the actions of one user.

“SOPA wold undermine the legal, commercial and cultural architecture that has propelled the extraordinary growth of Internet commerce over the past decade,” said Katherine Oyama, copyright counsel for Google.

Google’s current policy toward pirate sites is not to removed sites such as Pirate Bay from its search results. Instead, in compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it takes down specific page links when rights holders notify the search engine of infringement.

Acknowledging the problem of online piracy, Google said it has concerns with the unclear language of SOPA, not the goal of curbing copyright infringement.

“The bill sweeps in innocent websites that have violated no law and imposes harsh and arbitrary sanctions without due process,” Oyama said, adding that it could threaten new entrepreneurship.

Instead, Oyama suggested that the solutions to online piracy are cutting revenue to those sites and making legal sites, like iTunes and Netflix, more available to the public.

“As long as a rogue site exists, people are still going to talk about it,” Oyama said. “They’re still going to blog about. They’re still going to post about it.”

Lawmakers And Tech Industry Divided Over Future Of Online Safety Law

By Sofia Sanchez University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News Service

Lawmakers and members of the tech industry went head to head Thursday on the issue of whether the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 should undergo an overhaul in response to technological advances made in the last decade.

Executives from Microsoft and Facebook appearing before a Senate panel praised COPPA, which requires websites to gain parents’ consent before collecting or using any personal information given by children, as an effective tool, but argued against expanding the legislation.

"COPPA has enabled parents to take a more active and informed role deciding how their children can take advantage of the internet's many benefits...therefore, we do not believe that a legislative amendment is necessary at this time,” Microsoft Associate General Counsel Michael Hintze said.

Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.VA.), was displeased with the executives' positions and said that he believed the two companies were too confident that they could protect children without the government's involvement.

"You ... ended up with the idea 'we will do this by ourselves, we really don’t need the government to tell us what to do,'" Rockefeller said.

The West Virginia Democrat also took shots at Google and Apple, who both declined to appear before the committee.

“Could they not get the people here because they couldn’t afford the plane tickets?" the senator joked.

Iran Embodies Importance Of New Media, Say Experts

New media websites, like Twitter and Facebook, are more important than ever in Iran since the country's troubled election, said communication experts during a panel discussion Tuesday afternoon.

“If the regime [in Iran] cracks down, if it continues to crack down, and it continues to close the door to foreign media, Iranians will most probably rely more on the new media,” said Setareh Derakhshesh, a news anchor of Voice of America’s Persian News Network.

Due to the dangers of using some new media websites enforced by the Iranian government, the website Tor has become extremely popular in the country. Tor helps users create more anonymity on the Internet. According to Andrew Lewman, the executive director of Tor, Iran went from being Tor’s seventy-fifth most popular country to its fifteenth most popular country over the night of Iran’s elections.

“It’s nice to think that people in Iran want to get the news out [by using new media]…it’s a lot more plausible in our mind that they’re doing it to share information [about checkpoints and patrols],” said Lewman.

Targeted Internet advertising hits the bullseye, but misses privacy

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing on the privacy implications of Internet advertising. Advertising targeted to consumers’ interests was most discussed. Lydia Parnes, the Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission said that the implications of online advertising are very complex, but the Commission is hopeful that the industry can self-regulate, meaning federal intervention may not be necessary.

By contrast, Leslie Harris, the President and Chief Executive Officer at the Center for Democracy and Technology said that self-regulation does not work. Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr., the Vice President for Policy and Director of Technology Studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute said that although there is a market for anonymity, the Internet is not the network for privacy. He said that because of targeted advertising, ads are now relevant. Mike Hintze, the Associate General for Counsel, Legal, and Corporate Affairs at Microsoft Corporation, said that $21 billion were spent last year on online advertising because it is interactive, targeted, relevant, and beneficial to advertisers because the targeted groups are more likely to buy the product.

Chris Kelly, the Chief Privacy Officer at Facebook Incorporated said that all of their users have very easy access to privacy settings to make sure they control what information they share and who they share it with. He said that targeted advertising benefits users, but personal information is not given. Robert R. Dykes, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NebuAd Incorporated said that in his business, Internet users can opt out of the ads, but their personal information still streams through their system. They have no identifiable information like names or IP addresses.