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.”

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.

Energy on the House Floor

I've never seen members of Congress quite so energized. On Friday August 1, 2008 at 11:23am, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) adjourned and Congress went into recess. However, certain Republicans were not happy with Pelosi's decision, and stayed on the House floor Friday to continue talking. They met again Monday, August 4th, to continue talking in the dark.

Although not technically dark (the base lights in the ceiling were on, creating a dim glow), the floor itself, with no microphones, cameras, or recording equipment that was broadcasting, was technologically dark, save for Blackberries.

Certain members of Congress, such as John Culberson (http://twitter.com/JohnCulberson), have been utilizing Twitter while on the House floor. Via the live-blogging platform, he has been "tweeting" messages of his own thoughts while tourists stream in and out of the floor itself.

I sat in the press balcony, watching. Nearly every seat was occupied-not by members of Congress- and the audience clapped and whistled. When Congressman Tom Price (R-GA) stood and demanded that Pelosi come back and let them vote, the audience gave him a standing ovation.

Recording devices, not normally allowed in the chamber, were present in nearly every reporter's hand. The reporters pretended they weren't holding them, and the Capitol Police pretended not to see. At one point, I saw a member of Congress on the floor wave up at those of us in the balcony, and when I turned to see to whom he was waving at, I discovered Congressmen in the press balcony, standing behind me. "Hey, what's up," one of them said. I was speechless.

Congressman Mike Pence, (R-IN) summed it up nicely: Americans are not getting a vacation from high gas prices, and so Congress shouldn't be on vacation either. The audience cheered.