Businessweek | Draconian new anti-piracy laws being pushed through both the Senate and the House of Representatives are about more than just an academic debate over different legislative methods for fighting copyright infringement. They make it clear that media and content companies are fundamentally opposed to the way the Internet works. These bills are promoted by media and entertainment conglomerates as a way to fight what they see as massive content theft, but to combat that evil, the companies are effectively trying to get Congress to take over the Internet—and trample on important principles such as freedom of speech.As the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act—and its cousin, the E-Parasite Act—have worked their way through the Senate and the House, a loose coalition of technology companies and open-Internet advocates have come together to oppose the legislation—including such companies as Google (GOOG) (GOOG), Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo! (YHOO) (YHOO), some of whom appeared before a committee hearing on Wednesday to discuss the proposed laws, as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy & Technology, and even a group of civil rights agencies. Mozilla, the open-source browser project, changed its home page to lobby against the bills, and a number of civil liberty and open-Internet advocates made Wednesday what they called “American Censorship Day” and promoted a video about the evils of the proposed legislation (embedded below).
Google’s copyright counsel, Katherine Oyama, testified before the committee about the dangers of the new laws, which she said would fundamentally conflict with the principle of “safe harbor” enshrined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and allow—in fact, require—private companies such as Internet providers to “disappear” sites from the Internet after even an allegation of infringement. In her prepared testimony, Oyama said that while Google opposes piracy, it could not support the bill because:
“[I]t would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that could require monitoring of web sites and social media. Moreover, we are concerned that the bill sets a precedent in favor of Internet censorship.”
