(Cross posted at Reason.org)
Americans got a preview of what life would be like under the U.S. Senate’s Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) when the Department of Justice and the FBI yesterday shut down Megaupload.com and arrested its founder and six other executives on charges of illegally sharing copyrighted material.
The move comes in the middle of a vociferous debate on PIPA and its House counterpart, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and provides more fuel for opponents who argue that the bills threaten to undermine legal, legitimate mechanisms that are integral to the Internet technological and social utility (See my commentary posted on Reason yesterday afternoon).
PIPA supporters have argued that worries about Internet censorship and user disruption are exaggerated and the bill’s real goal is to target shadowy “rogue” sites that deal in counterfeit merchandise and pirated video downloads. Yesterday we found out just who the Feds thinks these rogue sites are.
Megaupload.com is a major commercial file-sharing site used by millions of consumers and businesses in the course of daily business. Users park large files that can then be shared among friends, family or professional workgroups. It competes directly with other such services such as Dropbox and RapidUpload. Megaupload claims to have about 50 million daily visits and even DoJ notes that at one point it was estimated to be the 13th most frequently visited site on the Internet.
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[Cross posted from TechFreedom]
Today, the Digital Advertising Alliance, a group of leading digital ad agencies and online ad networks, unveiled a campaign to bring attention to AdChoices, its icon-based system allowing users to opt-out of behavioral advertising. The following statement can be attributed to Berin Szoka, President of TechFreedom:
In the 1990s, Congress tried and failed to regulate Internet content. Instead, the courts have required an approach grounded in user empowerment, education and enforcement of existing laws against fraud and deception. Today, we’re seeing the the advertising industry build on this approach for consumer protection on privacy. The AdChoices campaign launched last summer empowers consumers to make their own choices on privacy. The ad campaign launched today educates consumers on how to use this tool. The Digital Advertising Alliance has promised to enforce industry’s principles. Consumer advocates should hold them to that promise. It’s also fair to insist that empowerment and education improve over time. But today, for once, let’s give the ad industry credit for doing the right thing.
The Megaupload folks are not the most sympathetic defendants, to say the least. They likely knew very well they were profiting from piracy, and they probably induced it as well. Anonymous’s attacks in retaliation for the arrests and domain seizures, therefore, threaten to destroy the good will the Internet community generated the previous day with the SOPA protests. That all said, we can’t lose sight of the principle because of the bad actors involved.
This case shows that law enforcement is perfectly capable of securing international cooperation and taking direct action against large piracy operations overseas. The Megaupload principals were arrested and they now face extradition and trial. So why do we need due-process-free domain seizures or tinkering with the inner workings of the Internet to combat piracy?
This case also reminds us that the federal government already has the power to seize .com, .net, .org and other U.S.-registered domains. Stopping SOPA is one thing, but now the task should be rolling back excessive government powers to control information online.
The balance struck by the DMCA, which gives safe harbor to sites that take down allegedly infringing content when notified by the owner, is the right one. No safe harbor is available to sites that have actual knowledge that they are benefiting from pirated content, as is probably the case with Megaupload.
I thought Todd Zywicki, a senior scholar with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, did a nice job on Judge Napolitano’s “Freedom Watch” show addressing the contentious question of whether government should be regulating food advertising in order to somehow make American kids healthier. Todd pointed out how the advertising guidelines currently being developed are anything but “voluntary” and noted that there are many causes of childhood obesity. Watch the clip here:
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Tune in here 12-1:45pm today for the livestream (below) of TechFreedom‘s joint Capitol Hill briefing, “Unintended Consequences of Rogue Website Crackdown,” co-sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute. Our expert panel will discuss the recent outpouring of public opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), what’s next for these troublesome bills, possible compromises, and the proposed alternative, Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act. Our panelists are:
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Ryan Radia, Associate Director of Technology Studies, CEI
- Larry Downes, Senior Adjunct Fellow, TechFreedom
- Julian Sanchez, Research Fellow, Cato
- James Gattuso, Senior Research Fellow in Regulatory Policy, Heritage Foundation
- Allan Friedman, Research Director, Center for Technology Innovation, Brookings Institution
- Dan Kaminsky, Security Researcher
Follow the discussion on the #SOPAnel hashtag or submit a question for the panel to @Tech_Freedom!
This event is the perfect way to celebrate TechFreedom‘s one-year anniversary. Our theme for the last year has been two-fold: optimism about how technology can expand our capacity to choose for ourselves and skepticism about government meddling with the Internet. As Hayek famously said about the “curious task” of economics, TechFreedom’s task is to “demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
We’re skeptical of SOPA and PIPA not because we’re against copyright, but for the same reason we’re skeptical of regulations aimed at protecting net neutrality, privacy, competition, and other legitimate values: Tinkering with the Internet is a perilous game—and policymakers rarely see the full implications of their interventions.
That’s why we’ve emphasized the need to consider the trade-offs of regulating extremely carefully—to minimize unintended burdens of any rogue website crackdown on cybersecurity, free speech, entrepreneurship, and global Internet governance. But we also want an open and judicious process for copyright’s sake! As we noted in our coalition letter with CEI and other free market groups, “If the public perceives this copyright legislation to be the product of a hasty and opaque process, respect for copyrights and trademarks will be diminished, not enhanced.” Continue reading →
(Cross posted at reason.org)
It’s rare when the entire Internet industry rises up with one voice. Perhaps that’s why the protest against the House of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate counterpart, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), is getting so much attention. In policy circles, usually one segment of the online industry is jockeying for favorable position against another. Today, with Wikipedia dark, Google taped over, and a host of other sites large and small raising awareness through home page notices, New Media is drawing its line in the sand against the most astounding government overreach into Internet regulation to date.
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As if my earlier essay on why “We Need More Attack Ads in Political Campaigns” wasn’t incendiary enough, allow me to heap praise on this outstanding new oped by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen “In Defense of Big Money in Politics.” Few things get me more steamed than when Democrats and Republicans decry “big money” in politics and claim we need to aggressively clamp down on it. What’s even more insulting is when they say this is a smart way to encourage 3rd party political candidates and movements.
What’s really going on here is simple protectionism. The reason that today’s politicians want to regulate cash in campaigns is because the two parties already own the system. Believe me, as someone who has NEVER voted for a politician from either of the two leading parties, I would love for it to be the case that clamping down on campaign spending actually helped 3rd party candidates. Richard Cohen’s column explains why that certainly wasn’t the case with Eugene McCarthy’s historic 1968 challenge to Lyndon Johnson, which was fueled by “big money” contributions from a handful of major donors. Here’s how Cohen begins his piece: Continue reading →
On the podcast this week, Michael Weinberg, staff attorney with Public Knowledge, discusses his white paper entitled, It Will Be Awesome If They Don’t Screw This Up: 3D Printing, Intellectual Property, and the Fight Over the Next Great Disruptive Technology. The discussion begins with Weinberg describing 3D printing: the process of printing three dimensional objects layer-by-layer from a digital file on a computer. According to Weinberg the design method used for printing includes programs like AutoCad and 3D scanners that can scan existing objects, making it possible to print a 3D replica. He goes on to explain why he thinks 3D printing, coupled with the Internet, is a disruptive technology. Finally, Weinberg discusses the thesis of his paper, where he anticipates industries affected by potential disruption will not compete with or adapt to this technology, but rather, will seek legal protection through IP law to preemptively regulate 3D printing.
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Over at TIME.com, I write that while some claim that Google Search Plus Your World violates antitrust laws, it likely doesn’t. But I note that Google does have a big problem on its hands: market reaction.
So if antitrust is not Google’s main concern, what is? It’s that user reaction to SPYW and other recent moves may invite the very switching and competitive entry that would have to be impossible for monopoly to hold. … Users, however, may not wait for the company to get it right. They can and will switch. And sensing a weakness, new competitors may well enter the search space. The market, therefore, will discipline Google faster than any antitrust action could.
Read the whole thing here.
After three years of politicking, it now looks like Congress may actually give the FCC authority to conduct incentive auctions for mobile spectrum, and soon. That, at least, is what the FCC seems to think.
At CES last week, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski largely repeated the speech he has now given three years in a row. But there was a subtle twist this time, one echoed by comments from Wireless Bureau Chief Rick Kaplan at a separate panel.
Instead of simply warning of a spectrum crunch and touting the benefits of the incentive auction idea, the Chairman took aim at a House Republican bill that would authorize the auctions but limit the agency’s “flexibility” in designing and conducting them. “My message on incentive auctions today is simple,” he said, “we need to get it done now, and we need to get it done right.” Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.