Filipino experts worry over US anti-online piracy bill

By LIAN BUAN, GMA News

Published January 20, 2012 7:35pm

When Wikipedia and much of cyberspace protested the US' impending Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) on January 18 with a 24-hour blackout, most online Pinoys seemed merely irritated by the inconvenience.

But these two pieces of legislation, both of which supposedly aim to protect intellectual property, have far-reaching implications on the Internet as we know it —potentially affecting the Philippines' 30 million web users, or one out of every five Pinoys.

What are SOPA and PIPA?

The SOPA is a US House bill heavily backed by entertainment companies that have long complained of copyright infringements from sites such as Piratebay and torrent seeders, which have cost the industry billions of dollars in lost revenue. On the other hand, PIPA —or the “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act”— is a similar bill with similar provisions, but is in the hands of the US Senate; it is set to be voted on on January 24.

The SOPA is designed to make it easier for entertainment companies and other content producers to run after websites that enable copyright infringement. The legislation gives the US Attorney General the power to have any website that is accused of being "dedicated to theft of US property" or a "notorious foreign infringer" taken down, blocked from receiving payments, or even removed from search engine results.

And all it would take to bring this power to bear on a suspected infringer is a complaint from an IP rights holder who has "a good faith belief" that his or her rights have been violated.

Impact on the Philippines

Wikimedia Philippines, for its part, has already thrown in its support for Wikipedia's blackout protest. "(T)he passage of SOPA and PIPA will absolutely reverberate beyond America's borders and will seriously put in question the continued viability of the internet as a bastion of free speech and expression," the organization said in its official statement. Although the SOPA is a US law, it could still impact businesses in the Philippines and in other countries, explained Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines Director-General Atty. Ricardo Blancaflor.

"It gives the US the power to apply with any court, at ang court na 'yun puwedeng pahintuin iyong gumagawa ng host na outside the US," he said on GMA News TV's State of the Nation.

Rico Mossesgeld of Philippine-based tech blog technogra.ph says that the bigger threat of the SOPA is that, if passed, it might prompt the Philippine Congress to take after the US and create its own local version. "(The) US can also apply pressure on its Philippine counterpart to follow suit, with threats of canceling trade agreements that would affect our export industry," he said in a blog entry.

Atty. Gironella, a Philippine-based IP lawyer, shared a similar view: "Given the copycat tendency in Philippine legislation, and given the rampant unauthorized reproduction of movies and music in the Philippines, there is a chance that local producers will lobby to pass a similar bill," she told GMA News Online in an email.

No stopping online piracy According to local Internet and technology law expert Atty. JJ Disini, the SOPA's provisions could easily affect online pirates and innocent online bystanders alike. "(T)he main opposition to the (SOPA) revolves around free speech concerns because the deletion of a domain name takes down not only the infringing site but all other potentially non-infringing aspects of the site. For example, if a social networking site has one or two accounts that are being used for infringement, the entire site including the accounts of thousands of other users will be shut down. That's a clear violation of the right to free speech," Atty. Disini said in an email sent to GMA News Online. And, in any case, the bill's far-reaching measures still can't guarantee to put a stop to online piracy. "The (SOPA) is ineffective because it's not difficult for pirate sites to use other domain names to open up shop. In the domain name seizures done by the US government in late 2010, most of the sites targeted merely shifted to country code domain names (ccTLDs) and were up within hours from the seizures," he explained.

Deprivation without due process

Atty.Gironella said that the desire to protect US property rights is understandable, but SOPA's means of enforcing and protecting these rights "violate the precepts of fair play and due process".

"SOPA does not merely offer a 'take down' of Internet content that infringes or hawks the infringement of US IP. It allows entire sites to be taken out of commission, without warning or opportunity for self-defense, even when infringing activity has yet to be proved," she said.

Atty. Gironella also expressed concern that, under the SOPA, the US Attorney General could act on a perceived infringer simply on the basis of an accusation.

"It is very, very worrying that infringement, which should be a factual question, is now only a matter of allegation in order to effect removal orders, site closures and payment stoppages. It amounts to deprivation of a property or property right without due process, and worse, for Philippine entities, it may be done by a government body without jurisdiction," she explained.

Threat to social networks and e-commerce

Another key factor in the SOPA that digital advocates feel curtails Internet freedom is the provision to cut off US-based payments processing for foreign websites that are host or medium to stolen content and counterfeited goods.

Online security analyst Sonnie Santos told GMA News TV that the SOPA can "block our ability to do e-commerce", citing online payment sites such as PayPal that could be nixed if found to be in association with "infringed" sites.

According to Santos, the SOPA can also affect the Philippines in two more ways: we could lose Internet traffic as well as revenues from the US.

Santos also explained that users would have a difficult time uploading their content because host websites will be forced to roll out stricter anti-piracy measures. YouTube, for example, can currently detect "infringing" videos and remove them, but is not obliged to do much else. However, under the SOPA, the site could be penalized for violations committed by its users.

Internet as collateral damage

Josh Lim, Wikimedia PHL Vice President, told GMA News Online that laws like SOPA and PIPA are "well-intentioned" but "do more harm than good.”

'It's like throwing the baby with the bathwater," Eugene Alvin Villar, OpenStreetMap PHL President, told GMA News Online, "the baby being the integrity of the Internet as a medium of free expression and collaboration and the bathwater being online piracy."

“I would believe that it's good that we're fighting piracy, but you do not simply flight piracy with restricting free speech," Lim said.

The same sentiment is echoed by bestselling author Neil Gaiman in an open letter to the US Congress, urging them not to allow the internet to become collateral damage in the fight against piracy.

"Online piracy is harmful and it needs to be addressed, but not at the expense of censoring creativity, stifling innovation or preventing the creation of new, lawful digital distribution methods," the signatories, who included musicians, actors, directors and producers, said in their letter, a copy of which was posted on Gaiman's site.

Many groups and companies have criticized SOPA to be ineffective, saying shutting down pirate sites won’t stop them from shifting to another domain name and moving operations there in a matter of hours.

Lawmakers withdraw support

As of latest report from CNN, some lawmakers have withdrawn their support to the bill, saying they found the legislation to be flawed and that the issues raised by the protests need to be addressed first before moving further.

In his Twitter page, Republican Sen. Roy Blunt wrote said "We can find a solution that will protect lawful content. But this bill is flawed & that's why I'm withdrawing my support. #SOPA #PIPA."

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who was an initial co-sponsor of PIPA, went through a change of heart.

"I have decided to withdraw my support for the Protect IP Act. Furthermore, I encourage Senator Reid to abandon his plan to rush the bill to the floor. Instead, we should take more time to address the concerns raised by all sides, and come up with new legislation that addresses Internet piracy while protecting free and open access to the Internet," Rubio wrote on a Facebook post.

Online clamor vs SOPA

Among the tech giants who have joined the anti-SOPA calls were Google and Social Networking sites Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook.

SOPA and PIPA have become a hot topic over PHL cyberspace this week, eliciting calls from Twitter personalities like @tonyocruz and the viral online character @AteVangie for Pinoy netizens to learn more about the proposed US anti-online piracy act and join petition to try and stop it from being passed into a law.

“The internet is the most powerful tool we have for creating a more open and connected world. We can't let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the internet's development,” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said. — TJD, GMA News

Tags: sopa, pipa, internet