But now the search giant is contesting the bills by adding a protest Wednesday on its home page, the same page where those lovable Google doodles are often found. While it's not the Internet blackout that some sites, including Wikipedia, are planning, the protest will add to the growing chorus of voices saying the proposed laws are dangerous.
Vote on both bills had been scheduled in the coming weeks, and it appears those votes will be delayed. Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said previously that the bills "go after all the wrong problems," and threaten free speech and due process. Schmidt described the bills as technologically difficult, including "giving copyright holders the right to delete links from the Internet and criminalizing the indexing of the content by search engines," the AP reported.
The ban could arguably cover tools such as VPNs and Tor used by human rights groups, government officials and businesses to protect their communications and evade online spying and filtering. The proposals grant rights holders the ability to demand that judges order ad networks and financial institutions to refrain from doing business with sites right holders say are infringing.
The measures also give out legal immunity to ad networks and financial institutions that choose, without a court order, to stop placing ads or processing transactions for websites they deem are dedicated to infringing activity. Copyright holders would face little penalty for filing takedown claims without doing due diligence or considering "fair use," encouraging even more abuse of copyright takedown lawsuits.
They are in response to Big Content's. These numbers are largely unsubstantiated and rest on the assumption that if a person had not gotten a copy of a movie online, they would have paid full price for a DVD or CD.
On the other side, much of the tech world maintains that the open nature of the internet has created millions of jobs, that millions of people pay for content online and that copyright and trademark holders already have the legal tools to fight infringement. Does the government or Big Content have a history of abusing the takedown process? Unfortunately, copyright holders don't always play fair.
Universal Music already believes it does not have to consider fair use when sending YouTube a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The U. What sites are targeted? The legislation for the most part is directed at foreign websites dedicated to infringing activities.
Critics — among them, the founders of Google, Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, Tumblr and Twitter — counter that the laws will stifle innovation and investment, hallmarks of the free, open internet. The Obama administration has offered muted criticism of the legislation, but, as many of his supporters have painfully learned, what President Barack Obama questions one day, he signs into law the next.
First, the basics. The two bills are very similar. Sopa would allow copyright holders to complain to the US attorney general about a foreign website they allege is "committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations" of copyright law. This relates mostly to pirated movies and music. Sopa would allow the movie industry, through the courts and the US attorney general, to send a slew of demands that internet service providers ISPs and search engine companies shut down access to those alleged violators, and even to prevent linking to those sites, thus making them "unfindable".
It would also bar internet advertising providers from making payments to websites accused of copyright violations. Sopa could, then, shut down a community-based site like YouTube if just one of its millions of users was accused of violating one US copyright. As David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer and an opponent of the legislation, blogged:. Pipa and Sopa will censor the web, will risk our industry's track record of innovation and job creation, and will not stop piracy.
That's why we call these the censorship bills.
0コメント