SOPA or how America hates the Internet.

[Grey Fox]

Crazy shit in that bill of yours, guys. Do something about it before it's too late.

The U.S. Congress is currently embroiled in a heated debated over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), proposed legislation that supporters argue is needed combat online infringement, but critics fear would create the "great firewall of the United States." SOPA's potential impact on the Internet and development of online services is enormous as it cuts across the lifeblood of the Internet and e-commerce in the effort to target websites that are characterized as being "dedicated to the theft of U.S. property." This represents a new standard that many experts believe could capture hundreds of legitimate websites and services.

For those caught by the definition, the law envisions requiring Internet providers to block access to the sites, search engines to remove links from search results, payment intermediaries such as credit card companies and Paypal to cut off financial support, and Internet advertising companies to cease placing advertisements. While these measures have unsurprisingly raised concern among Internet companies and civil society groups (letters of concern from Internet companies, members of the US Congress, international civil liberties groups, and law professors), my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) argues the jurisdictional implications demand far more attention. The U.S. approach is breathtakingly broad, effectively treating millions of websites and IP addresses as "domestic" for U.S. law purposes.

The long-arm of U.S. law manifests itself in at least five ways in the proposed legislation. 

First, it defines a "domestic domain name" as a domain name "that is registered or assigned by a domain name registrar, domain name registry, or other domain name registration authority, that is located within a judicial district of the United States." Since every dot-com, dot-net, and dot-org domain is managed by a domain name registry in the U.S., the law effectively asserts jurisdiction over tens of millions of domain names regardless of where the registrant actually resides.

Second, it defines "domestic Internet protocol addresses" - the numeric strings that constitute the actual address of a website or Internet connection - as "an Internet Protocol address for which the corresponding Internet Protocol allocation entity is located within a judicial district of the United States."

Yet IP addresses are allocated by regional organizations, not national ones. The allocation entity located in the U.S. is called ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers. Its territory includes the U.S., Canada, and 20 Caribbean nations. This bill treats all IP addresses in this region as domestic for U.S. law purposes. 

To put this is context, every Canadian Internet provider relies on ARIN for its block of IP addresses. In fact, ARIN even allocates the block of IP addresses used by federal and provincial governments. The U.S. bill would treat them all as domestic for U.S. law purposes.

Third, the bill grants the U.S. "in rem" jurisdiction over any website that does not have a domestic jurisdictional connection.  For those sites, the U.S. grants jurisdiction over the property of the site and opens the door to court orders requiring Internet providers to block the site and Internet search engines to stop linking to it.

Should a website owner wish to challenge the court order, U.S. law asserts itself in a fourth way, since in order for an owner to file a challenge (described as a "counter notification"), the owner must first consent to the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts.

If these measures were not enough, the fifth measure makes it a matter of U.S. law to ensure that intellectual property protection is a significant component of U.S. foreign policy and grants more resources to U.S. embassies around the world to increase their involvement in foreign legal reform.

U.S. intellectual property lobbying around the world has been well documented with new Canadian copyright legislation widely viewed as a direct consequence of years of political pressure. The new U.S. proposal takes this aggressive approach to another level by simply asserting jurisdiction over millions of Canadian registered IP addresses and domain names.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6134/135/
http://americancensorship.org/infographic.html
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/the-stop-online-piracy-act-big-contents-full-on-assault-against-the-safe-harbor.ars

[Ed Anger]

Do something about it

No.

[Martinus]

Relax. You make it sound like the US was relevant any more.

[Admiral Yi]

So the law would require US ISPs to block access to pirate sites in Canada, it would require US search engines to not show results for pirate sites in Canada, and it would prohibit US payment companies from transferring funds to pirate sites in Canada.

What exactly is your beef Wolf?

[Razgovory]

So the law would require US ISPs to block access to pirate sites in Canada, it would require US search engines to not show results for pirate sites in Canada, and it would prohibit US payment companies from transferring funds to pirate sites in Canada.

What exactly is your beef Wolf?

He runs a pirate site in Canada.

[Neil]

What's the problem?  I mean, US domination of the Internet is a bad thing, right?  This sort of thing allows for a multipolar internet.

[Grey Fox]

So the law would require US ISPs to block access to pirate sites in Canada, it would require US search engines to not show results for pirate sites in Canada, and it would prohibit US payment companies from transferring funds to pirate sites in Canada.

What exactly is your beef Wolf?

US has control of all .com, .org & .net websites plus the north american registrar is in the US.

[Admiral Yi]

US has control of all .com, .org & .net websites plus the north american registrar is in the US.

Right, so replace the word in Canada with any where in the world.  What's your beef?

[Grey Fox]

US has control of all .com, .org & .net websites plus the north american registrar is in the US.

Right, so replace the word in Canada with any where in the world.  What's your beef?

Since the NA registrar is located in the US, a canadian website say, gc.ca, could be completely block by the US government.

[Admiral Yi]

Since the NA registrar is located in the US, a canadian website say, gc.ca, could be completely block by the US government.

First of all, the site wouldn't be blocked by non-US ISPs.

Second of all, WTF is gc.ca doing sharing pirated movies and videos?

[Grey Fox]

Since the NA registrar is located in the US, a canadian website say, gc.ca, could be completely block by the US government.

First of all, the site wouldn't be blocked by non-US ISPs.

Second of all, WTF is gc.ca doing sharing pirated movies and videos?

It's not block by ISP, it's block by DNSses.

It just takes someone to claim it's copyright infrigment to get a site blocked.

[Neil]

Second of all, WTF is gc.ca doing sharing pirated movies and videos?

American companies will claim copyright because they're dishonest and there's no incentive not to.

[Gaius Marius]

This sounds like litigation waiting to happen to me. There is no justification for the US assuming legal jursidiction over the internet in other countries. Maybe "Big Content" should be going after the market where intellectual property theft and copyright violation is bigger than anywhere else, aka China instead of pushing Congress to get tough on pirates with odious legislation.

[The Brain]

"Sopa" means (a piece of) garbage in Swedish. Makes you thimk.

[Eddie Teach]

It means soup en español.