[Chapter-delegates] international civil society statement on SOPA

[Jozef Halbersztadt]

Is ISOC aware?

Best

--
'jothal' jozef [dot] halbersztadt [at] gmail [dot] com
Internet Society Poland http://www.isoc.org.pl



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Raegan MacDonald <raegan at accessnow.org>
Date: 2011/11/11
Subject: [EDRi-members] international civil society statement on SOPA
To: edri-members at mailman.edri.org


Hi EDRis,
As most of you are probably aware, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)
in the US is a domestic bill that introduces a deeply concerning
degree of legal uncertainty into the internet economy, particularly
for businesses and users internationally.
In the name of protecting US (intellectual) property, this bill
prescribes DNS filtering, removes the safe harbor provisions of the
DMCA, and requires all platforms and websites to proactively police
the activities of all of their users for potentially infringing
activities. This bill would also create a private right of action
allowing alleged rightsholders to suspend access to payments, domain
names, advertising and other services of any site accused of copyright
infringement for web services in and outside of the US.
Together with Joe and a number of organisations including Access, the
New America Foundation's Open Tech Initiative, EDRi, RSF, and
MayFirst/People Link, we've drafted a letter summarizing our concerns
(attached and below) to US Congress on behalf of the international
civil and human rights community.
This is intended to compliment a similar letter being drafted by US
organisations. There will be a briefing for congressional staffers on
Monday afternoon where these letters will be released, and we will be
delivering it to the press on Tuesday ahead of the House Judiciary
hearing on this bill on Wednesday. Please let me know if EDRi would
like to sign this letter by Monday morning (Nov 14th).

This letter has already been reviewed by many organisations, and given
the very quick turnaround that's needed on this, this is going to have
to be the final draft. If there are serious issues that would prevent
you from supporting this, please reach out to me off list.

Best regards,
-Raegan
-----------------------------------------------
Date [TK]

Chairman Lamar Smith
Committee on the Judiciary
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman
Committee on the Judiciary
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515The Honorable Lamar Smith

Re: H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Privacy Act

Dear Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Conyers,

The undersigned advocates and organizations supporting human rights
and press freedom write to express our deep concern with H.R. 3261,
the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA). While this is a domestic bill,
there are several provisions within SOPA that would have serious
implications for international civil and human rights which raise
concerns about how the United States is approaching global internet
governance. The United States has long been a strong advocate for the
protection and promotion of an open Internet. However, by
institutionalizing a form of domestic Internet censorship the United
States creates a paradox that undermines its moral authority to
criticize repressive regimes.# We urge the United States to uphold its
proclaimed responsibility as a leader in internet freedom and reject
bills that will censor and fragment the web.

Through SOPA, the United States is attempting to dominate a shared
global resource. Building a nationwide firewall and creating barriers
for international website and service operators makes a powerful
statement that the United States is not interested in participating in
a global information infrastructure. Instead, the United States would
be creating the very barriers that restrict the free flow of
information that it has vigorously challenged abroad. By imposing
technical changes to the open internet while eroding due process, SOPA
introduces a deeply concerning degree of legal uncertainty into the
internet economy, particularly for businesses and users
internationally. Business cannot be conducted online when
international users and businesses do not have faith that their access
to payments, domain names, and advertising will be available, raising
challenges to economic development and innovation. This is as
unacceptable to the international community as it would be if a
foreign country were to impose similar measures on the United States.

The provisions in SOPA on DNS filtering in particular will have severe
consequences worldwide. In China, DNS filtering contributes to the
Great Firewall that prevents citizens from accessing websites or
services that have been censored by the Chinese government.# By
instituting this practice in the United States, SOPA sends an
unequivocal message to other nations that it is acceptable to censor
speech on the global Internet. Additionally, Internet engineers have
argued in response to the Protect IP Act, DNS filtering would break
the internet into separate regional networks.# Worse still, the
circumvention technology that can be used to access information under
repressive Internet regimes would be outlawed under SOPA, the very
same technology whose development is funded by the State Department.

SOPA puts the interests of rightsholders ahead of the rights of
society. SOPA would require that web services, in order to avoid
complaints and lawsuits, take “deliberate actions” to prevent the
possibility of infringement from taking place on their site,
pressuring private companies to monitor the actions of innocent users.
Not only will this remove the safe harbor protection provided in the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), but the proposed legislation
would disproportionally affect small online communities who lack the
capacity to represent their users in legal battles. Wrongly accused
websites would suffer immediate losses as search engines, payment
systems and ad networks would be required to comply with a demand to
block or cease doing business with the site pending receipt of a legal
counter-notice. Even then, it would still be at the discretion of
these entities to reinstate service to the website regardless of the
merits of an alleged rightsholder’s claim,  robbing online companies
of a stable business environment and creating a climate where free
speech is subject to the whims of private actors.

Censoring the internet is the wrong approach to protecting any
sectoral interest in business. By adopting SOPA, the United States
would lose its position as a global leader in supporting the Internet
for public good.

The international civil and human rights community urges Congress to
reject the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Sincerely,