ABOUT THE BOOK

Early 2012 witnessed a remarkable, evolutionary confrontation in the political world. For perhaps the first time, major Internet firms showed strong opposition to a set of laws being debated in the U.S. Congress. They opposed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate. The confrontation was the the result of a long-standing debate between the titans of Hollywood, and moguls of Silicon Valley over the ownership of content on the Internet.

The SOPA and PIPA Acts were fundamentally designed as a means to prevent piracy of music and video content online. They would provide expanded rights to U.S. law enforcement authorities to pursue individuals and companies that infringed on copyrights of intellectual property.

The Acts were primarily aimed at preventing U.S. Internet users from accessing illegal content. In particular, the Acts would have restricted Internet companies from dealing with illegal websites, search engines from linking to those sites, and coercing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to those sites. It would also grant the government root access to the domain name system on the web so that it could control and block pirated content or websites.

EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK

As a result of the theft of their intellectual property, the entertainment industry primarily began to resort to the legal system. They pursued their claims using classic legal maneuvers including civil and criminal prosecution. Shawn Fanning of Napster was targeted for prosecution and eventually forced to shut his site down.

While the industry had some successes in shutting down popular sites, hackers easily created new sites to replace the old ones as soon as they were shut down. Deterrence worked in some cases to punish consumers for stealing music and video. However, smart hackers created ways to hide their IP address or to host their sites off-shore away from the jurisdiction of U.S. law enforcement.

Steve Jobs

Enter: Steve Jobs, who introduced the iTunes platform in January, 2001. Jobs was the iconic founder and CEO of Apple, the largest most innovative and most profitable technology company in the world. His force of will inevitably would have had an impact on the piracy debate. Coincidentally or not, the 2012 vote on SOPA and PIPA occurred just months after the death of Steve Jobs.

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CHAPTER OUTLINE

Hacker’s Guide To Understanding SOPA and PIPA
+ Introduction
+ Roots of the Problem
+ Initial Response
+ SOPA and PIPA Introduced
+ ...and much more

The complete text of the current version of the Stop Online Piracy Act.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Stop Online Piracy Act was one of the most controversial pieces of legislation that Congress considered passing. It was introduced in the House by Representative Lamar Smith, a Republican representing the 21st District in Texas. Although the bill has officially died, it remains one of the most popular topics on Wikipedia. This is due in part to opponents of the bill claiming SOPA violated First Amendment rights, and the bills susceptibility to being interpreted broadly.

SOPA sought stiff penalties, including jail time, for offenders who illegally downloaded copyrighted material. It also sought to authorize the complete shut-down of websites that contained copyrighted content. Big businesses got involved on both sides of the issue, and a grass roots effort emerged in strong opposition to it that culminated with websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit voluntarily going dark for one day to illustrate how far-reaching the bill was.

Entertainment industry behemoths such as Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America heavily influenced this bill. Former Senator Chris Dodd currently heads the MPAA as the Chief Executive, and it his organization that helped write the bill.

EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK

As SOPA became increasingly despised among technology industry experts, savvy users, and people who hate the idea of government poking its head into their private affairs, information leaked that corporate sponsors and members of Congress had been violating copyright laws by illegally downloading protected content.

In December 2011, major SOPA sponsor, Sony was found to have several violators among its ranks. Technology website BGR, reported on December 14, that employees of Fox, Sony, and NBC Universal had used BitTorrent, a pirating website, to download copies of Conan the Barbarian, music from the Black Keys, and other protected music. These acts were discovered using a program called Torrent Freak, which can find out what each specific IP address is downloading.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Wikipedia+: Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)
+ Introduction
+ Arguments Supporting SOPA
+ Arguments Against SOPA
+ Vint Cerf, Co-Founder of the Internet
+ ...and much more