在线知识产权保护：我们能从SOPA学到什么?--论文范文代写

In addition, the movie industry suffers copyright infringement at the same time. Harrison (2012) indicates that releaser raise the price of a movie ticket from average $7.89 in 2010 to $8.15 in 2012 in order to make up for the loss of boxing office. Pirated films still could be found online while movie industry use several anti-piracy methods to fight with copyright infringement, such as “watermarking the films, renaming and vaulting films prior to theatrical release, high security at ‘high-risk’ theatres, working with YouTube to take down infringed copyright material, and all deliveries of the film are required to have specific signatures”(p. 3). In order to protect copyrights for each relative industry, the U.S government and many states government proposed several acts that could offer copyright owners more legal protections.

For instant, Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was implemented in 1998, is one of the United States copyright laws. This law criminalizes the actions of producing and disseminating the copyrighted technology, devices, or services and other actions that aim to circumvent the access control (Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998). The DMCA creates the safe harbor that protects the “rights of copyright holders against relentless onslaught of new piracy technologies” (Heaphy, 2003) which guarantee the extraordinary growth of the internet economy. According to Samuelson (2012), “under the DMCA, Internet intermediaries are obliged to take down infringing materials after they are notified about specific infringements at specific parts of their Web sites” (p. 27). The proponents of the DMCA believe that “the provisions of the DMCA provide essential legal mechanisms for stemming a dangerous erosion of intellectual property rights enabled by the internet and the digitization of information and various entertainment media” (Heaphy, 2003).
Brief of SOPA
In 2011, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced in the House of Representatives, as well as a similar bill, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). However, these two acts bring massive critics and opponents from technology companies, computer security experts, social network sites, and search engines so that SOPA has been put on hold.
The aim of SOPA is to blocking access to foreign rogue web sites. To be more specific, SOPA ask courts orders to require foreign Web sites “to cease providing access to infringing copies of U.S. work….SOPA further empowered the AG to serve these orders on U.S. Internet intermediaries who would then have been required to take ‘technically feasible and reasonable measures’ to block their users from accessing the foreign Web sites” (Samuelson, 2012). In this sense, search engines have to block access to the sites which provide pirated files even if users searched for those items. In addition, payment providers, such as Visa and Mastercard, could not offer their services or approve any transactions in these sites, and internet advertising funds could not allow be providing or receiving at these sites (Samuelson, 2012). Otherwise, AG could sue anyone who failed to comply with the DNS blocking obligations according to SOPA. Proponents assume that even if foreign rogue Web sites are still out there, users in the U.S. could not access infringing files and materials that copyright owners hold through U.S. intermediaries.
However, as many concerned, search engines might be liable for infringement if they lead users to some sites with pirated content. Also, “the legislation would have permitted internet service providers (ISPs) to remove allegedly infringing websites from the domain name system (DNS),which would make the website inaccessible to the average user” (Yoder, 2012, p. 1). If so, many search engines and social network sites have to face serious problems, such as Google, YouTube, and Wikipedia. In order to protest SOPA, the English language version of Wikipedia, Reddit shut themselves down on 18 January 2012 and engaged in the 24-hour Internet blackout (Connolly, 2012, p.68).
Moreover, the cost of protest is a giant amount. According to the Center for Representative Politics (2011), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) had spend nearly $8 million lobbying congress on persuasion which is an extremely expense (as cited in Yoder, 2012, p. 1). Opponents spend tens of millions of dollars to lobby for and against SOPA which led by Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon and Microsoft (Connolly, 2012, p.68). Google posted a link to a petition against the legislation. The more tragic thing is that “the proposals were heavily backed both by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) in an effort to halt what they saw as a threat to the entertainment industry”. It provides opponents strong evidence to against SOPA. After almost one year debate, SOPA has been hold instead of being passed at the end of 2011.
Why we oppose SOPA
Upon IP protection, why SOPA can't reach a broad agreement? As we state in the prior paragraph, unlike other laws or acts that protect intellectual property, SOPA's primary targets are those who are indirectly affiliated with pirates rather than the pirates or the piratic content users themself. The ultimate intention of SOPA is to cut off any connection from U.S websites to those so-called foreign rogue websites, which actually adds extended liabilities to ISP, advertisers, search engines and probably any other online service providers (OSP), as well as, to some degree, individuals and organizations uncorrelated to piracy. These extend liabilities not only causes opposition from involved U.S websites but also raises doubts that SOPA goes against the First Amendment. What's more, some scholars find SOPA lacking technical feasibility and efficiency in this indirect bill.
Scholar's concerns on the First Amendment with SOPA majorly come form the possible legalization of internet censorship and threat of freedom of speech. A remarkable memo by Prof. Tribe (2012) lists the reasons why SOPA violates the First Amendment. Among them, Tribe(2012) highlights "prior restraint" in Section 103(a). Prior restraint of online piracy in fact is to request OSPs to censor any user generated contents before they are submitted on the website. Tribe quotes that the Supreme Court has declared "only a judicial determination in an adversary proceeding ensures the necessary sensitivity to freedom of expression [and] only a procedure requiring a judicial determination suffices to impose a valid final restraint." Freedman v. Maryland(1965). "[P]rior restraints on speec hand publication are the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights." Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart (1976). Prior restraint, if comes into practice, would trigger chilling effects across Internet, especially in those websites that have considerable user-generated contents. That is why most OSPs raise against SOPA.
Scholars also question about the choices of words in SOPA. As Section 103 promotes, any U.S website could be " dedicated to theft of U.S. property" if it "enables, or facilitates" online piracy. So, how to define the word "enable" and "facilitate"? For Connolly (2012), any site with a comment box could be "dedicated to theft U.S property", just because this function enables users to post something that leads to copyright violation. If such explanation is true, any websites that has user generated contents would be sued as they are dedicated to the theft of U.S property. This may sound ridiculous and exaggerated, but this definition definitely needs to be edited in case of ambiguous interpretation.
The extend lability also causes mass panic in Internet industry. This panic could impact companies either technically or commercially. Firstly, the costs of these companies would be significantly raised, because any company who provide internet services are now responsible for the infringing of their service object. For example, if a company sets up a department that is in charge of self-discipline, it has to recruit new employees, provide training, and make relevant changes in their management systems. Even more, this department does not directly or indirectly generate any revenue. Also for this reason, Kinnon(2011) believes SOPA brings "daunting financial burdens and legal risks for start-up companies", creates impassable barriers for entrants in Internet industry thus change this industry forever. Secondly, the content in this bill could potentially incites illicit competition. For example, Sec 104 grants immunity from liability for those who refuse to provide service to a foreign website dedicated to theft of U.S property. So, if a U.S company want to terminate services to a foreign website because of some unilateral interests, the company could claim its business partner is dedicated to theft of U.S property, and withdraw all its business without liability. Or, probably not necessary restricted in Sec 104, a third company(A) could hire someone (B) to frame the U.S company (C) providing services to foreign websites (D) which is illegal in SOPA, and A could benefit from the business termination between C and D. And B is granted with immunity from liability because there would be no solid evidence to distinguish whether B's action is voluntary or intentional slander. Also, if intergrading these actions with Samuelson's (2012) idea that SOPA is inconsistent with the safe harbors in DMCA, the judicial enforcement of termination is immediate and inevitable, thus we can predict such illicit competition through the righteous judicial system would definitely be devastating. Thus, what listed above are the reason why the Internet industry cannot be agree with SOPA from a business perspective.
Some other scholars also question the technical feasibility and efficiency of SOPA. Samuelson (2012) lists the reasons. As she states, SOPA goes against with DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions), which is widely applied all over the Internet. What SOPA requests, for example
blocking the infringing foreign websites, cannot be effectively implemented in current DNSSEC due to some specific hardware and software reasons. Basically, if the U.S government want to effectively implement SOPA, they have to real-timely trace every DNS servers across the world and coerce stoping the development, distribution and usage of software (e.g. almost all the Internet browsers on various platforms) that enables DNS bypass. Such is considered as "creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet"(Espinel, Chopra, & Schmidt, 2012) by the White House.
Overview of Alternatives
In the last section, we proceed to find alternatives to better protect intellectual property rights and try to not offend the Constitution from historical experience, foreign legal considerations and accommodate the interests of both Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The alternatives consist of two parts: legal approaches and non-legal approaches.
Koster (2012) introduces a French law, the Hadopi Law, which was enforced by the Hadopi authority in 2009. This authority was set up
"1) to enforce the copyright law on the Internet through legal actions against violators, 2) to educate Internet users about illegal versus legal activities with respect to the copyright law, and 3) to facilitate the development of Internet services providing legal access to copyrighted works. (p.327)"
According to Koster (2012), Hadopi shows some modest positive changes among French Internet users. Comparing to SOPA, Hadopi Law's primary focus is the Internet users, which, to some degree, could restrict the foreign infringing websites. To be more specific, Hadopi Law is built on the foundation of monitoring the Internet traffic generated by Internet users. So, it is some kinds of censorship. How U.S citizens look upon such issue remains unknown to us. But technically, the piracy is more concealed and more inundant in Peer-to-Peer transmissions rather than posts on websites, so it is more precise and efficient to monitoring the copyrights of files downloaded and uploaded by users than to establish self-discipline system on websites. So, the Hadopi Law underscores SOPA if we just concern the IP protection issue from a technical perspective, however, It cannot be denied that, a similar Hadopi Law could also offend the First Amendment.
Also, there are more non-legal approaches for entertainment industries. Blank  (2012) believes the entertainment industry has been consistently wrong about emerging new platforms and channels, considering this new things will be the end of their business. A typical example is Buck v. Jewell-LaSalle Realty Co. (1931). In this case the industry considered radios a way of piracy. Same fate was shared by many other communication channels and mediums but later they turned out to promotes the industry though technical innovation. And now the Internet becomes Hollywood's thorn on the back. A matching technical innovation should turn it into advantage, but as Blank (2012) notices, the entertainment industry is now shielding itself with laws like SOPA, paying tons of money to get the bill though but unwilling to make innovation. In fact, websites like coursesmart.com, who rents encoded e-Textbooks, and software platforms like Steam, who distributes and manages PC games online, have made remarkable process in taking advantages of Internet platform as well as protecting digital copyrights. Such innovation experience could be applied to the whole entertainment industry. These non-legal approaches surely cannot be coercive or speedy as a brutal law like SOPA, however, could settle the problem of online piracy in a much more gentle and essential way.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this paper looks into the problem of online piracy and the protest of SOPA, analyzes why SOPA cannot reach a board agreement in its current form from the perspectives of law,  business and informations technology. And in the end the paper provides both legal and non-legal approaches to better protect online intellectual property without offending general interests.
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