The House
Judiciary Committee hearing to discuss to the hotly debated H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was flawed
on so many levels. Even watching the
hearing online was flawed, which is ironic because you would think it would be
easy to obtain a legally accessible, good quality video stream on a hearing
about online piracy. Once you were
finally able to view the hearing, you realized the whole thing was a setup.
First, the panel
was unevenly weighted. Out of six
witnesses invited to testify, five of them spoke in favor of the SOPA bill.
Google’s Policy Counsel, Katherine Oyama, was the only witness to speak out
against the bill. Absent were the numerous
consumer advocacy organizations, free speech organizations, human rights
organizations, prominent Internet engineers, venture capitalists, public
interest groups, and entrepreneurs who sent letters to the committee opposing
this bill. So whereas the proponents of
the bill had a larger – but shallow – bench that represented various sectors, the
SOPA opponents only had Google. That was
hardly what one would call a fair and balanced debate. Furthermore, it seemed that several Members
engaged in the bipartisan game of Lets-All-Beat-Up-On-Google-Today
during their questioning, rather than actually engaging in serious discussion.
Second, the
panel did not have a single cyber security expert despite the serious
cyber security implications in SOPA that could make Internet users more
vulnerable to hacks, identity theft and cyber attacks. Given these threats, one would think that the
Judiciary Committee would include an expert who would address these
implications or at least try to smooth these issues over for those groups who
have expressed concern. This was not the
case at all. At one point, Oyama attempted
to explain how Internet engineers and cyber security experts said this bill would
harm DNSSEC,
only to be interrupted by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas)
so that he could give his witness, Pfizer’s Chief Security Officer and VP of
Global Security John Clark, a chance to address the DNS issue. Unfortunately for Chairman Smith, Clark
conceded that he did not have any cyber experience. It’s ironic that he was the
one chosen to testify from the security angle yet he did not have the same
level of expertise as some of the Internet
engineers who weren’t allowed to testify before the committee.
Third, the MPAA
witness Michael O’Leary inaccurately responded to some of the questions
regarding Google’s search results. O’Leary
encouraged the Members to “go to Google and type in ‘J. Edgar’ and you will get
a list of page after page of sites that engage in this illegal activity.” Upon closer inspection, this just is not
true. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-California) called
him out on this inaccuracy during the hearing. If O’Leary had exercised just a
little more due diligence he would have noticed that the search results didn’t
lead to pirated content, just websites with numerous ads and pop-ups. One would think that after spending more than
$91 million in lobbying so far, O’Leary’s MPAA bosses, and their friends in
the music and television industries would get their facts straight, but sadly
that is not the case. After the back and
forth with Lofgren, O’Leary conceded that “there is no silver bullet” when it
comes to ending online piracy.
Fortunately,
there was bipartisan opposition to this poorly drafted bill. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) is working on
a different bill to better target the online piracy problem. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-California) has serious
concerns about the bill’s cyber security implications and expressed disappointment
that these issues were not raised and that noted cyber security expert, Stewart Baker, was not
allowed to testify on how this bill would harm Internet security. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) shared the
concerns of one of his constituents, Ryan Turner, a college student who runs
his own IT business. Turner wrote, “The
government hand in DNS servers scares me… Should this pass, I believe my future
in IT will be crippled.” This comes from
someone who is part of the next generation of job creators.
Overall, the
hearing was a disappointment to those who believe the Internet should be open,
uncensored, and secure. The attorneys
and staff here at Public Knowledge have written numerous, informative blog posts about SOPA and
its Senate counterpart S. 968, the Protect
IP Act (PIPA). Check back on the PK blog for future in-depth posts about
SOPA and where we proceed from here.