Sen. Ron Wyden (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)
With activist opposition growing, and lobbyists (worried about that opposition)
signalling they would be willing to see changes in anti-piracy Internet legislation, a bipartisan group of law makers is proposing an alternative. The Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and Protect I.P. Act in the Senate are broadly written and potentially disastrous for online communities and Internet entrepreneurs. With the best chance to derail the fast track that Senate leadership had PIPA on, the lawmakers have issued a
new proposal.
This proposal would recognize the problem of international piracy for what it is—an international commerce issue—and put investigative and enforcement recommendation power in the hands of the U.S. International Trade Commission, which "regulates imports of foreign goods that benefit from unfair trade advantages."
[F]or months lawmakers have been wrangling over a foreign piracy bill without resorting to trade policy. Both chambers have put forth legislation, dubbed the "Stop Online Piracy Act," in the House, which would allow the Department of Justice to determine which individual foreign websites are "primarily dedicated" to piracy and shut them down if they are using a U.S.-based hosting service. It would also allow American movie studios and other copyright owners to demand that U.S.-based web hosting companies bring down entire domains if they believe that domain is "primarily dedicated to piracy." A web hosting service could challenge this demand, and the dispute would then be decided in court. [...]
Late on Thursday, a handful of tech- and free-speech friendly lawmakers delivered the outline of a counterproposal. Instead of private corporations having the ability to bring down websites, they would be able to lodge a formal complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission. The ITC would then conduct an inquiry into the website's activity, and recommend whether or not to rule the site an unfair import. If the ITC ruled against the site, American payment processors and advertisers would be barred from doing business with the site -- but no DNS blocking would be deployed, and the website would remain intact, albeit cut off from American funds like other rogue foreign operations.
The framework for the counterproposal was put forth by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) joined with Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) and John Campbell (R-Calif.).
Wyden envisions this discussion draft being the basis for entirely rewritten legislation, which would involve “[m]uch more discussion between folks on the content side and technology companies" to "strike a better balance."
You can read the discussion draft here, and send your comments to Sen. Wyden or to your own member of Congress.