Coloradans protest federal Internet-piracy proposal

By Andy Vuong
The Denver Post

The dwindling support for congressional efforts to curb online piracy highlights the powerful platform that social networking has given to those who spend little to no money lobbying lawmakers.

To be sure, strong opposition from Internet giants such as Google and Wikipedia is playing a large role in the retreat of support for the proposed laws simply referred to as SOPA and PIPA.

But countless entrepreneurs, tech geeks and others who traditionally do no more than call their local lawmakers, if that, have taken to Facebook and Twitter to voice their displeasure, updating profile pictures with a "STOP SOPA" banner or sharing related posts and stories with their legions of virtual friends.

"What we've witnessed here around this campaign is a possibly historic effort in terms of Internet entrepreneurs paying attention to what's happening in Washington," said Phil Weiser, executive director of the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado. "Unlike more mature companies, they're not necessarily organized to participate in traditional ways in Washington."

"Social media has made this type of organizing much more impactful," said Weiser, dean of the CU Law School.

Why are the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) supposedly so dangerous, as foes argue, when most of those involved agree that illegal use of copyrighted content on the Internet is a real problem?

In general terms, provisions in the proposed measures make it more likely that Internet companies such as Facebook and Google would face legal action if their users upload or share a link to a video with copyrighted content.

Proponents of the bills include movie studios and record labels who say more needs to be done to curtail the piracy of digital goods.

As it stands now, Internet companies are required to remove the infringing content if asked by the copyright holder but aren't liable if the material slips through the cracks.

"It's hard for Facebook to proactively check all their users, all the time, in all sorts of ways," Weiser said. "If you build in such requirements and subject them to lawsuits on the back end, and if they don't do it perfectly, that is a real risk to Internet companies' ability to thrive."

Opponents of the measures argue that the requirements would lead to censorship as large companies may limit services and smaller ones may shutter rather than face potentially crippling lawsuits.

"Shifting copyright enforcement responsibility from government to the private sector makes it much more costly to do business on the Internet," said Dan Lynn, co-founder of Denver-based tech start-up FullContact.

Lynn is among those who have placed a "STOP SOPA" banner on their Twitter avatars.

The issue is top of mind for many residents as Colorado's Twitter users are generating about 2 percent of the tweets about SOPA, according to Trendrr, a social media intelligence platform. California, home to technology-rich Silicon Valley, tops the list at 11 percent.

Metropolitan State College of Denver criminal justice major Silvia Arellano said she learned of the issue Wednesday when she received a text alert about Wikipedia temporarily shutting its site in protest.

Tyler Porritt, a Metro State student from Boulder, said content sharing is too widespread to address through legislation.

"I understand the legality and income-loss issues, but I grew up in a era where everybody downloads everything," he said.

Indrajit Ray, an associate professor in the computer science department at Colorado State University, said the onus should be on industry to come up with a business model that works in an Internet age.

"If we put in some type of legislation, the general trait of mankind is to break that," Ray said. "One way to solve it is to come up with a different business model where the incentive to do piracy is not that great."

Some Internet service providers have a voluntary agreement with content providers to send subscribers a warning when they are engaging in infringement activity, such as downloading an illegal copy of a movie. Trials of such efforts have shown to be effective in reducing the amount of piracy, said Weiser, a former deputy assistant attorney general at the U.S. Justice Department.

"If people know that their behavior is not anonymous, they're a lot more responsible," he said.

Weiser said another option to fight the problem is to eliminate avenues for known file-sharing and piracy websites to accept payments or earn advertising revenue, similar to the way the U.S. cracked down on Internet gambling.

Andy Vuong : 303-954-1209 orfacebook.com/byandyvuong