Strange Being On The Same Side With Darrell Issa?

This week California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, an unlikely proponent of something good for a change as stalwart warrior to stop SOPA, released the Judiciary Committee list of the businesses and organizations pushing Congress for passage of the bill. There were a lot of unsavory characters who spend an awful lot of money legally bribing congressmen on that list.

Odd to find a pillar of the Estabishment like Issa lined up on the same side with the forces that make up Anonymous, which is going absoluely ape-shit over the proposed legislation. "The goal of the so-called 'Stop Online Piracy Act' SOPA is to empower litigious U.S. corporations to police the internet, with the ability to act as judge, jury and executioner," says an Anonymous statement.

"SOPA tramples civil rights laws, fair use, freedom of press and freedom of speech. Under SOPA an average person could be arrested, fined, sued and spend time in a federal prison for so little as uploading a video to YouTube or even linking to one. This law further proves the reality of corporate rule and totalitarianism."

The law is unlikely to be used that way by a Democratic administration-- at least not in theory, though after 3 years of Obama, I'm not buying that-- but what would happen when the next fascist-oriented Republican takes over, a Mitt or Newt? Oddly, one of DC's most high-profile and extreme right-wing think tanks, the Heritage Foundation, is also against SOPA.

"The concern with SOPA is that it enforces private property rights at the expense of other values, such as innovation on the Internet, security of the Internet, and freedom of communication," James Gattuso, Heritage's senior research fellow in regulatory policy, told CNET this evening. While SOPA addresses a "very real problem," he says, it's not necessarily the right solution.

Unlike some Washington advocacy groups that are predictably anti-copyright, Heritage has historically taken the opposite position. It called the Motion Picture Association of America's decision to sue peer-to-peer pirates a "wise choice," and suggested that disrupting P2P networks to curb piracy, an idea that some politicians actually proposed, is a step "in the right direction."

Heritage's criticism is important because SOPA author Lamar Smith of Texas, who has become Hollywood's favorite Republican, is almost certain to win committee approval in early 2012. Then the bill's fate will rest in the hands of the Republican House leadership--which could chose to delay a floor vote indefinitely if the GOP appears divided. (See CNET's FAQ on SOPA.)

"The areas that are the most concern are the obligation of service providers to block resolution of IP addresses and the obligation of search engines to block search results," says Gattuso, whose conservative credentials include working at the Federal Communications Commission during the first Bush administration and for then-Vice President Dan Quayle. "Those get to the core issue of why the federal government could be able to interfere with the way the Internet is operated, and the core issue of what people can say and what information they can get on the Web."

A warning from a group like Heritage, usually a staunch ally of copyright holders, could help to sway undecided Republicans. It's no exaggeration: Ed Meese, Reagan's attorney general who's now a Heritage fellow, seemed to be channelling an MPAA lobbyist when writing in 2005 that "there is no difference between shoplifting a DVD from a store and illegally downloading a copyrighted movie from Kazaa." Heritage's warnings of international "threats to intellectual property rights" date back to at least 1987. And it scores protection of intellectual property rights in its annual Index of Economic Freedom.

SOPA, of course, represents the latest effort from the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and their allies to counter what they view as rampant piracy on the Internet, especially offshore sites such as ThePirateBay.org. It would allow the Justice Department to obtain an order to be served on search engines, Internet providers, and other companies forcing them to make a suspected piratical Web site effectively vanish, a kind of Internet death penalty. It's opposed (PDF) by Internet companies and many Internet users.

While Heritage may be the largest, it wasn't the first free-market group to criticize SOPA.

In a letter to Smith last week, TechFreedom, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Americans for Job Security, and Americans for Limited Government warned Smith that his committee "simply has not spent enough time on this legislation to properly address the complex and important issues at stake." These aren't left-leaning groups by any measure: TechFreedom has argued against Net neutrality, warned against expansive antitrust and privacy regulations, and defended the now-abandoned merger between AT&T and T-Mobile.

"You don't have to be against copyright to be skeptical of SOPA," Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom, told CNET today. "Even those who will defend copyright (believe that SOPA) would have sweeping unintended consequences. So it's perfectly consistent for conservatives to insist on both the need to enhance copyright enforcement and to be exceedingly careful about how we do so."

The most prominent group on the other side is probably the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has become the most aggressive defender of SOPA, likely because it receives more money in membership dues from Hollywood than Silicon Valley. (Yahoo and Kapersky Lab have dropped out in protest, and Google is under pressure to do the same.) Concerned Women for America and the National Association of Manufacturers have also endorsed SOPA.

Fortunately, you don't have to get into bed with Heritage, AOL or Issa to be against SOPA. The progressive challengers Blue America is backing for House seats are also SOPA opponents. This week Darcy Burner, who's running for the open seat in the Seattle area, released a Send A Nerd To Congress statement that was widely discussed among progressives:

Send a nerd to Congress! Congress has lots of doctors. Congress has lots of lawyers. You know what Congress doesn’t have lots of? Geeks! So when they consider legislation affecting the Internet they get it wrong-- and defend themselves by saying, “I’m not a nerd.” It's time to change that! The Internet is the most important invention of the last 50 years. It has increased the transparency of government; made it possible for grassroots donors to bind together and change campaigns nationwide; and was used to organize the Arab Spring. Over the last couple weeks, Congress has been considering legislation that would destroy the open Internet. It would allow anyone holding a copyright to say that a site-- even just a commenter-- infringed on their copyright-- and the domain name of the site would be revoked without due process. What said Congress? “I’m not a nerd.” Well, we need some nerds in Congress. I was given my first computer at the age of 13. My family couldn’t afford to buy any software, so I wrote it myself. At Harvard, I earned a degree in computer science with a special field of economics. I’ve worked in software in Boston, in Silicon Valley, and at Microsoft. I understand how bad the Stop Online Piracy Act legislation is, and why it's frankly a stupid idea. It’s poorly written, it’s wrong, and it’s done in the name of big corporate interests. I think its time we had a few more nerds in Congress.

A Blue America candidate from Florida who's very much like Darcy, Nick Ruiz, fully agrees with her assessment. This is what he told me this morning:

We should not let private equity interests entangle, censor and criminalize the open-ended architecture that makes the online experience a free and collaborative event. We can't allow that fair use of material and open source collaboration be muzzled by private entities that want to profit at every click of the mouse. That's what's wrong with SOPA, and in many ways, that's what is wrong with America. Everything humanity creates or is engaged in need not be 'profitable' or 'accountable' to Wall Street's definitions of value and control.

Joe Miklosi, the progressive running for the suburban Denver seat currently held by racist teabagger Mike Coffman, expressed a similar perspective. "I am deeply concerned about the piracy of intellectual property," he told me.

Our first priority to protect American ingenuity and creativity must be the strict and firm enforcement of strong international trade agreements that respect the value of intellectual property. Foreign theft of IP costs our economy billions of dollars. Online piracy is a concern at home and abroad. However, our efforts to protect IP at home should not unduly infringe on our 1st Amendment rights. Online discussions, information sharing, and creative expression must be allow to flourish.

Ken Aden, who's running in northwest Arkansas against one-percenter Steve Womack takes an even more aggressive stance:

Neither SOPA nor the PROTECT IP Act (S. 968) address the real problems related to copyright and trademark infringement online and neither will work well from a technological standpoint. TechDirt.com founder Mike Masnick put it best last month when he noted that "the approach put forth by these bills is a joke."

In addition to essentially creating framework for government-sanctioned censorship via DNS blocking similar to the Chinese government's Golden Shield Project, this legislation will have a disastrous impact on the continually growing tech sector of the U.S. economy. The broad definitions in the legislation have the potential to create significant liability for nearly every site online, and the uncertainty surrounding how the legislation could be enforced will have significant effects on job growth in the tech sector.

From changing what is considered a felonious violation of copyright law to allowing judges to determine the best network architecture, to broadly expanding secondary liability, this legislation is a potential disaster for the tech sector and the American people.

Rather than creating an environment to help new innovators create platforms which would actually expand the reach of movies, music, and other forms of entertainment, Lamar Smith, SOPA's author, has simply created legislation that gives lobby groups like the Motion Picture Association of America and the recording Industry Association of America the keys to the proverbial candy store when it comes to protecting their own pocketbooks. That's no surprise since the television, film, and music industry have given him more money in the last cycle than any other contributors.

We need real solutions to allow for the protection of intellectual property that don't put a potential wet blanket on the concept of "fair use," don't result in censorship, and will not stifle technological innovation in this country.

Just as we were about to publish, two more Blue America-endorsed candidates sent me SOPA statements. First, Norman Solomon (D-CA): "While I strongly support the right of creative artists to be compensated for the work they produce, I oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) as an overreaching bill that threatens Internet freedom in our country. We live in an era when the Internet is instrumental to global movements for democracy and openness. I will resist all legislative efforts that threaten Internet openness. We need a more focused, sober approach to combating foreign 'rogue websites' engaged in counterfeiting and copyright infringement. We've got to find ways to protect musicians, filmmakers, writers and other artists without putting into the hands of government officials the hammers that could be used to crush vibrant online sites. The legitimate concerns and interests of creative communities must be safeguarded at the same time that we uphold the sacred principles of free speech."

And we'll finish with Mary Jo Kilroy, the once and future Representative from Colombus, Ohio-- short and right to the point: "The bill risks damage to the structure and design of the internet, could restrict freedom of expression, and impede needed cybersecurity measures. While we should be concerned about copyrights and American intellectual property, this bill will do little to address the problem of on-line piracy."

Supporting the Blue America candidates-- which you can do right here-- will help guarantee that men and women with this worldview are writing laws-- and not just about the internet. If you can, please contribute what you feel comfortable giving. It's a slow time for congressional candidates right now.