Thursday, 19 January 2012

SOPA: a reader asks for information

Heat ... and light
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the United States has generated a good deal of discussion -- but from the point of view of the dedicated copyright student the words expended on it might be said to have produced more heat than light.

A reader has written to ask me if I can recommend "any serious, legal and dispassionate reflexion about SOPA, whatever be the position of the author".

Offhand I couldn't think of much writing that complied with these criteria. Accordingly I invite readers of this blog to crowd-source a response to her request, preferably by posting recommended reading via the Comment link below. Many thanks in anticipation!
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6 comments:

  1. FrenchKat19 January 2012 at 18:24

    I thought this link may be of interest to your reader:

    http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html

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  2. Paul Edward Geller19 January 2012 at 18:24

    To begin to understand the problem, take a look at http://msl1.mit.edu/ESD10/docs/darknet5.pdf

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  3. FrenchKat19 January 2012 at 18:31

    And this from Professor Tribe:

    http://www.net-coalition.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tribe-legis-memo-on-SOPA-12-6-11-1.pdf

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  4. Andy J19 January 2012 at 20:34

    @Paul Edward Gellar. With the greatest respect, I think a paper dated 2002 is hardly relevant to the situation today. Yes it covers some of the technical background on file sharing and so forth, but my understanding of Jeremy's post is that his correspondent wanted an analysis of SOPA from a legal perspective (albeit not necessarily from a strictly neutral viewpoint).
    Frankly if the correpondent wants any technical background on the problem SOPA claims to address, (but which I would argue is totally irrelevant to how SOPA is intended to operate), then you will find much of this discussed on Torrentfreak. At least there you hear it from the 'enemy' so to speak.

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  5. Emil A. Georgiev20 January 2012 at 09:33

    I found the article Don't Break the Internet by Mark Lemley, David S. Levine, & David G. Post very useful.

    BR,
    Emil

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  6. Dan Glover20 January 2012 at 17:43

    For a view on why SOPA and PROTECT IP will NOT "break the Internet", particularly in their current form, see this link to an article by Terry Hart at Copyhype:
    http://www.copyhype.com/2012/01/hey-what-happened-to-wikipedia-an-intro-to-sopa

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