SOPA, PROTECT IP Bills Promote Censorship, Says Google’s Schmidt

"What these bills do is they force you to take content off the Internet,” Schmidt said. “By doing so, it’s a form of censorship, it’s not a good thing.” Schmidt scoffed at the mobile-phone patent battle being waged in the International Trade Commission (ITC) and said he expects to hear a decision from European antitrust regulators sometime in the first half of 2012.

Google has been a vocal opponent of SOPA because the legislation contains an overly broad definition of illegally infringing sites that could unfairly target legitimate sites, Google’s privacy counsel told lawmakers at a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing (CED Nov 17 p3). House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, introduced the legislation as a means to promote American jobs by giving law enforcement and copyright holders more tools to bring action against infringing websites, he said.

Schmidt railed against the anti-piracy bills while acknowledging that something needed to be done to stem copyright infringement and the online theft of intellectual property. “I understand the goal of what SOPA and [PROTECT IP] are trying to do. Their goal is reasonable but the mechanism is terrible. They should not criminalize the intermediaries. They should go after these people without violating the law,” Schmidt said. “What they are essentially doing is whacking away at the DNS system and that’s a mistake. It’s a bad way about going after this problem.”

The MPAA dismissed Schmidt’s rhetoric as a “distraction,” in a press release issued Monday. “Today, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt again engaged in sky is falling rhetoric in attacking important legislation that targets criminals who profit from online piracy and counterfeiting,” said Michael O'Leary, the MPAA’s senior executive vice president for global policy and external affairs. “Schmidt’s comment that the legislation ‘criminalizes the intermediaries’ is a new weapon in their arsenal of hyperbole ... This type of rhetoric only serves as a distraction and I hope it is not a delaying tactic.”

Schmidt said he did not know enough about the current draft of the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act to say whether Google should back the proposal. Last week Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., released a draft proposal of the bill as an alternative to SOPA and PROTECT IP that gives the ITC more power to target and sever funding to foreign websites that infringe copyrighted goods.

The ITC should not be used as a venue for mobile device manufacturers to “shut down consumer choice,” Schmidt told reporters. The ITC has recently become a battlefield in the patent war among industry giants in the Internet and mobile device sectors, he said. “It’s bad. From a consumer perspective you want choice,” he said. “And the consequences of this ITC mechanism is it appears that if it does find against Android it could limit your choice.”

European antitrust regulators have not telegraphed any decisions stemming from their investigations into Google’s business practices, Schmidt told reporters. Last year the European Commission initiated a probe to determine whether Google is violating EU antitrust law by giving itself preferential treatment over rival services. “It’s hard to characterize what’s going to happen because we honestly don’t know,” Schmidt said. “They have been quite careful not to tell us what is coming. They have not given us a time frame, although my guess would be the first half of 2012 we would begin to hear from them.” -- Bryce Baschuk

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The House Judiciary Committee will mark up the SOPA bill Thursday at 10 a.m. in Room 2141 of the Rayburn building. A broad coalition of Internet and technology companies have opposed language in the bill, which they say could be used to unfairly target legitimate websites. The manager’s amendment adds language to clarify that the bill applies only to foreign rogue websites, does not require service providers to block subdomains and narrows several other definitions in the legislation.

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The OPEN Act is a sensible approach to combating online piracy, some technology associations said in a letter to the bill’s sponsors. The OPEN Act bill is “narrowly focused on providing effective remedies that target such sites, without creating new liabilities for lawful, U.S. technology companies,” said CEA, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetCoalition. Tasking the International Trade Commission with prosecuting violations would be an effective tool, they said.

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Cyberlocker service Megaupload aims to turn a spat with Universal Music Group into a movement against the SOPA and PROTECT IP bills. The Hong Kong-based service, which claims to draw 4 percent of all Internet traffic, posted an original music video on YouTube Friday promoting its service, featuring lyrical praises from major label artists including Diddy, will.i.am, Kanye West and Chris Brown. UMG filed a successful takedown notice with YouTube (http://goo.gl/wIqnL) to remove the original upload of the video on copyright infringement grounds, though the video -- also available from Megaupload’s own site -- has been posted on YouTube by several other users (http://goo.gl/eYq8s) and remained available as of Monday afternoon. “Let us be clear: Nothing in our song or the video belongs to” UMG, Megaupload said in a statement on its site Monday. “We have signed agreements with all artists endorsing Megaupload. Efforts to reach out to UMG and open a dialog about this abuse of the DMCA [takedown] process were answered with unfounded and baseless legal threats and demands for an apology.” Megaupload said it already closes accounts of repeat infringers and has given the music labels “direct delete access to our servers, bypassing the complicated removal process entirely.” It suggested UMG didn’t like Megaupload’s plan to relaunch its Megabox.com, with a new offer to artists to “sell their creations directly” and take 90 percent of the sales revenue, “allowing them to be in control of their careers.” We couldn’t reach UMG for comment. The Megaupload statement, titled “Join the fight against Censorship,” asks fans to contact their members of Congress and ask them to oppose the House and Senate bills: “After this demonstration of the abuse of power by UMG, we are certain that such an instrument of Internet censorship should not be put into the hands of corporations.” P2P news site TorrentFreak said Megaupload was planning to sue UMG over the takedown notice. We couldn’t reach Megaupload for comment.