SOPA Opposition Groups Bemoan DNS Blocking Provision

The House Judiciary Committee postponed its markup of HR-3261 last week because the House recessed for the winter break (CED Dec 21 p5). The committee began its markup of the bill Dec. 15 and voted on 28 of the proposed 66 amendments before adjourning Dec. 16 due to a series of votes on the House floor (CED Dec 19 p4). It’s believed the earliest the committee could meet is Jan. 17, when the House reconvenes.

Last week, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, opposed SOPA in a report written by the group’s senior research fellow, James Gattuso. The former FCC deputy chief of plans and policy said SOPA’s approach represents “the first step down a classic slippery slope of government interference that has no clear stopping point.” Gattuso was particularly concerned that the bill’s plan to block resolution of IP addresses on U.S. servers would actually encourage users to use less secure international servers. Gattuso also worried that SOPA could undermine and interfere with the deployment of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), an Internet security system that encourages successful resolution of IP addresses.

House Cybersecurity Subcommittee Chairman Dan Lungren, R-Calif., was one of the first lawmakers to raise the alarm about what he sees as the legislation’s harmful impact on cybersecurity. At the Judiciary Committee’s November hearing on SOPA, Lungren criticized the bill and said the DNS blocking provision could have “unintended consequences” that could threaten the government’s efforts to make the Internet more secure (CED Nov 17 p3). Lungren told us last week that if House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, removed the DNS blocking provision from the bill it would make him “far more disposed to supporting the bill."

Former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Stewart Baker said Smith hasn’t thought through the “second order implications” of the bill. “I'm concerned that when you go that fast in such a delicate area you might make mistakes,” said Baker, now a partner at Steptoe & Johnson. Baker said that despite the legislation’s goal of blocking foreign infringing sites, easily-accessible browser plugins will still make it relatively simple for users to access blocked sites. “In that context [SOPA] is of relatively modest value from the point of view of the content providers. Essentially they are creating a speed bump for those of us who are working to create a secure Internet."

If some of the technical objections to the bill “turn out to be legitimate, then we have to deal with them,” said Tom Allen, a SOPA advocate and president of the American Association of Publishers. The former congressman from Maine told us that Smith “absolutely has to investigate” the cybersecurity issues in order for the bill to pass. But he disagreed that such an investigation needs to take place prior to the markup’s final vote. “There is time between this bill going through the House Judiciary Committee and its passage by the House and the Senate on the floor to make sure that appropriate issues are considered.”

Meanwhile, something needs to be done quickly to protect American rights holders from theft abroad, said Allen. As digital books and e-readers become more ubiquitous, authors and publishers are beginning to feel the impact of online theft, he said. “We have to try to make clear that we need this legislation to protect our intellectual property,” he said. “We are spending huge amounts of time playing Wack-A-Mole with foreign sites,” such as BitTorrent indexes. “That is a major problem for the publishing industry.”

The House Judiciary Committee recently posted a list of nearly 150 businesses and associations that support SOPA, ranging from the Council of Better Business Bureaus and the Screen Actors Guild to the U.S. Tennis Association and the Church Music Publishers’ Association (http://xrl.us/bmmq39). The MPAA has vocally lobbied for “strong, bi-partisan legislation that will protect millions of American jobs and creativity.” The RIAA has lavished equal praise on the bill, which it said is “focused on the bad actors and provides additional safeguards for legitimate operators.”

But some independent artists are growing irritated with lobbying juggernauts like the RIAA speaking on behalf of creators who actually oppose the bill, said Casey Rae-Hunter, deputy director of the Future of Music Coalition. “Forever artists have been told by major corporations to shut up and sing,” he said, “but if anything, the Internet has given us a voice.” Independent musicians agree with the bill’s “general goal of protecting rights holders,” said Rae-Hunter, but the wording should be tailored “in a way that won’t fundamentally put the architecture of the Internet at risk.”

Rae-Hunter is a musician for an alternative rock group aptly named “The Contrarian” and said the red flags being raised about the bill’s implications on DNSSEC should give lawmakers pause. “What we need is dolphin-safe intellectual property enforcement,” he said. “The way to do that is to stop these sites from doing business with advertisers and credit processors.” Rae-Hunter agreed with Baker’s claim that the contentious DNS blocking provision of the bill would have a “negligible effect on the bad actors” while putting the security of the Internet at risk. “What lawmakers need to do is take the bad stuff out of the bill and focus the intent on the people who are creating the marketplace ills."

On Friday the domain name register Go Daddy said it was no longer supporting the legislation because lawmakers can “clearly do better,” according to a press release. “It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this,” said Warren Adelman, Go Daddy’s CEO. “Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.” The company faced a backlash from opponents of the bill, who mounted a boycott effort at GoDaddyBoycott.org to try to drive customers away from the site due to its prior advocacy of the bill -- Go Daddy is on House Judiciary’s list of SOPA supporters.