The Legal Battle for the Internet

With recent issues like Net Neutrality (preventing content providers from gaining an unfair advantage over each other via carrier-level agreements) and the debate over the use of unallocated wireless radio frequencies after the switch to digital television, the developments over the last 6 weeks on the Internet front are not surprising. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) floated to the top of tech and art news, backed by MPAA on intellectual property and licensing grounds, opposed by leading Internet companies at the forefront of information sharing and content delivery.

Claims made by both sides are valid in their motivations, but the bill (H.R. 3261) does not seem to serve either camp well. POPVOX has some good information about what each side says on this particular bill. Also check out some of the news and positions that have developed via the links below:

Advocacy Groups

• American Censorship
• Public Knowledge  
• Don't Censor the Net

Blog Posts from Significant Stakeholders, against SOPA

• Electronic Frontier Foundation on recent developments. December 16, 2011.
• Internet Engineers' Letter to Congress on SOPA. December 15, 2011.
• Mozilla on progress of SOPA. December 14, 2011.
• Creative Commons on progress of SOPA. December 14, 2011.
• Wikimedia Foundation on progress of SOPA. December 13, 2011.
• Open Letter From Mozilla, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Ebay, etc. November 15, 2011.
  

Blog Posts from Significant Stakeholders, for SOPA

• On MPAA response to opposition. December 13, 2011.
• MPAA: Pros. December 12, 2011.
• Open Letter from SAG, AFM, et al. October 26, 2011.

Commentaries

• At Ars Technica: Sen. Reid pushes censorship bill. December 19, 2011.
• At TechDirt: Courts have ruled similarly already. December 19, 2011.
• At TechDirt: Arguments in favor are flawed. December 6, 2011. 
• At C|NET: Sandia Labs against SOPA on cybersecurity grounds. November 17, 2011.

Significant Stakeholders

These companies and organizations are at the forefront of discussions opposing SOPA.

• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Free Software Foundation
• Creative Commons
• Mozilla Foundation
• Wikimedia Foundation

These companies and organizations are at the forefront of discussions supporting SOPA.

• Motion Picture Association of America - Issue page
• Screen Actors' Guild

Update: Scribd is hosting a collection of SOPA/PIPA documents.


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