After initially coming out in favor of the Stop Online Piracy Act, the controversial and sweeping copyright protection measure now moving through Congress, the Business Software Alliance now seems to be reversing itself as the legislation progresses. In a blog post on the BSA's website today, BSA president and CEO Robert Holleyman expressed concern about the direction SOPA is taking and its potential impact beyond going after criminal infringement, and urged Congress to make changes to the bill.
"Valid and important questions have been raised about the bill," Holleyman wrote. "As it now stands [ ] it could sweep in more than just truly egregious actors. Due process, free speech, and privacy are rights cannot be compromised."
He also noted the potential impact of filtering and monitoring provisions being proposed as part of SOPA, and wrote that the security and reliability of the Internet might suffer from unintended consequences. "BSA has long stood against filtering or monitoring the Internet," he stated. He urged the House Judiciary Committee to tighten and narrow the scope of the bill's language and to address "reasonable questions" about the potential filtering provisions.
SOPA currently contains provisions that would require Internet service providers to block access to foreign sites that infringe on copyright material, "including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address." Search engine providers would be required to block infringing sites from appearing in their results, and ad networks and payment processors would also have to stop working with blacklisted sites.
Holleyman's comments today come less than a month after he issued a press release hailing SOPA—though that initial praise did come with some moderation. "As Congress continues its work on this legislation," Holleyman said in October, "it will be important to strike the right balance between two sets of considerations — enabling effective action against online pirates, while also ensuring the law does not impede technology innovation or the evolution of software and the Internet, which are critical engines for future economic growth."
When even the BSA, a powerful and staunchly pro-copyright-enforcement body, thinks a bill like this goes way too far, it's bad news for SOPA backers in the media business.
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