The most concerning aspect of both of these bills is that our country’s decision makers stand behind SOPA and PROTECT IP as written to champion American interests and intellectual property ad, in turn, protect the American entrepreneurial spirit, our jobs, and our financial security.

In fact, both bills will ultimately fail to accomplish the intended goals and are, in the process, set to squash many of the freedoms we take for granted from a free-flowing Internet.

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

“To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.” – H.R.3261

What It Does:

This  bill would allow copyright holders and the Department of Justice to seek legal action against websites accused of facilitating copyright infringement, and to force service providers to block offending sites; this would prevent gateway services, such as Google Checkout or Paypal, from doing business with such sites and would even bar search engines from simply linking to an offending website.   For streaming content, such as YouTube, Vimeo, or a self-published video blog, unauthorized streaming of any copyrighted materials would be a crime backed by up to 5 years in prison after 10 incidents of streaming copyrighted music or video within a six month period.

PROTECT IP Act

“Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011” – S.968

What It Does:

As the bill states:  “An service provider of an information location tool shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, to– (i) remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the order; or (ii) not serve a hypertext link to such Internet site.”   Additionally, the information location tool, which is largely refers to Search Engines but can refer to any site, must delete all hyperlinks to the offending “Internet site.”  The net effect is that, without an up front burden of proof, Internet sites can be censored until such time as their names are cleared, no matter how long that takes, and without remedy if falsely accused and later proven innocent.

What Does All This Mean?

The summation of both of these bills is an attempt to control the flow of information on the Internet under the guise of protecting the American Dream from “rogue websites,” plagiarizers, and other intellectual property thieves.  As an organization that both uses the Internet to share materials that our are own intellectual property and that also helps other organizations share their own intellectual property, we agree with the masses that taking anything that doesn’t belong to you without any attribution or retribution is reprehensible behavior.

The language of both of these laws, however, invites other consequences.  Consider for a moment that if either of these laws had been in effect a decade ago, the landscape of today’s Internet would be very different indeed.  For starters, we would not have YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Etsy, Ebay, Dropbox, Twitter, Twillio, Vimeo, Tumbler, Pinterest, Can.vas, or a good number of open source software projects.

What Can I Do?

That’s a fantastic question!  Tell the House and Senate that you are exercising your right as an American citizen and say:

• You do not support restrictions upon the entrepreneurial spirit this country has been built on
• Enforcement of laws in this country should always require due process
• The United States of America is not China, and you do not support a Great Firewall of America
• That Internet Blacklist Legislation would drive jobs away from this country and will not be tolerated here

Tell Them Now!

Say NO! to SOPA by contacting your House Representative: http://www.house.gov/

Say NO! to PROTECT IP by contacting your Senate Representative: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Contact SOPA Supporters directly: http://gizmodo.com/5870241/presented-without-comment-every-single-company-supporting-sopa-the-awful-internet-censorship-law

Every once and a while, someone comes along and does something, like deleting internet postings, that reminds the world of the internet’s golden rule: All posts are final.  Today that someone is PR Paul.  While Paul and his associates are in full “damage control mode” — hopping twitter accounts and scrubbing tweets, site content, and other social sites — the documentation of these actions through #OceanMarketing on Twitter, Penny Arcade, The Examiner, and Forbes are proving to be Paul’s ultimate folly.  One thing Paul has done well is to remind folks that once something is on the Net, it has made an imprint that extends far beyond any single person’s reach.

As he and his buddies hop around social sites trying to fix a situation that will probably fad itself out over a the next few weeks, I think PR Paul could benefit from a few good books that have come across my desk in the last few years:

• I Love You More Than My Dog
• The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself
• Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (And Other Social Networks)

For everyone else, including us at Wagger, this is a cautionary tale about the importance of researching any company representing you. Ask for references and ask to see the work they’ve done.  If they are a little green, or just starting out, they should admit it outright.  And, as a point of advice, be very suspicious if another organization wants full control of your business email, Twitter, and other public-facing elements without your oversight — especially if the owner comes off as a street thug masquerading as a self-proclaimed “Marketing Professional”.