The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA) was a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to the sale of infringing or counterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the U.S. The bill was introduced on May 12, 2011, by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and 11 bipartisan co-sponsors. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that implementation of the bill would cost the federal government $47 million through 2016, to cover enforcement costs and the hiring and training of 22 new special agents and 26 support staff. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill, but Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) placed a hold on it.
The PROTECT IP Act is a re-write of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which failed to pass in 2010. A similar House version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), was introduced on October 26, 2011.
In the wake of online protests held on January 18, 2012, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that a vote on the bill would be postponed until issues raised about the bill were resolved.
Content
The bill defines infringement as distribution of illegal copies, counterfeit goods, or anti-digital rights management technology. Infringement exists if "facts or circumstances suggest [the site] is used, primarily as a means for engaging in, enabling, or facilitating the activities described." The bill says that it does not alter existing substantive trademark or copyright law.
The bill provides for "enhancing enforcement against rogue websites operated and registered overseas" and authorizes the United States Department of Justice to seek a court order in rem against websites dedicated to infringing activities, if through due diligence, an individual owner or operator cannot be located. The bill requires the Attorney General to serve notice to the defendant. Once the court issues an order, it could be served on financial transaction providers, Internet advertising services, Internet service providers, and information location tools to require them to stop financial transactions with the rogue site and remove links to it. The term "information location tool" is borrowed from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and is understood to refer to search engines but could cover other sites that link to content.
The PROTECT IP Act says that an "information location tool shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, to remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the order". In addition, it must delete all hyperlinks to the offending "Internet site".
Nonauthoritative domain name servers would be ordered to take technically feasible and reasonable steps to prevent the domain name from resolving to the IP address of a website that had been found by the court to be "dedicated to infringing activities." The website could still be reached by its IP address, but links or users that used the website's domain name would not reach it. Search engines—such as Google—would be ordered to "(i) remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the [court] order; or (ii) not serve a hypertext link to such Internet site."
Trademark and copyright holders who have been harmed by the activities of a website dedicated to infringing activities would be able to apply for a court injunction against the domain name to compel financial transaction providers and Internet advertising services to stop processing transactions to and placing ads on the website but would not be able to obtain the domain name remedies available to the Attorney General.
Supporters
Legislators
The PROTECT IP Act has received bipartisan support in the Senate, with introduction sponsorship by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and, as of December 17, 2011, co-sponsorship by 40 Senators.
Companies and trade organizations
The bill is supported by copyright and trademark owners in business, industry, and labor groups, spanning all sectors of the economy. Supporters include the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the Independent Film & Television Alliance, the National Association of Theatre Owners, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Directors Guild of America, the American Federation of Musicians, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the Screen Actors Guild, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Nashville Songwriters Association International, Songwriters Guild of America, Viacom, Institute for Policy Innovation, Macmillan Publishers, Acushnet Company, Recording Industry Association of America, Copyright Alliance and NBCUniversal.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL–CIO have come together in support of the bill. In May and September 2011, two letters signed by 170 and 359 businesses and organizations, respectively—including the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, Nike, 1–800 Pet Meds, L'Oreal, Rosetta Stone, Pfizer, Ford Motor Company, Revlon, NBA, and Sony—were sent to Congress which endorsed the Act and encouraged the passage of legislation to protect intellectual property and shut down rogue websites. David Hirschmann of the Chamber of Commerce complained about the state of the political debate in January 2012, saying that talk of loss of freedoms and censorship "has nothing to do with the substance of the bills." Hirschmann promised "to use every tool in our toolbox to make sure members of Congress know what's in these bills."
Others
Constitutional expert Floyd Abrams, representing the MPAA and related trade groups, wrote a Letter to Congress stating that the proposed PROTECT IP Act is constitutionally sound.
Daniel Castro of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a think tank funded in part by the Information Technology Industry Council and the publisher of a 2009 report titled "Steal These Policies" that formed the basis for both SOPA and PIPA, defended PIPA's predecessor bill (COICA) in March 2011, saying "nobody's talking about taking down someone's personal website because they happen to use a copyrighted photo." In January 2012 ITIF Senior Research Fellow Richard Bennett said that criticism of the legislation was misinformed and overblown: "[t]he critics either don't understand what the bills do or are misrepresenting what the bills do. There's sort of a hysterical climate of criticism where people are objecting to something the bills don't do and are promoting noble causes like free speech and democracy but there is not much connection between what they are complaining about and what's in the legislation."
Opponents
Legislators
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden (D) has publicly voiced opposition to the legislation, and placed a Senate hold on it in May 2011, citing concerns over possible damage to freedom of speech, innovation, and Internet integrity. Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown (R) has also Opponents
The English-language Wikipedia page on January 18, 2012, illustrating its international blackout in opposition to SOPA and PIPA.
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden (D) has publicly voiced opposition to the legislation, and placed a Senate hold on it in May 2011, citing concerns over possible damage to freedom of speech, innovation, and Internet integrity. Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown (R) has also publicly announced his opposition to the bill and its House counterpart, SOPA. In addition to individual opposition, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Senator Wyden and Representative Darrell Issa proposed an alternative bill known as the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN Act) to address intellectual property theft without compromising internet freedom.
Companies and organizations
Among those who oppose the legislation are the Mozilla Corporation, Facebook, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Yahoo!, eBay, American Express, Reddit, Google, Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, English Wikipedia, Entertainment Consumers Association and Uncyclopedia. Internet entrepreneurs including Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, and Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley signed a letter to Congress expressing their opposition to the legislation. The Tea Party Patriots have argued that the bill "is bad for consumers". A letter of opposition was signed by 130 technology entrepreneurs and executives and sent to Congress to express their concern that the law in its present form would "hurt economic growth and chill innovation in legitimate services that help people create, communicate, and make money online". English-language Wikipedia sites joined other Internet sites in protesting the PIPA and SOPA legislation by staging a "blackout" of service for 24 hours on January 18, 2012. Many websites protested, including: Wikipedia, CNet and Cheezburger network sites. Some websites denied access to their websites altogether. Campaigner Peter Bradwell of the Open Rights Group argues how this act could have a negative influence among other countries who are also considering this bill. "These two bills are too broad and so badly worded that perfectly lawful sites could be censored. One reason we're joining these protests is that we face very similar issues in UK copyright-enforcement policies. Highlighting these flaws should help UK policymakers avoid making the same mistakes."
Others
Law professors Mark Lemley (Stanford University), David S. Levine (Elon University), and David G. Post (Temple University) have criticized the PROTECT IP Act and SOPA.
Reception
On January 14, 2012, White House officials posted a statement saying, "Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small", and "We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet."
Technical objections to DNS blocking and redirection
The bill originally contained measures which would allow the stripping of rogue websites out of the Domain Name System (DNS), the Internet's virtual "phone book." If a user entered the web address of a rogue site, it would appear the site did not exist. The bill's sponsors have said they are removing this provision.
According to Sherwin Siy of Public Knowledge, past attempts to limit copyright infringement online by way of blocking domains have always generated criticism that doing so would fracture the Domain Name System and threaten the global functionality of the Internet, with the original draft of this bill being no different. By design, all domain name servers worldwide should contain identical lists; with the changes initially proposed, servers inside the United States would have records different from their global counterparts, making URLs less universal.
Five Internet engineers (Steve Crocker, David Dagon, Dan Kaminsky, Danny McPherson, and Paul Vixie) prepared a whitepaper which states that the DNS filtering provisions in the original bill "raise serious technical and security concerns" and would "break the Internet", while other engineers and proponents of the act have called those concerns groundless and without merit. One concern expressed by network experts is that hackers would offer workarounds to private users to allow access to government-seized sites, but these workarounds might also jeopardize security by redirecting unsuspecting users to scam websites. Supporters of the bill, such as the MPAA and RIAA, have argued that widespread circumvention of the filtering would be unlikely. The CEO of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation compared the DNS provisions to car door locks, noting that while they aren't foolproof against thieves, we should still use them.
A group of Law professors, quoting Crocker's whitepaper, say that the PROTECT IP and Stop Online Piracy Acts could have the opposite of the intended impact, driving users to unregulated alternative DNS systems, and hindering the government from conducting legitimate Internet regulation. They question the constitutionality of both bills, believing they could have potentially disastrous technical consequences and would make US Internet law more like those of repressive regimes. They go on to state that both bills provide "nothing more than ex parte proceedings—proceedings at which only one side (the prosecutor or even a private plaintiff) need present evidence and the operator of the allegedly infringing site need not be present nor even made aware that the action was pending against his or her 'property.' This not only violates basic principles of due process by depriving persons of property without a fair hearing and a reasonable opportunity to be heard, it also constitutes an unconstitutional abridgement of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment."