Ugh.. This article barely mentions the critics of IP. They get mentioned at the very end of the article as "those who believe in the free flow of information, and critics of Protect IP." Meanwhile, the article throws around unsourced 'billions of dollars and thousands of jobs' claims about just how awful it is that intellectual property is violated.
I don't know what motive Google has for fighting it, but I'm glad they are nonetheless
The motive for fighting it is that by crossing the line from "robotic indexer of the web" to "provider of curated search data", Google assumes substantial responsibility for the content of websites outside their control. This is a nightmarish slippery slope situation for them.
In my mind, making a person who provides a hyperlink responsible for the content of that link is just insanely wrongheaded and bespeaks a deep misunderstanding of the nature of the web.
Placing the liability for a link on the linker is more than just misunderstanding the nature of the web, it flies in the face of lots of other American principles.
People commit serious crimes with all kinds of things, screwdrivers and wire ties, let's say. Do we penalize the screwdriver maker when some crazoid kills an innocent and beautiful child with a screwdriver? No. In fact, we've just recently had the Supreme Court tell us that Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
This law is tantamount to a hitman asking directions to a street address from some passer-by, and then making the passer-by legally a murderer.
"This is a nightmarish slippery slope situation for them."
Stronger: This is an existential crisis for them. For as rich as they appear to be and for all the resources they seem to have, the task of curating the web is still an order of magnitude or two larger at least, and for certain strict interpretations of the law, this would simply crush them. And there is no chance that any politician will look at Google and see this, because all the numbers are above the "1, 2, ..., many" threshold for most humans, and the idea that the task is too large for Google will be poo-pooed by politicians if you simply make that engineering argument.
That's way overstated. The "curation" that is required here is, "Here is a list of domains that appear in court orders. Don't send ads to them with adsense, don't accept ads linking to these domains, drop them from search rankings." My reading of the law as written doesn't require more drastic action, such as scrubbing out links to them from blogs.
That is, it isn't Google's responsibility to figure out who is infringing. It is Google's responsibility to take a list given to them by US courts and follow a set of directions.
Not a pleasant task, to be sure. But it wouldn't break Google's bank account to do it.
Google can not afford to think just about the law in front of us today. This normalizes an idea they can not allow to take root, that they are responsible for the web. That idea is the existential threat, not the proximate law.
In point of fact quite a lot of sites and startups here are actually in the same danger, it's just Google has the spare resources to actually notice, pay attention, and do something about it, where a bootstrapping startup can not.
I do see something wrong with the task. We are being poor stewards of DNS. Given past abuses of the legal system by the RIAA, I am sure they will abuse us further.
I'm also quite uncomfortable with how this will work in practice. The bill has a number of assurances to protect non-US companies from having it be unfairly applied to them. I do not trust those assurances. When a US lawyer sends a subpoena to the DNS provider and the website, and the website (not being in the USA) doesn't show up, the DNS provider still will. I doubt that they will put up a vigorous defense. Based on the fact that two sides showed up and the facts presented were overwhelming, the judge will have little choice about taking action under the bill. (Even though the real facts about the website may be overwhelming in the website's favor, the judge has to judge on the facts presented in court.)
Furthermore I hate the precedent.
But when someone opposes it with ridiculous hyperbole, it is too easy for supporters of the bill to point out how ridiculous the argument is. So the fact that the bill is bad won't stop me from pointing out that the argument is even worse.
I haven't read the bill, but does it really require court orders to be shown? For what I've gathered is typical for this kind of legislation, private companies get privileges to send some kind of takedown notices (see DMCA) to the others. If those went through courts, I wouldn't be as worried.
I haven't read the bill, but does it really require court orders to be shown?
It really does. Read the full text at http://www.publicknowledge.org/files/docs/Bill-PROTECT-IP-Ac... to verify for yourself. Sections 3d and 4d say what courts can order companies like Google to do, and sections 3e and 4e say how to go about punishing Google if it fails to do what it was told to do under 3d and 4d respectively. (The difference between sections 3 and 4 is whether the lawsuit was brought by the attorney general or the copyright holder.)
I don't know what motive Google has for fighting it, but I'm glad they are nonetheless