Editorial: Piracy legislation misguided

College students, who often frequent illegal file-sharing websites, are unlikely to support any… College students, who often frequent illegal file-sharing websites, are unlikely to support any legislation that forces them to pay for music or movies. But every citizen, college-aged or not, should rally against two bills making their way through the House and the Senate — the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act, respectively.

The bills, like 2008’s PRO-IP Act and 1998’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act, target copyright infringement. Unlike those laws, however, they allow the attorney general to designate websites that Internet service providers, payment providers, search engines and advertising networks must block. In theory, only sites devoted to sharing pirated content would be affected. In reality, many of the acts’ provisions would encourage over-censoring and stifle new, innovative companies.

First and foremost, the Stop Online Piracy Act would hold websites accountable for any infringing content their users post, regardless of whether they remove said content once they’ve been notified of its existence. In other words, if someone uploaded a music video to YouTube without the record label’s consent, the website itself would be held liable.

Inevitably, this law would impede small startup companies that don’t have the resources to police their content. According to The New York Times op-ed contributor Rebecca MacKinnon, Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, employs roughly 1,000 people to ensure users don’t post anything critical of the government. Although the American bills don’t target free speech, they might necessitate similarly rigorous enforcement.

Online service providers would also bear greater responsibility for pirated material. Under the Stop Online Piracy Act, private companies could sue providers for even unknowingly hosting infringing content — a prospect that might encourage them to err on the safe side and block anything remotely suspicious.

For the above reasons, many online entrepreneurs, including Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, have decried the bills as inane and misguided. But their disapproval is counterbalanced by widespread support from reputable entertainment organizations, including the American Federation of Musicians, the Directors Guild of America, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Screen Actors Guild.

Copyright infringement is a serious problem; according to a recent MarkMonitor study, websites offering pirated content attract 53 billion hits each year. But anti-piracy legislation all too often neglects nuance in favor of all-encompassing stringency. The online community deserves a better solution.