Wikipedia Initiative SOPA and PIPA
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PDF generated at: Tue, 09 Oct 2012 02:40:04 UTC Contents Articles Wikipedia:SOPA initiative 1 Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Action 168 Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Ideas 313 SOPA and PIPA - Learn more 322 Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Post-blackout activities and initiatives 325 Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Blackout screen designs 327 Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 January 19 339 Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Proposed Messages 347 Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Post-blackout activities and initiatives/UK petition 371 Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/UN 374 Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Take action 375 Wikipedia:Access2Research 379 Protests against SOPA and PIPA 383 PROTECT IP Act 400 Stop Online Piracy Act 409 References Article Sources and Contributors 433 Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors 436 Article Licenses License 437 Wikipedia:SOPA initiative 1 Wikipedia:SOPA initiative For more information on the proposed law itself, see SOPA To see the conclusion of the community discussion, skip down to this section For post-blackout news, initatives and discussion, see /Post-blackout activities and initiatives This is a project page to determine what action is required on the part of the Wikipedia community regarding the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and our response to it (if any). Jimmy Wales asked for community input [1] on a possible database lock, similar to what the Italian Wikipedia did in October 2011 in response to a proposed bill in the Parliament of Italy. Although opinion is divided on the issue, there appears to be broad support that some form of response is needed. This is a workshop to explore various alternatives. The Wikimedia Foundation is going to support whatever action the community decides to take. The community has asked the Wikimedia Foundation to keep it informed as events unfold: to that end, the Wikimedia Foundation will use this page as a central place to post information. If you have questions for the Wikimedia Foundation, you can post them here—staff will monitor this page. However, this is not a Wikimedia Foundation page: it's a community page, and the Wikimedia Foundation is playing a support role here. Voice your support or opposition to the proposals by voting. You may also display a userbox on your userpage with the {{SOPA}} template. Updates on SOPA, PIPA, and OPEN January 23, 2012 - Senator Leahy made a statement urging the Senate to pass PIPA. From Politico: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) isn’t backing down from his fight for Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation and said on the Senate floor today he hopes “that in the coming days the Senate will focus on stopping that theft that is undercutting our economic recovery.” Leahy said he regretted the Senate will not be proceeding with its cloture vote on the PROTECT IP Act, stressing that online piracy costs jobs and poses a risk to public safety. He added that “misinformation” was spread on the Web about what the bill would accomplish. “My hope is that after a brief delay, we will, together, confront this problem,” Leahy said. Senator Leahy's full statement is available on his website [2]. For more information, see Sen. Leahy Isn’t Giving Up On PIPA Yet [3], Talking Points Memo. - Stephen LaPorte (WMF) 01:17, 24 January 2012 (UTC) January 20, 2012 - Representative Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) said that he is postponing consideration of the bill in response to concerns from critics who said the bill could lead to censorship. He stated:[4] "I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy," Smith said in a statement. "It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products." In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said he would delay the vote scheduled for Tuesday to begin consideration until the Senate Judiciary Committee could make more progress. "We made good progress through the discussions we’ve held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks," Reid said.[4] January 17, 2012 - Representative Lamar Smith announced that he expects SOPA markup to continue in February. Here is Rep. Smith's full statement [5]: To enact legislation that protects consumers, businesses and jobs from foreign thieves who steal America's intellectual property, we will continue to bring together industry representatives and Members Wikipedia:SOPA initiative 2 to find ways to combat online piracy. Due to the Republican and Democratic retreats taking place over the next two weeks, markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act is expected to resume in February. I am committed to continuing to work with my colleagues in the House and Senate to send a bipartisan bill to the White House that saves American jobs and protects intellectual property. As TechDirt predicted [6], earlier claims of SOPA's death were premature. - Stephen LaPorte (WMF) 00:06, 18 January 2012 (UTC) January 16, 2012 - Mike Masnick from TechDirt explains the current status of SOPA and PIPA: Issa's office put out a press release Friday night with Cantor's comments (I can pass along the press release if you'd like). Others have confirmed that Cantor has said that and that he's "serious" about not bringing it to the floor any time soon, though he has not made a public statement. As for PIPA... Just yesterday, Reid reiterated his plans to bring the bill to the floor, saying that it was important for "jobs" even as he admitted that the "recent" concerns brought up by "Google & Facebook" are legitimate and he's worried about the impact the bill will have on the internet. But, he also claimed, he's working with Dianne Feinstein to sort out all the problems, since she represents both Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Kinda crazy since Feinstein, just weeks ago, insisted that no one in tech was upset about the bill... The New York Times [7] has more on last week's developments in the SOPA and PIPA debate. - Stephen LaPorte (WMF) 19:57, 16 January 2012 (UTC) January 14, 2012 - The official Whitehouse response to SOPA, PIPA, and OPEN [8] recognizes that piracy and rogue sites pose a risk to the U.S. economy. The Administration will only support legislation that avoids censorship of legal activity, allows innovation, and does not damage the architecture of the internet. The statement calls for stakeholders to provide input on new legislation to prevent and prosecute piracy originating outside of the U.S. - Slaporte (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 14 January 2012 (UTC) See Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Ideas. As the foremost user generated web site in the world, Wikipedia should provide Congress with ideas, recommendations and feedback. Jehochman Talk 20:57, 14 January 2012 (UTC) For more recent media, see the media page and legislative timeline. The legal understanding Below is a copy of a post [9], made by Wikimedia Foundation General Counsel Geoff Brigham. Posted by Geoff on December 13th, 2011 For the past several days, Wikipedia editors have been discussing [10] whether to stage a protest against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). I’ve been asked to give some comments on the bill and explain what effect the proposed legislation might have on a free and open Internet as well as Wikipedia. My goal in this blog post is to provide some information and interpretation that I hope will be helpful to Wikipedia editors as they discuss the bill. SOPA has earned the dubious honor of facilitating Internet censorship in the name of fighting online infringement. The Wikimedia Foundation opposed that legislation [11], but we should be clear that Wikimedia has an equally strong commitment against copyright violations. The Wikimedia community, which has developed an unparalleled expertise in intellectual property law, spends untold hours ensuring that our sites are free of infringing content. In a community that embraces freely-licensed information, there is no room for copyright abuses. We cannot battle, however, one wrong while inflicting another. SOPA represents the flawed proposition that censorship is an acceptable tool to protect rights owners' private interests in particular media. That is, SOPA would block entire foreign websites in the United States as a response to remove from sight select Wikipedia:SOPA initiative 3 infringing material. This is so even when other programs like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have found better balances without the use of such a bludgeon. For this reason, we applaud the excellent work of a number of like-minded organizations that are leading the charge against this legislation, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation [12], Public Knowledge [13], Creative Commons [14], Center for Democracy and Technology [15], NetCoalition [16], the Internet Society [17], AmericanCensorship.org [18], and others. On Tuesday, after receiving input on the original version of the bill [19], the House Judiciary Committee issued a new version of SOPA [20] for its mark-up scheduled for this coming Thursday. A vote on that mark-up may take place on the same day. At the end of this article, I provide a summary of the most relevant parts of this new version of SOPA as well as a summary of the legislative process (which you can also follow here [21]). In honesty, this new version of the bill is better (and credit goes to the Judiciary staff for that). But, it continues to suffer from the same structural pitfalls, including its focus on blocking entire international sites based on U.S.-based allegations of specific infringement.