SGE does not support SOPA/PIPA

Recently, a comment from our current Singapore Minister of Law, K Shanmugam hints at the possibility of enacting laws that might be similar to the two pieces of legislation currently being debated in the US: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and a sister bill the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

There has been strong resistance against both bills not just from many technology entrepreneurs from the start-up space but also from multi-national companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook.

The aim of this post is to explain what SOPA and PIPA really means for us and why we are not supportive of such legislation for economic reasons if our Minister of Law decides to propose it as a bill in the very near future. It’s not just a Singapore problem but a Southeast Asia problem if it gets passed thru in Singapore.

To put it simply, here’s what SOPA and PIPA seek to do: the laws will be enacted “to minimize the dissemination of copyrighted material online by targeting sites that promote and enable the sharing of copyright-protected material, like The Pirate Bay.” If the act is enacted, a few steps will be taken to limit access to rogue sites:

(a) bypassing the “notice and takedown” method of copyright infringement on internet services (for example, the Pirate Bay) and require the Internet service providers, or ISPs in short (in Singapore: M1, Starhub and SingTel) to police content uploaded by users or prevent users from uploading copyrighted content,

(b) require ISPs to change their DNS servers and block resolution of domain names of websites that host these illegal content (i.e. movies or TV shows),

(c) require search engines to modify search results to exclude websites of such nature,

(d) order online (including mobile) advertising services (Google AdSense, InMobi) and digital payment services (Paypal, Square) to cease business with websites of such nature.

The reason why most major internet companies oppose to the act is simple. SOPA and PIPA changes the liability rules around copyright infringement. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 in which Singapore has signed on a stronger version (during their free trade negotiations with the US) states that companies are protected from charges of “contributory infringement” on content uploaded by users as long as the company follows up with the process of removing the content which infringes copyright when an alert process is signalled.

Here’s how it works in real life: suppose a user of the ISP uploads a video that infringes copyright, the ISP will be alerted by the relevant authorities to remove the content. SOPA changes the former arrangement, and now user-generated content sites like YouTube or Twitter have to worry about copyright due to contributory infringement when a rogue user deliberately uploads content to these user generated content sites.

The burden of reviewing every blog post, tweet and video submission is impossible to manage for any company. This is similar to the situation in China, where video sites such as Tudou have to hire people to monitor content uploads 24-7 to ensure that no sensitive political content is uploaded.

SGE‘s opposition against SOPA/PIPA legislation is not focused on freedom of speech arguments which have been brought forward by many digital advocates. You can read about these elsewhere. Our concern is that such legislation has profound implications to our economy.

First, the legislation breaks the internet architecture and subjects our ISPs to undue stress of monitoring all forms of user-generated content. The current procedure that the ISPs use to remove illegal content is sufficient to protect copyright. However, if SOPA or PIPA legislation is enacted through the Singapore parliament, the ISPs would have to waste resources to monitor internet traffic.

Second, the Singapore government has devoted a lot of resources to nurture in our country the next Facebook and Google or sites that might create great impact like Wikipedia or any user-generated sites similar to YouTube and Twitter. By allowing such a legislation, innovation within the local tech and creative content industry will be reduced. Think of a young, talented pianist applying for a top music school and producing a YouTube performance of a song which is well known. The pianist can get sued for copyright infringement even if the content is being re-mixed.