Web Giants Are Afraid of Censorship

Anti-piracy bills developed by the U.S. Congress may lead to censorship and hinder activities of legitimate Web companies.

The U.S. economy loses over $100 billion annually due to intellectual property theft, Republican Lamar Smith noted this week. He is one of the authors of the anti-piracy bill that would grant the government the power to block foreign sites that violate the law. Copyright holders, such as music and movie studios and publishing houses, would demand the elimination of those sites which have been identified as pirated from search engine lists. They may submit them to banks and advertising firms to cut their funding sources.

The bill has been supported by both Republicans and Democrats. Critics, however, observe that the provisions of the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) and “PROTECT IP Act,” developed earlier by the Senate, may go too far. They point out that expected traffic-filtering techniques on the Internet are now being used in such countries as China and Iran.

“The solutions are draconian,” Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said in a statement. Representatives of Mozilla highlight that if this bill is passed, the Internet and freedom of speech will never be the same.

U.S. companies estimate that the annual losses due to theft of their intellectual property amount to $135 billion.

Experts claim the new rules could lead to the collapse of smaller firms, reduction of the chances of survival of new ones in Silicon Valley and an increase in the costs of the big Internet companies. Among those who are in opposition to the law are Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, Mozilla, eBay, AOL and Zynga, as well as many smaller businesses.

In an open letter to politicians, giants of the industry stressed that although they are in favor of protection of intellectual property, the regulations in the current version would lead law-abiding Internet and technology companies in the U.S. to some unknown obligations. It would impose on giants like YouTube or Google a duty to preventively monitor all materials posted by users.

Representatives of the film and music industries, who have called for the adoption of stricter rules for many years, are in favor of the controversial bill.