White House signals that administration opposes SOPA and PIPA as currently written

Respond­ing to a pair of peti­tions call­ing on Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to take a stand against two bills that threat­en Inter­net free­dom (the so-called “Stop Online Pira­cy Act” and “Pro­tect IP”), three admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have pub­lished a posi­tion paper on the White House web­site which sug­gests that the admin­is­tra­tion does not find SOPA or PIPA accept­able as cur­rent­ly writ­ten — but unfor­tu­nate­ly stops short of explic­it­ly con­demn­ing either bill. The post appears to be an attempt to acknowl­edge oppo­nents’ griev­ances with­out offend­ing the pow­er­ful trade asso­ci­a­tions (MPAA, RIAA, etc.) that want the abil­i­ty to start cen­sor­ing the Inter­net at will.

Here’s an excerpt:

While we believe that online pira­cy by for­eign web­sites is a seri­ous prob­lem that requires a seri­ous leg­isla­tive response, we will not sup­port leg­is­la­tion that reduces free­dom of expres­sion, increas­es cyber­se­cu­ri­ty risk, or under­mines the dynam­ic, inno­v­a­tive glob­al Internet.

Any effort to com­bat online pira­cy must guard against the risk of online cen­sor­ship of law­ful activ­i­ty and must not inhib­it inno­va­tion by our dynam­ic busi­ness­es large and small. Across the globe, the open­ness of the Inter­net is increas­ing­ly cen­tral to inno­va­tion in busi­ness, gov­ern­ment, and soci­ety and it must be pro­tect­ed. To min­i­mize this risk, new leg­is­la­tion must be nar­row­ly tar­get­ed only at sites beyond the reach of cur­rent U.S. law, cov­er activ­i­ty clear­ly pro­hib­it­ed under exist­ing U.S. laws, and be effec­tive­ly tai­lored, with strong due process and focused on crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. Any pro­vi­sion cov­er­ing Inter­net inter­me­di­aries such as online adver­tis­ing net­works, pay­ment proces­sors, or search engines must be trans­par­ent and designed to pre­vent over­ly broad pri­vate rights of action that could encour­age unjus­ti­fied lit­i­ga­tion that could dis­cour­age start­up busi­ness­es and inno­v­a­tive firms from growing.

We must avoid cre­at­ing new cyber­se­cu­ri­ty risks or dis­rupt­ing the under­ly­ing archi­tec­ture of the Inter­net. Pro­posed laws must not tam­per with the tech­ni­cal archi­tec­ture of the Inter­net through manip­u­la­tion of the Domain Name Sys­tem (DNS), a foun­da­tion of Inter­net secu­ri­ty. Our analy­sis of the DNS fil­ter­ing pro­vi­sions in some pro­posed leg­is­la­tion sug­gests that they pose a real risk to cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and yet leave con­tra­band goods and ser­vices acces­si­ble online. We must avoid leg­is­la­tion that dri­ves users to dan­ger­ous, unre­li­able DNS servers and puts next-gen­er­a­tion secu­ri­ty poli­cies, such as the deploy­ment of DNSSEC, at risk.

The three cosign­ers of the posi­tion paper (Vic­to­ria Espinel, Aneesh Chopra, Howard Schmidt) con­clude by urg­ing all sides to work togeth­er to pass leg­is­la­tion to curb copy­right and trade­mark infringe­ment in 2012, demon­strat­ing a com­plete lack of under­stand­ing of the pol­i­tics sur­round­ing SOPA and PIPA.

SOPA and PIPA are before Con­gress because a car­tel of media con­glom­er­ates and their indus­try mouth­pieces are obsessed with try­ing to restrict dig­i­tal free­dom. The Inter­net is the one medi­um they don’t own, because it was designed to be decen­tral­ized. Like many oth­er activists, users, and entre­pre­neurs, we believe the Inter­net’s decen­tral­ized design is its great­est strength — it’s what makes the Inter­net open and demo­c­ra­t­ic, allow­ing for true two-way communication.

But media exec­u­tives don’t like what they can’t con­trol. They claim that online shar­ing of movies, books, music, and tele­vi­sion shows is destroy­ing their prof­its, and they want to stamp it out. That’s the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion they’ve offered for SOPA and PIPA. But that’s not what they are real­ly after.

They don’t say so pub­licly, but their ambi­tion is to cableize the Inter­net, or in oth­er words, alter its design to make it more like cable television.

See, as long as the Inter­net remains decen­tral­ized, online shar­ing will be impos­si­ble to stamp out, and it will like­wise be impos­si­ble to restrict how peo­ple timeshift and spaceshift con­tent. Media con­glom­er­ates want to dis­man­tle the Inter­net and replace it with a Medi­anet they can control.

That’s what SOPA and PIPA are real­ly about: begin­ning the process of alter­ing the Inter­net to make it more like cable tele­vi­sion. The rea­son so many of the bil­l’s pro­vi­sions seem harm­ful to free expres­sion, e‑commerce, and inno­va­tion is because they’re sup­posed to be. It is no acci­dent that these bills were writ­ten with­out input from Inter­net engi­neers, entre­pre­neurs, or users.

The MPAA and RIAA have been hop­ing to avoid a big pub­lic debate about this leg­is­la­tion, (cor­rect­ly) fear­ing that it would lead to insur­mount­able opposition.

But despite their efforts to advance SOPA and PIPA as qui­et­ly as pos­si­ble, oppo­si­tion is grow­ing by the day, and law­mak­ers the RIAA and MPAA had pre­vi­ous­ly signed up as sup­port­ers are start­ing to back away.

We have no inter­est in attempt­ing to find com­mon ground with the likes of the RIAA and MPAA because we can­not trust them. They have already act­ed in bad faith by writ­ing this leg­is­la­tion them­selves and try­ing to ram it through Con­gress with­out a pub­lic debate. Besides, we don’t believe that online copy­right and trade­mark infringe­ment is a prob­lem that can be solved through legislation.

We would not be opposed to thought­ful­ly draft­ed leg­is­la­tion intend­ed to alle­vi­ate or mit­i­gate infringe­ment. But there’s noth­ing thought­ful or sen­si­ble about SOPA or PIPA. These bills have been craft­ed to dam­age and under­mine the Inter­net by cor­po­ra­tions that fear the Inter­net. They must be stopped.