Our findings suggest that decisions around copyright scope can have significant impacts on investment and innovation. We have tested a number of models and consistently find that the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision led to additional incremental investment in U.S. cloud computing companies compared to the EU experience. As shown in the figure in Appendix B, estimates of increased VC investment in U.S. cloud computing from our seven models range from $728 million to approximately $1.3 billion, with an average of $936 million. When paired with the findings of the enhanced effects of VC investment relative to corporate investment, this may be the equivalent of $2 to $5 billion in traditional R&D investment.

There are lots of concerns here, including the amount of discretion it hands to the attorney general. But another big worry is that blocking the domain name for one infringing site (say, latviablogging.com/counterfeitrolexes) could prevent access to thousands of innocent ones also hosted under that domain (like latviablogging.com/motherscookierecipes).

"It is inevitable that there will be bad behavior on any site that has thousands and thousands of dedicated subsections," said Dane Jasper, CEO of Santa Rosa Internet service provider Sonic.net. Cutting off the entire site's traffic and funds amounts to an "Internet death penalty" without a trial, he said.

This section of the bill appears to apply to both U.S.-based sites and foreign ones, or even a portion of a site, if it's "dedicated to theft of U.S. property." One of the key definitions of that is if a site "is taking, or has taken, deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability" of infringement. Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C., public interest group, helpfully boiled down that clumsy legalese to: "lacking sufficient zeal to prevent copyright infringement."

In other words, it would place the responsibility for detecting and policing infringement onto the site itself, rather than content owners, as required under the DMCA.

"There's really not much question that this bill is designed to do an end run around the DMCA," said Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group in San Francisco. "What has been affirmed by court after court is that service providers do not have to affirmatively police infringement. That's a good thing because it's a terrible burden to put on a service provider."

We at FMC want to see the growth of a legitimate digital music marketplace that rewards creators and fans. We support efforts to protect rightsholders online and encourage fans to participate in platforms where creators get paid. We genuinely hope that if Congress gets involved that they find a way to support creativity without compromising free expression and innovation. In its current form, SOPA is not that bill.

SOPA’s definitions around “infringing” sites and services are seemingly broad enough to include sites that have perfectly legitimate uses. For example: some of us here at FMC are musicians and producers. We regularly use services like Dropbox, etc. to send files back-and-forth to collaborators. Under this bill, such services — and those yet to be invented — could be subject to blocking or other penalties. Unlike the Senate bill with its more tailored definition, SOPA could target any foreign site or service that “facilitates” infringement. That net seems too wide for comfort.

Another concern with SOPA is that it impacts an underlying feature of the internet — the Domain Name Server system (DNS). Think of DNS as a global phonebook for the web, where a site’s numerical address is converted to words and letters. Instead of typing in a string of numbers like 69.65.119.60, DNS servers let users type in easier-to-remember names, like futureofmusic.org. If a site appeared on a government blacklist, these servers would be instructed to no longer “resolve” the address. Keep in mind that it is incredibly easy for an infringing site to switch domain names — the underlying content is still there. Additionally, a user could also simply type in the numerical IP address and go straight to the site. Worse, by switching to a domain name server in another country, those in the US seeking that material could end up surfing in some of the most parasitic and dangerous backwaters of the internet (and bringing back what they catch). The authors of the bill seem to recognize how easy it is to get around DNS redirects, so they’ve also authorized the attorney general to go after anyone who provides a product or service to do so. But we start blocking access to foreign sites, will other countries take that as a green light to start blocking access to ours? Is it a good idea to open this can of worms at a critical time for global information openness and security?

An important part of the DMCA are its “safe harbors,” which protects online service providers from liability for third-party content uploaded to their sites, provided they quickly remove or disable access to material upon receiving notification from rightsholders. Recent court cases have hinged on whether a site or service had “specific knowledge of infringement.” If not, a site may be within its safe harbors. There is concern that the language in SOPA could force a site or service to monitor activity, out of fear that they would otherwise be “avoiding confirming” non-infringement. Under such an obligation, we may never see the next amazing platform for user-generated expression (and creator compensation).

Stripped of their obfuscations, SOPA and Protect IP suggest increasing desperation by media companies. A bill that was to target only the "worst of the worst" foreign Web sites committing blatant and systemic copyright and trademark infringement has morphed inexplicably into an unrestricted hunting license for media companies to harass anyone--foreign or domestic--who questions their timetable for digital transformation.

Nothing can change the fact that Hollywood's way of life is transforming once again. The only unknown is time--will a profitable future for digital content arrive in a few years or will it take another decade? SOPA only seeks to delay the inevitable, at the cost of wasteful litigation and overzealous law enforcement.

What would the movie business be like today, if the MPAA had succeeded in banning the VCR?

I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

"You go down the Latino people, the deaf people, the farmers, and choose them.... You say, 'I can't use this one--I already used them last time...' We had their letterhead. We'd just write the letter. We'd fax it to them and tell them, 'You're in favor of this.'"

So this is a critical moment. The choices we make today will determine what the Internet looks like in the future.... For the United States, the choice is clear. On the spectrum of Internet freedom, we place ourselves on the side of openness. We recognize that an open Internet comes with challenges. It calls for ground-rules to protect against wrongdoing and harm. And Internet freedom raises tensions, like all freedoms do. But its benefits are worth it.

The criticism below views SOPA as a “back door” means “with which to bludgeon” innocent site operators by expanding the scope of secondary liability claims and diminishing DMCA protections. Of course, this view largely ignores that SOPA explicitly states that its provisions must not be read to expand or diminish either. And, it doesn’t. The fact that SOPA does not permit sites to take "deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability" of infringement merely restates the law as it stands today. There is no rule that permits “willful blindness” of obvious wrongdoing under U.S. law, and nothing in the DMCA or any other statute has been deemed to hold otherwise.

"I think it is unrealistic to think we're going to continue to rely on the DMCA notice-and-takedown provision," Goodlatte said.

"Anybody who is involved in providing services on the Internet would be expected to do some things."

You're probably watching me on a high speed internet -- the same internet that has given us our competitive advantage. You know it took years for innovators and investors to create the online experience that you enjoy today. It really is the highway for all the goods and services and jobs that we need for the creative economy. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. They're right there at your fingertips because of the internet that we enjoy. But some people fear that without government intervention, that entrepreneurs and innovators are going to hijack the internet that you enjoy... the World Wide Web! This has never happened and there has never been a time that a consumer has needed a federal bureaucrat to intervene. But yet this policy, called Net Neutrality is the Obama administrations hysterical reaction to a hypothetical problem. Here's what they want to do: Take the private internet and put it all under government control. Think about it: what's going to happen to the next Facebook innovator, if they have to go apply with the government to get approval to develop a new application. And what would happen to your small business, if you had to depend on internet speeds that Uncle Sam says is going to be okay.... We want to keep [the internet] open free and prosperous.

We, the undersigned artists, have all been empowered by the Internet. Today, artists can reach large audiences and make a living because the Internet and digital tools have democratized the means to create, distribute, and promote our work.

We write to you today because we are concerned with S.968, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). Copyright law exists to promote the arts, but the new penalties in PIPA could be used against the new social media channels we depend on to make a living, and endanger freedom of expression.