Letter from the COO — Congresswoman Hahn’s Response

I recent­ly wrote to Cal­i­for­ni­a’s 36th Dis­trict Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Con­gress­woman Jan­ice Hahn regard­ing my thought’s on SOPA.  Her response below:

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Dear Arthur Iinu­ma,

Thank you for con­tact­ing me to voice your oppo­si­tion to H.R. 3261, “Stop Online Pira­cy Act.” I am hon­ored to rep­re­sent you, and I appre­ci­ate your active par­tic­i­pa­tion in the leg­isla­tive process. Your involve­ment makes democ­ra­cy work bet­ter by help­ing me more effec­tive­ly rep­re­sent you and California’s 36th Dis­trict.


To ensure the growth of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion in the Unit­ed States, it is essen­tial that we pro­tect the rights of artists and inno­va­tors from online thieves who pros­per by steal­ing their work. At the same time, any pro­posed leg­is­la­tion tar­get­ing online pira­cy must be bal­anced to avoid over­reach­ing that could result in cen­sor­ing the Inter­net and hin­der the abil­i­ty of our most inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies from com­pet­ing and cre­at­ing new jobs in Amer­i­ca. For this rea­son, I recent­ly announced that I will not sup­port H.R. 3261, the “Stop Online Pira­cy Act.”  If this or sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion comes to the House Floor for a vote, I will keep your thoughts in mind.


 Hear­ing from the peo­ple I serve is vital to doing my job right. Thanks again for tak­ing the time to share your con­cerns and I hope you will keep in touch with me on this or any oth­er issue you feel impor­tant. To stay informed of my work, you can always call my office in San Pedro at (310) 831‑1799 or my office in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. toll-free at (855) 328‑7332.

Sin­cere­ly yours,

Jan­ice Hahn
Mem­ber of Congress

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For those that need some addi­tion­al insight, SOPA (Stop Online Pira­cy Act) is a pro­posed Unit­ed States bill that allows U.S. law enforce­ment to con­duct spe­cif­ic polic­ing activ­i­ties in an effort to pre­vent the pro­mo­tion of copy­right­ed intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty infringe­ment.  While at first glance, the bill seems to be with mer­it, the impli­ca­tions of allow­ing the gov­ern­ment to step in and con­duct such “law enforce­ment” activ­i­ties are far reaching.

An exam­ple of some of the allowed measures:

The large part of the prob­lem is not sim­ply the depth of enforce­ment allowed, but the broad­ness of def­i­n­i­tion for what law enforce­ment can rea­son­ably act upon.  For a coun­try praised for it’s open­ness and expres­sion of free­dom, the bill is a land­mark effort to allow large-scale enforce­ment of cen­sor­ship across the inter­net.  There are also ques­tions of effec­tive­ness (new web­sites can be cre­at­ed in rel­a­tive­ly short peri­ods of time), effect on cur­rent “safe har­bor” pro­tec­tions, tech­ni­cal con­straints (the analy­sis of mil­lions of pieces of new con­tent being sub­mit­ted to the larg­er con­tent sites such as Google, YouTube, or Face­book), and the poten­tial for neg­a­tive impact of com­merce and com­mu­ni­ty (legit­i­mate sites that were adquate­ly or fair­ly screened; the required finan­cial resources to enact polic­ing of such sites). 

Although I do not con­done the dis­tri­b­u­tion of copy­right­ed mate­r­i­al, I also do not believe that SOPA or close­ly relat­ed PIPA (at least in their cur­rent form) are the best imple­men­ta­tions of leg­is­la­ture for address­ing this issue.  Some time needs to be spent by con­gress to rework the bill, or per­haps draft an alter­nate (i.e. OPEN Act) before sup­port by the inter­net com­mu­ni­ty can be expected.

-ai

Dis­claimer:  The con­tent in this blog is sole­ly the opin­ion of the author and does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views or opin­ions of ISBX, or any of it’s part­ners, share­hold­ers or employees.