In which I appear on “This Week In Law” not so much defending SOPA but defending the attempt for creating remedies for the sort of ills (specifically, online counterfeiting by non-US entities) that SOPA is supposed to address. My bit starts at about the 3:00 point. As an aside, we could view a SMS crawl from viewers, and let me tell you, it was not (initially) a pro-SOPA crowd.
I taped this two weeks ago. Since that time, UMG appears to have (all the facts aren’t in yet so I’m saying ‘appears to have’) brought a bad faith DMCA notice against the Megaupload, designed not to protect its own valuable copyrights but to suppress speech (or more, probably, to fuck with people it doesn’t like – which is not an intent of U.S. copyright law).
In the run-up to the holiday season, I find myself saying to my kids “If you don’t take care of the things you have, I won’t get you new things.” I don’t really say that to them, I just think that. Well, you can say that to content lawyers as well. If the truth of the Megaupload situation turns out to be as bad as it looks, then my view is:
Screw SOPA. You’re too irresponsible to be handed new powerful ex parte tools. The bill should not be made law.
And I’m a content lawyer, and I think we need many of its provisions, so I don’t say that lightly.