Internet piracy – and how to stop it – has been in the news as Congress considers the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), which has critics on both the left and the right.
The Obama administration signaled its wariness about SOPA in a statement issued January 14, saying that “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.”
Even within Virginia, SOPA has its supporters and opponents – with the opponents being the most vocal.
Goodlatte supports SOPA
Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA6) is one of the bill’s cosponsors.
He argued last year that SOPA “will update the laws to ensure that the economic incentives our Framers enshrined in the Constitution over 220 years ago - to encourage new writings, research, products and services - remain effective in the 21st Century’s global marketplace, which will create more American jobs.”
Kwiatkowski opposes SOPA
Goodlatte’s likely opponent in this year’s Republican primary, Karen Kwiatkowski, said last week in an email sent to the news media that “SOPA would interfere with the architecture of the Internet” and that “SOPA won’t prevent online copyright violations. It is expensive, wrong-headed, harms both business and Internet architecture, and messes with the technological progress that has been made in the past 15 years.”
Kwiatkowski expressed her worries that “SOPA will cause rapid and unnecessary government shutdowns of websites, and drive rights-holders and Internet service providers to do the same, all without due process.”
Hurt: ‘really frightening’
Congressman Robert Hurt (R-VA5) expressed his own misgivings about SOPA in an interview with Charlottesville radio host Rob Schilling on January 9, calling the bill “unprecedented and really frightening.”
Hurt said that he has “a real problem with [SOPA] and I don’t think at this point it’s something that I could consider supporting. I would want to see some changes made to it before I could consider it but overall, I have significant problems with it.”
Radtke: ‘affront to First Amendment’
In an exclusive interview this week with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner, GOP Senate candidate Jamie Radtke also noted her opposition to the bill.
“My position,” she said, “is that I don’t want to give Eric Holder complete determination of whether or not certain Internet web sites should be pulled down.”
Radtke noted that she was one of the first Tea Party activists to oppose Net Neutrality.
The concept, she explained, “sounded good,” but the policy was “basically trying to achieve the same thing, which is to censor the Internet.”
The Internet, Radtke pointed out, has “been one of the greatest free speech mechanisms that we’ve ever had.” SOPA can undermine that quality, she warned.
“To give businesses the ability to [simply] claim that there is abuse,” such as copyright violation, “and then just give it to Eric Holder [so] he can pull it down” with no possibility of appeal “is an affront to the First Amendment.”
This is not a partisan complaint, Radtke emphasized.
“We don’t want to give that sort of power to the Attorney General. I don’t care who it is.”
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