Release Notes

"PROTECT IP" is the revised successor to the failed COICA bill (2010) which was originally introduced by U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy and backed by a large swathe of U.S. entertainment industry bodies, not least of all by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). On the opposing side, Senator Ron Wyden was largely accountable for preventing a full vote on COICA in the Senate. Wyden stated in a press release, “COICA’s at-all-costs approach to protecting intellectual property would have inflicted collateral damage on the foundations of the Internet, trampled free speech, stifled innovation and given license to foreign regimes to further censor the Internet for political and commercial purposes".

"The costs far outweighed the benefits” critics of the bill say as it violates human rights and would damper the U.S. government’s ability call for global Internet freedom. An open letter from nine organizations including Human Rights Watch and Reporters without borders, regarding COICA, states the bill “will result in serious unintended consequences for freedom of expression and human rights on the Internet, undermining global Internet freedom abroad”. Protect IP has been criticized for its ambiguity as to what constitutes an infringing website.

In Europe, similar initiatives are struggling to come to fruition. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reported on August 5 that Spanish courts and U.K. regulators have both ruled against acts that would see the blocking of websites. The Court of Appeals of Barcelona (Audiencia Provincial de Barcelona) in a recent case has clarified that merely providing a link is not "making available" content, and does not infringe copyright. Whilst in the U.K., the communications regulator Office of Communications (OFCOM) “concluded the provisions as they stand would not be effective” after reviewing the Digital Economy Act with the result being "the Government will not bring forward the Act’s site-blocking provisions at this time".

COICA and PROTECT IP are not the only initiatives concerning Internet users that have been put forward to combat the issue of pirating in recent times. Currently under legal scrutiny by the E.U., is the ACTA agreement. This is a pluryilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. The Japanese government first raised the idea of ACTA at a conference in France in November 2005 and has since been through nine official rounds of talks with Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States.

Whilst this agreement covers much broader aspects of piracy, a main objective of ACTA is to have a method of policing copyrighted content on the Internet across international borders. In some regards this could provide a greater threat to the freedom of the Internet than PROTECT IP as it has largely been created underneath the radar of public scrutiny. Since its inception, ACTA has received heavy criticism for the secrecy of the negotiations between the negotiating countries from organizations such as the EFF. While piracy is estimated to cost songwriters and musicians in the U.S. $58 billion each year in lost revenue, according to a 2007 study by the Institute for Policy Innovation, there is data that suggests otherwise—particularly with box office sales. The MPAA along with much of the U.S. movie industry decries that piracy is killing its business, yet global box office sales hit an all time high in 2010 with a figure of $31.8 billion, an 8 percent increase on previous years.