Let me tell you a story.
There once were four small businesses in Greenville:
They all did business locally, and also had web sites that helped their businesses. Cathy’s Cupcakes showed samples of her work, with a link to use a generic order form and purchase cupcakes with Paypal, Sam’s Supplies had a full e-commerce set-up, and Tommy’s T-Shirts linked up to an Etsy store, while Wally’s Websites hosts these three sites. Things were going great for all of them!
Then one day, Cathy’s Cupcakes puts up a new recipe: Lovely Coffee® Cupcakes. She even tells people how to make them, which includes using Lovely Coffee® coffee and tells people where in Greenville to go buy some. The cupcakes were a smash! People begin to “Like” Cathy’s Facebook page and re-posting her web site on Pinterest. Cathy was taking off! A month later, somebody at Lovely Coffee® decided that Cathy was violating the Lovely Coffee® property. They didn’t email Cathy and request she take the cupcake recipe down. They didn’t call her. No, Cathy received a letter in the mail telling her she needed to remove any mention of Lovely 
Coffee® on her web site, since they’re cupcakes, and Cathy sells cupcakes. She stands to profit off of the Lovely Coffee® brand. Cathy didn’t know what to do. Cathy was shocked to see a court order five days later, demanding she take down her entire web site until the matter with Lovely Coffee® is resolved, or she may face years in jail. Sound kind of harsh? Oh, it gets better.
Remember Sam’s Supplies? Yep, that guy. Well, to supplement Sam’s e-commerce site, he lets other local businesses do advertising on his store’s pages. One of those advertisers is Cathy. Much to Sam’s surprise, he received a court order, too, instructing him that he must remove Cathy’s advertising from his web site. He is warned that his domain registrar, GoDaddy, has received an order telling them that they will be liable if they do not shut down his domain. So unless he quickly ditches Cathy’s advertising, his site will go down and he will be looking at jailtime as well — jailtime just as severe as Cathy’s. Think this story can’t get worse? Oh, it does.
Next we have Wally’s Websites. Wally hosts Cathy’s web site. He has just received a court order stating that Cathy’s site has a violation of SOPA. He can voluntarily shut Cathy’s site down now. If he does so, he doesn’t need to worry; Cathy can’t sue him over it. But, if he does not immediately take her site down from the web, his DNS services will be forfeiture and ALL of the web sites he hosts will go down. Wally hosts sites for over 100 small and medium-sized businesses in Greenville! And, yep, Wally will face jailtime. But wait … this craziness is about to hit insanity-level:
Now, you might be thinking, “That’s impossible! There’s no way sites like Facebook, or Twitter, or Flickr or YouTube or anybody else can keep up with that!” And you’d be right. They can’t.
We’ve come to Tommy’s T-Shirts. Poor Tommy’s T-Shirts. Tommy actually doesn’t even know about Cathy’s Lovely Coffee® Cupcakes. But he’s about to get in BIG trouble, because he’s done business with Cathy. You see, a little over a year ago, Tommy made some custom t-shirts for Cathy’s employees. He’s selling extras of the shirt on Etsy, and he has a link back to Cathy’s web site. Because Tommy is linking to Cathy’s web site and her web site has the Lovely Coffee® Cupcakes on them, Tommy has received a court order telling him to take the link down and the product off of his page, or his site will go down. Tommy does this; but then finds out he hasn’t done enough.
You see, Cathy “likes” Tommy’s Tommy’s T-Shirts Facebook page. This is a big no-no. Because that means you can click on Cathy’s profile from Tommy’s T-Shirts’ Facebook page, and that will lead you to a link to Cathy’s Cupcakes official Facebook page, which has a picture of the Lovely Coffee® Cupcakes, and advertises that Cathy sells cupcakes, which the user can then infer that they might be able to buy some of the Lovely Coffee® Cupcakes from Cathy. So Tommy must be sure he blocks Cathy from his official Facebook page, so there’s no link back to Cathy’s Cupcakes. Oh yeah … and he needs to make sure he blocks anyone else who also likes Cathy’s Cupcakes page. And in case you think this is being unfair to the little guy — fear not: Facebook will be receiving a similar court order to make sure that Cathy’s Cupcakes Facebook page is taken down, along with any and all mentions and links to it.
On the surface, SOPA is a very well-intentioned bill. It’s meant to stop online piracy. The problem is this bill is created and sponsored by people who haven’t the slightest clue how the user-generated Internet works.
Now, you might be thinking, “That’s impossible! There’s no way sites like Facebook, or Twitter, or Flickr or YouTube or anybody else can keep up with that!” And you’d be right. They can’t. Which is why early predictions already think that SOPA could be the end of some of these sites, with Flickr likely being the first to go.
Think I’m painting some scare-tactic-laden horror story for you? Nope. The hypothetical story above was created using specifically spelled out points in sections 101–106 in the SOPA bill being taken up by Congress right now. I’m guessing you’ve heard of SOPA. And you’ve heard it’s bad; but you probably didn’t realize how bad.
On the surface, SOPA is a very well-intentioned bill. It’s meant to stop online piracy … and hipsters and teenagers aside, who wouldn’t want that? The problem is — and I say this not intending to dive into politics — this bill is created and sponsored by people who haven’t the slightest clue how the user-generated Internet works. For example, Lamar S. Smith introduced the bill to the House floor in October. Good for him. Lamar S. Smith has a Facebook page, a YouTube channel and a UStream channel. If SOPA is signed into law, Lamar S. Smith will immediately be in violation of federal law, because he will be participating in three web sites that will have numerous copyright infringement cases facing it. He’ll be forced to shut down his pages on Facebook, YouTube, and UStream. If he declines, saying “That’s overboard. I shouldn’t have to take my page down because some nut in Kentucky is putting up ABC video clips on UStream, porting them to YouTube, and then linking them on Facebook!” — well, then the courts will have no choice but to take down his official House of Representatives page, because that’s linked from and to his Facebook page that’s on the same URL as a million pages and content items violating new laws defined in SOPA. Oh, and they’ll also have to take down the official house.gov site as well, since that links to Lamar Smith’s official .gov page, which links to Facebook, which will face countless copyright infringement cases.
This all sounds completely mental, right? It sure does. And it’s completely real. This is why we at Worthwhile, and many other web-related companies stand firmly against SOPA and ask that you would stand with us. Hear are some things you can do about it:
1) Sign the Petition. The one on whitehouse.gov has been shut down for now (aha! Progress!); but this one from American Censorship is sort of the leader now.
2) Contact your Senator and Representative and demand that they vote against SOPA. For those in Greenville, SC, that would be these guys:
| Rep. Trey Gowdy [R, SC-4] |
| Phone: 202–225-6030 |
| Sen. Lindsey Graham [R, SC] |
| Phone: 202–224-5972 |
| Sen. Jim DeMint [R, SC] |
| Phone: 202–224-6121 |
3) Read the bill and spread the word. There’s a lot of ignorance about this bill, which fronts as something protecting IP, but goes through unrealistic lengths to do it and destroys the web as we know it. The only way you can truly know what’s going on is to read the bill and then start informed conversations with your friends, family, and colleagues.
The Worthwhile family stands firmly against piracy, and would love to see laws enacted to protect IP’s …
… but SOPA ain’t it.
If this practical and hypothetical approach isn’t for you, no worries. Here are some other articles that can break down SOPA for you:
