But I don’t think SOPA does quite as much as what the mass majority of people do.

http://politechbot.com/docs/sopa.law.professor.letter.111511.pdf

The above link is a letter drafted by a set of intellectual property law professors about the biggest problems of SOPA. They are very anti-SOPA. The letter was signed and endorsed by over 100 professors, some of which are very respected in the field (Lessig from Harvard, and the first author himself, Lemley from Stanford for example). However, there are also plenty of other very respected professors in the field who didn’t sign (and I can only presume did not endorse) the letter. This alone tells me that the issue probably isn’t as black as white as a lot of the anti-SOPA forces are making it out to be.

1) Due Process
2) National Security
3) US Image to Foreign Nations

I don’t intend to address the second issue much, because I don’t have the technological background to understand how SOPA would hurt our national security (I have no idea what DNSSEC is or how it works). I do want to point out though, that it seems rather inconceivable that our Congress would end up passing a law that hurts our national security on the eve of an election. That would seem to be a very bad public relations move.

As for the third issue, I have to admit I’m pretty down on the soft power of the US to be able to convince other nations to support free exchange of information. We’ve advocated that to China for years and there’s been no change (if anything, internet firewalling has gotten stricter over time in China). As such, I can’t see how SOPA severely hurts our ability to influence other countries, when they don’t listen to us right now.

However, the issue that I want to talk about the most, is the first one concerning due process. I feel like due process is somewhat of a magical term that is thrown around in order to make certain laws look really bad. But what exactly does this mean?

SOPA basically allows a court to issue a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order to an internet service provider to stop recognizing a website, without notice first to the owner of the website, and without an adversarial hearing where the website owner can defend himself first. Sounds terrible right? Except it happens all the time in other fields of law. Anytime the government removes someone from receiving future disability paychecks, that removal decision is conducted without notice or hearing. For many states, if you are about to get into a lawsuit, your property can be attached (which means you can’t sell your property) without notice or hearing. And of course, businesses and people file for temporary restraining orders against each other (to prevent them from doing something that is presumed to be illegal) all the time, and restraining orders are issued without notice or hearing. The reason why this case appears significant is that the “right” that is limited isn’t just money or property, but freedom to exchange information.

Additionally, preliminary injunctions and temporary restraining orders are issued at the discretion of the judge. Just because you file a complaint, doesn’t mean the judge is going to issue the order. Also, according to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, for the judge to issue a temporary restraining order, the person who files a complaint needs to provide collateral security to compensate the other party if the temporary restraining order is wrongfully issued.

So for instance, if for some reason some idiot judge actually did issue a temporary restraining order against Google for aiding copyright infringement, and Google didn’t actually aid in copyright infringement, then the person who filed the complaint would have to pay Google all the profits it lost during the time it was temporarily restrained.

It would also of course look absolutely terrible on the judge himself (read: no chance for future promotions) if he/she wrongfully issued a restraining order against Google.

For these reasons, I think the whole “SOPA is the worst thing to ever happen to us in the internet age” is kind of overblown.