While the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) lumbers its way through the American legislature, a remarkably similar act has found its way into legitimate law on the other side of the pond. Just in case no little chickens have been by to tell you that the internet’s sky-high potential for the free expression of ideas is about to come crashing down, SOPA is an anti-internet piracy bill. Introduced in late October of last year, the bill would allow the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and copyright holders to seek injunctions against sites containing allegedly infringing material. As law, the bill would empower courts to halt services essential to website survival. Infringing sites could be cut off from advertising payoffs, links on search engines, and internet service providers could even be ordered block users from accessing the site.
Familiar internet goliaths such as Google, YouTube, Twitter, and others are crying out that passing the SOPA will destroy the internet as we know it. Pretty soon there will be solid evidence of whether or not these claims hold water. Spain recently passed the Sinde law which is, while not an exact replica, essentially a Spanish SOPA.
What makes the Sinde law interesting, however, is not just its similarity to the SOPA, it’s also that America appears to have bullied Spain into passing the law. According to Spanish newspaper El Pais (you’ll need a translator if you don’t speak the native tongue – or you can just read The Guardian’s account), a letter from US Ambassador Alan Solomont to the Spanish Prime Minister indicated that the US would frown upon a Spanish failure to pass the piracy law. Reminding Spain of its status on the Special 301 Report – a list of countries deemed to have sub-par internet piracy protections – the ambassador warned that a “downgrade” from there could be disastrous. Joining that group, in the ambassador’s words, of “the worst violators of global intellectual property rights” would subject Spain to “retaliation actions” including disintegration of tariff agreements and a WTO referral.
Regardless of any nefarious behind-the-scenes letters, it will be interesting to see how the Sinde Law changes the face of the internet in Spain. Given the speed at which the American Congress moves, we might get to see some of the long-term effects of SOPA-like censorship before we have to worry about the any sky shattering legislation passing stateside.