That's how multiple sources are describing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a new law that gets its first hearing today. Trevor Trim explains one unintended consequence:
Under SOPA, private companies will be able to force payment processors to shut down payments to websites by merely claiming the site “engages in, enables or facilitates” infringement. This broad provision could target websites behind important Internet projects such as Tor, the anonymity network that has been vital for protecting activists from government surveillance in Tunisia and Egypt. While Tor is designed to promote free expression, privacy, and human rights (and has had an amazing impact on the Arab Spring), it can unfortunately also be used to mask one’s IP address when downloading copyrighted content, such as music. Corporations concerned about users illegally downloading music could use SOPA to force Visa and Mastercard to cut off donations to Torproject.org—despite Tor’s aim to facilitate human rights activism, not piracy.
Link via the Center for Democracy and Technology, which keeps an up-to-date, comprehensive roundup of arguments against SOPA. David Post thinks it plain won't work:
It’s too easy to circumvent — anyone who understands the technology will agree with that. Sure, it will ensnare many unlawful actors. But at Internet scale, ensnaring some of the bad guys does not and cannot appreciably affect the conduct in question. Think of it this way: If there are 10 bad guys out there, and you’ve got a way to catch, say, 5 of them, that’s usually a pretty good scheme. We’ll have 5 fewer bad guys, and who knows, maybe just by probabilistic chance you’ll catch all 10; after all, if you’re 50 percent likely on average to catch each bad guy, it’s unlikely but by no means impossible that you’ll get ‘em all.
But if there are 10 million bad guys and you get rid of half of them, there are still 5 million bad guys out there. And, with intellectual property, 5 million bad guys can do precisely as much “damage” to your intellectual property as 10 million.
Peter Suderman piles on.
The Dish 