Even I’m tiring of hearing about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), though it is supremely important to shoot down. However, I think it’s important for people to take a look at and consider just the first line of the actual verbiage.

It gives rights-holders the ability to “request” the take-down of sites: “Dedicated to the theft of US property”.

There is so much wrong about that single line that it singularly makes it clear to me that no one willing to give this the go-ahead has any real understanding of copyright. So I’ve decided to break this down a bit for my readers in a series of three blogs over the next few days.

First, for a site to be “dedicated to” anything implies that it’s primary and perhaps sole purpose is that object. The Google search engine could be understand as “dedicated” to searching the Web. eBay is “dedicated” to conducting online auctions. Sure, both do much more, but I would agree that those sites are indeed “dedicated” to the aforementioned deeds.

So what? Well, according to SOPA (and Khan’s Academy explains this beautifully), a site needn’t be dedicated to “the theft of US property” to be taken down. Right in the verbiage of the proposed act is the indication that this would extend to any sites that “enables or facilities” such pirate sites. So a link to a site “dedicated” to selling hot copies of Rosetta Stone and other apps is de facto guilty as well, despite the linking site not being “dedicated” to copyright violation. It only takes a moment’s consideration to see how far this would extend beyond sites whats sole purpose is to profit from piracy.

Think this is splitting hairs too much? Alas, that’s what’s necessary when dealing with blanket legislation, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This was so heavy-handed that it effectively destroyed fair use for bypassing Technical Protection Measures (TPMs). A later amendment allowed for bypassing such measures so long as copyright violation was not the software’s primary purpose; (ie – just so the software was not “dedicated” to piracy). Wonder why we can now use apps to backup our DVDs – thank this amendment (and those who fought for it).

Check back soon for some more much-needed semantic hair-splitting, and more evidence of SOPA’s true negative potential.