Two controversial acts aimed at restricting internet access have been abandoned by US law-makers in the face of unprecedented public protest.

Following the 24-hour online blackout by Wikipedia and thousands of other websites on January 18th, both the US House of Representatives, legislating the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate (progressing the Protect IP Act (PIPA) announced that action on both acts would be delayed until “there was wider agreement on the issue”.

The decision of the US Congress to delay the progress of this proposed legislation will come as welcome news to the many constituents who have contacted their British National Party MEP, Nick Griffin, to express their concern over the impact the US legislation may have on UK internet users. 

SOPA and its sister bill, PIPA, propose law that would allow the US attorney general to create blacklists of websites to be censored, cut off from funding or removed from search engine indexes.

While Nick Griffin appreciates that internet piracy is a problem that must be addressed, he considers that legislation such as SOPA and PIPA represents the use of a sledge hammer to crack a nut. The enforcement proposed is draconian and could deny website owners the right to due process. SOPA and PIPA would give US authorities the power to block sites accused of copyright infringement at the domain level - in other words to make them disappear from the internet by rendering them unfindable.

The problem with this DNS-blocking approach is that it is indiscriminate. The vast majority of the world's (legitimate) websites and services are hosted on servers which exist under the umbrella of single domain names. A major hosting service will contain many thousands of individual blog sites, a few of which may be fostering or practising piracy, but a DNS block would make the entire domain disappear.

In addition to sanctioning excessive policing of the internet, this draconian legislation will have the secondary effect of encouraging internet service providers to adopt repressive sales strategies. Providers are likely to err on the side of caution when making decisions about the customers they provide a service to and may elect to deny domain access to a customer if there is even the slightest chance that allowing it to operate might contravene the law and, by association, bring the providers themselves into legal jeopardy. The repressive reach of the law is thus extended through the reaction it inspires.

Nick Griffin has been monitoring closely legislation similar to SOPA and PIPA which is progressing through the European Parliament. He is concerned that, like the US proposals, the European Parliament’s Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the Gallo Report facilitate repressive restrictions on internet users and excessive control mechanisms. The US and EU proposals effectively authorize internet censorship. Automatic sanctions will turn the presumption of innocence into a fiction; mirroring the coercive powers used in ultra authoritarian regimes such as China and Iran.

While there has been a fair degree of open debate in the US about SOPA and PIPA which has resulted in the US Congress bowing to public pressure and reviewing its internet proposals, such democratic dialogue has been severely lacking in respect of the equivalent legislation progressing through the European Parliament. There has been a disturbing scarcity of information about ACTA and a total lack of transparency in the negotiation process which, to date, has rendered informed consultation impossible.

Nick believes that the individual’s right to privacy and freedom of expression must be protected. He will be using his vote within the European Parliament to try to prevent the introduction of internet initiatives which sanction excessive control and the use of censorship.