This hit piece in Politico suggests some Democrats are foolish enough to think they should tear down Senator Wyden for his heroic work in fighting for a free and open Internet–something he’s been doing since the 1990s. In 2006, Senator Wyden authored the very first network neutrality bill. This year he fought to kill SOPA and PIPA. I’m biased since I was there both times, but he deserves praise, from his party and the nation, not a knife in the back.

While the piece focuses on Medicare, it seems timed to attack him for his work on SOPA, which is dead as of last Friday. Part of the Politico piece makes it explicit:

Driving the spurt from $2.3tn (£1.5tn) to $4.2tn (£2.7tn) will be the rapid rise of mobile internet access.

The study, commissioned by web giant Google, assumes that in four years 3bn people will be using the internet, or nearly 50% of the world’s population.

The research suggests that the UK is one of the most advanced e-commerce economies.

Another good reason to tread carefully when it comes to devising regulations for this interconnected and dynamic market.

Washington, D.C. – Nevada Senator Harry Reid released the following statement today on the Senate’s PROTECT I.P. Act:

I debated a representative from the Copyright Alliance, and we followed Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian.

The bills’ supporters have strongly argued that American sites are exempt from the bills and that the bills only target foreign sites. They made this argument to Congressmen even when the original SOPA bill was introduced, before the “Manager’s Amendment,” even though the first SOPA bill clearly and explicitly targeted American sites. More recently, on MSNBC, the NBC General Counsel repeated that argument over and over. This morning, at the State of the Net Conference, the Chamber of Commerce made the same argument: only foreign sites will be affected.

Even if this were a saving grace, the bills’ opponents claim that the bills in fact would significantly burden American sites. I wrote a post here that many people point to as the “definitive” post explaining how PIPA and SOPA target American companies. I explained that the foreign domains of American sites (Google.ca, Amazon.co.uk) subject American companies to punishment. I explained that the anti-circumvention provisions subject Twitter, Facebook, Google, WordPress and other American sites to injunctions if people use them to explain how to get around the bills’ remedies. I also noted that those provisions would make illegal encryption technology, like State-department supported Tor, an anti-censorship tool.  And I explained that all of the remedies burden American companies, by requiring American search companies, service providers, ad networks, and payment processors to take certain steps when faced with a court order about a liable site.

So I feel compelled to respond to a bizarre counterargument I heard today. This morning, at a conference, the counsel for the Chamber of Commerce said that Amazon.co.uk or Google.ca would not be covered by the bill because the bill only applies to “US-directed sites” and those sites with foreign domains are directed to foreign audiences. Later in the day, I spoke with USA Today, and, after my chat, the reporter called back to tell me that the other side said I was wrong about Amazon and Google being subject to the bill because of foreign domains. The argument again: Google.ca and Amazon.co.uk (and others like them) are not “US-directed sites.”

So I’d like to say: this is your best argument? It’s astonishingly weak for two reasons.

First, the bills define US-directed site to mean almost any site that you can access in the US. PIPA does not have a definitive test, but it lets courts determine which sites are directed to the US based on several indicia, including whether the “Internet site has reasonable measures in place to prevent such goods and services from being accessed from or delivered to the United States.” (PIPA, page 48.) Meaning, if the site hasn’t blocked American users from accessing the site, then it’s US-directed. The whole point of the Internet, though, is that sites are globally available, and not blocked for particular countries. SOPA, on the House side, merely requires “minimum contacts” sufficient for personal jurisdiction, which is a very low standard that would touch most sites–as any law student would learn after reading the International Shoe case in the second week of Civil Procedure. (See SOPA, page 9).

Second, this argument is unconvincing because it suggests that the bills would cover zero sites in the whole world. If Amazon.co.uk and Google.ca are exempt from the bill, then so are ThePirateBay.co.uk or ThePirateBay.ca. The point of SOPA and PIPA, in theory, is to target foreign sites, who are defined based on having foreign domain names. So, the Chamber is saying, “Don’t worry Google.com won’t be subject to the bills because that’s not a foreign site.” Now it says, “Don’t worry, Google.ca won’t be subject to the bills because it’s not a US-directed site.” Does that mean neither MegaUpload.com or MegaUpload.ca is subject to the bill? By my count then, the bills don’t apply to any sites that have a domestic domain name nor do they apply to any sites that have a foreign domain name.

The Chamber is trying to convince us that the bills apply to zero websites and companies? They wouldn’t apply to MegaUpload.com or MegaUpload.ca, Google.com or  Google.ca, ThePirateBay.org or ThePirateBay.fr?

This doesn’t strike me as highly convincing.Why would studios and labels spend millions trying to pass a bill that affects zero websites and companies?

They wouldn’t.

Yesterday night, I jumped on Al Jazeera English. Here is the clip, and I embed it below.

Other than a brief mention on CNN, MSNBC’s was surprisingly the first mainstream coverage of this issue.

Alexis was excellent and my mother tells me I did a fine job too.

Afterwards, I wished that Alexis and I had been able to have a mind meld into one magical person, like the superhero Firestorm.  He did a great job of discussing how these bills would make anti-censorship tools illegal. He noted that the State Department funds and encourages anti-censorship tools and these bills would make those tools illegal. I wish I had had the time to discuss that issue on Al Jazeera English. Considering Al Jazeera’s role in the Arab Spring and role of anti-censorship tools in autocratic regimes, I wish I could have conveyed that point on Al Jazeera’s English channel.

Over at MSNBC, the NBC General Counsel kept claiming that, based on his read of the bills, they only affected foreign websites. Alexis and Chris Hayes aren’t lawyers so it was hard for them to disagree with an experienced lawyer on statutory analysis. But I’m also an experienced lawyer, and I’ve  evaluated the statute and have detailed the exact sections of the bill that severely burden American sites. After the show, Chris retweeted my post on the issue. Alexis also linked to my post in his Google Plus posting about the show.

Glad that we have seen at least some coverage of these really important bills that could dramatically change the Internet for the worse–suppressing free speech, harming security, threatening innovators and start-ups.

Also, even if two of us can’t meld into one superhero, SOPA and PIPA have caused a firestorm online, as millions speak with a unified voice, and it won’t let up soon, even if that voice is silence.

Meanwhile, the White House issued a response to two petitions urging the President to veto SOPA, stating:

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

That may seem like significant statement, but as Politico points out, “it stopped short of saying whether that includes two bills that have sent the tech industry into a panic.”

And earlier today, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) announced that a hearing scheduled for January 18th on technical concerns about SOPA has been postponed following assurances from Rep. Lamar Smith that the legislation won’t move forward without a consensus. Smith also said that the DNS blocking provisions would be removed from the bill.

Despite these developments, opposition remains fierce. The SOPA blackouts are still on for the 18th. And on the 17th, Marvin will be doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit. Be sure to check it out.

All the usual blustering and speculation in the latest Google antitrust debate has obscured what should, however, be the two key prior questions: (1) Did Google violate the antitrust laws by not including data from Facebook, Twitter and other social networks in its new SPYW program alongside Google+ content; and (2) How might antitrust restrain Google in conditioning participation in this program in the future?