From 650 words to 140 characters Some say the written press is dead.

The press is very much alive, and published digitally it possesses a quality it did not have 20 years ago: continuous citizen participation. The Internet is the technological innovation of our era. The development of the WWW and of social networks created the need to establish public policy to regulate the Net, freedom of speech and the rights of authors to reproduce their works. Regulating the flow of intellectual property online has not been an easy task. The proposed legislation before Congress, SOPA, PIPA and the Commercial Felony Streaming Act are measures that threaten electronic commerce and freedom of speech in linking forum websites and hosting websites for data storage, amongst others. These projects confer more enforcement powers to the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies to extend their jurisdiction outside of the United States. SOPA sparked a debate in opposition with significant support in social networks. Google and Wikipedia censored their own content in simulation of how they would have to limit their publications if the law was enacted. The surprising thing is that without the need to approve SOPA a federal grand jury charged host website MegaUpload and its owner Kim Dotcom for conspiring to distribute intellectual property illegally. If the federal government can seize a website operating in New Zealand and request the extradition of its operator to the U.S., why would Congress need to approve SOPA? The DOJ alleged Dotcom violated the DMCA the federal law that protects the rights of authors by allowing the traffic of illegal content on the website. He wasnt arrested for uploading illegal content himself, copying it or recording it in a movie theater, but for allowing that his website be used mainly for pirate traffic. Wheres the violation of the law? The DMCA applies when a person infringes the right of an author. Mr. Dotcom did not upload any content. The users of his website are the ones violating the law by uploading infringing content. Theft is illegal and piracy, which grows uncontrollably online, should not exist. That being said, the legality of the operation of websites like MegaUpload is uncertain. The DMCA was interpreted in Viacom v. YouTube (No. 07 Civ. 2103, SDNY). In this case, the federal District Court for the Southern District of New York decided that a host website has no affirmative duty to filter all its traffic if the website is as popular as YouTube, for being too onerous a task. The charges against Dotcom were presented without knowledge of the amount of files MegaUpload users upload, or the amount of Takedown Notices the site receives from content owners to eliminate infringing content. Even so, and without SOPA, the Justice Department requested the extradition of Dotcom to the United States. This and other efforts by the federal government to fight piracy online like Operation In Our Sites, were subject to citizen protest on Twitter and Facebook.

The day it becomes illegal per se to operate a website that contains infringing content the government will be forced to seize and shut down hundreds of thousands of websites, hosts and linking forums, small and large, including Google and YouTube. The recent opposition to Internet censure confirms the need to rethink public policy that regulates the streaming of videos and file sharing online. Regardless of the medium used: videos, hyperlinks or the written press, the right to freedom of speech has an undeniable value to our democratic society. Legislation that attempts to regulate the Internet by arbitrarily censuring without protecting free speech will fail. We are heading towards a digital future. We cant forget that nowadays, the last word is a tweet.
By: Jan Andr Blackburn-Cabrera, J.D., University of Puerto Rico, LL.M., Law and Technology, University of Ottawa, Law and Technology Center