On behalf of the undersigned leaders of technology in Illinois, we express our concerns with the Senate Bill Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the House Bill Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in their current forms. While we agree with the need to address these issues, the SOPA and PIPA Bills, in their current form, will not achieve their goals effectively.
The Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House represent a severe threat to Internet and online freedom and if enacted will create new burdensome regulations that will crush job creation, harm the economy and curb investment in the technology sector.
The stated purpose of both of these bills is to protect intellectual property and crack down on piracy and counterfeit products on the web; a goal we all share. We feel these bills do not contain tools to actually achieve this goal, but rather appear to have been written to protect a few industries that missed the innovation wave and want the government to close the ground they lost in the communications, entertainment and social media space.
Both bills would effectively regulate Internet companies out of business. Additionally, without any real process safeguards, there is great potential for abuse by rights holders. This increased risk would dramatically reduce the amount of investment in the technology sector - one of the few sectors of the economy where we are seeing job growth. Dozes of prominent Venture Capitalists have already come out in opposition to these bills.
We therefore respectfully ask that sponsors and supporters of this legislation continue to work together, with industry leaders, to more effectively deal with the problem of rogue foreign websites and delay the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act.
As leaders in the Illinois technology community, we remain committed to fighting online piracy. We feel that the DMCA has established a solid framework and additional measures to address the problem should not undermine that valuable foundation. We are concerned that the framework proposed by SOPA and PIPA threaten to inhibit innovation in the broadband ecosystem, impose burdensome regulatory requirements on the tech sector, while not effectively tackling the problem of online piracy. We look forward to a future dialogue with you on this issue.