by Jeremy Leaming
Renowned constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe is weighing in on the House’s consideration of the so-called Stop Online Piracy Act.
CNET’s Declan McCullagh reports that Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School, has detailed why SOPA is unconstitutional. McCullagh also notes that the measure, which the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider on Dec. 15, is garnering opposition from companies, such as Facebook, Twitter, M
ozilla, eBay, and Google. The Motion Picture Association, Bloomberg reports, “is mounting its own counterattack in support of the legislation, through White House visits and a national advertising campaign.”
The bill, in part, would allow the Department of Justice to seek court orders requiring Internet-service providers, search engines, among other entities, to block or stop doing business with non-U.S. websites allegedly linked to piracy.
In a 23-page legislative memorandum, Tribe explains the numerous reasons why the measure rests on wobbly constitutional ground.