Could SOPA and PIPA interfere with State Dept.’s global Internet freedom agenda?

Alec Ross, the State Department’s senior advisor for innovation, pointed out that that anti-piracy legislation could restrict the rights of Internet users across the country – and put U.S. diplomats in a very awkward position.

“Any attempt to combat online piracy cannot have the unintended consequence of censoring legal online content,” Ross said, referring to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). He suggested that some measures in that bill could be inconsistent with the State Department’s Internet advocacy. The department’s global Internet freedom agenda was outlined by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a speech nearly a year before the uprising in Tunisia. In the wake of the Arab Spring revolutions that followed the overthrow of Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali – some of which were catalyzed or sustained by online communication — it has become a central tenant of the department’s so-called 21st Century Statecraft.

As Clinton explained back in January 2010, lawmakers should ensure that citizens have the right to access the open Internet: "Governments should not prevent people from connecting to the Internet, to websites, or to each other. The freedom to connect is like the freedom of assembly, only in cyberspace. It allows individuals to get online, come together, and hopefully cooperate." But this does not include the right to freely share copyrighted material online, she cautioned. "Those who use the Internet to … distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their real world identities. But these challenges must not become an excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights and privacy of those who use the Internet for peaceful political purposes." These principles could be could be compromised by the broadly written anti-piracy bills under consideration, opponents allege.