A bipartisan bill introduced last week in the House of Representatives would mark a fundamental change in Internet law, shifting liability for copyright piracy from the infringer to the host website.

It would chip away at critical safeguards that have shaped the Internet as we know it today, and many worry it would make it far more difficult for the next YouTube, Facebook or Craigslist to emerge and succeed.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is the counterpart to the Senate's pending PROTECT IP Act, which already had rights groups, academics and many online businesses up in arms. But the House bill goes much further.

The goal of both bills is to give copyright holders stronger legal tools to go after sites that host unauthorized or counterfeit music, movies, software or goods, in particular "rogue" overseas sites that largely lie beyond the reach of U.S. law. It's a worthy goal, but not one worth sacrificing a critical enabler of online innovation, job creation and expression.

"The limitation, censorship or stunting of such tools - because they may not support the guidelines of SOPA - would inevitably be bad for content creators and democracy more broadly," said Aaron Levie, chief executive officer of Box.net, a Palo Alto online storage and collaboration service.

It's impossible to understand what the bill could do without first understanding the enormous influence of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

By inoculating online businesses and Internet service providers against users' actions, the 1998 law created a legal environment where companies like Yelp, YouTube, eBay, Craigslist and Facebook could thrive.

Transferring liability

It invited these companies to create lively and dynamic open forums, where people could post videos, sell things, share opinions, highlight articles and much more. That's because it removed the risk that the few users among millions who post copyrighted material, libelous statements or counterfeit goods would subject the site to business-crushing legal liabilities. (Not that various media giants haven't tried anyway.)

The DMCA isn't a free pass, as services are only protected so long as they act quickly when notified of illegal activity. But it correctly places the ultimate blame on the infringer, and the onus to police such activity on the copyright holder.

Much of this could change under SOPA.

Under one section, the U.S. attorney general could, with a court order, effectively block or cut off funds to a foreign but "U.S. directed" site that is "committing or facilitating the commission of criminal violations." The order could force Internet service providers to prevent customers from reaching the site. Search engines could be forced to remove links, and ad networks and payment processors would have to cut off the flow of funds.

There are lots of concerns here, including the amount of discretion it hands to the attorney general. But another big worry is that blocking the domain name for one infringing site (say, latviablogging.com/counterfeitrolexes) could prevent access to thousands of innocent ones also hosted under that domain (like latviablogging.com/motherscookierecipes).

"It is inevitable that there will be bad behavior on any site that has thousands and thousands of dedicated subsections," said Dane Jasper, CEO of Santa Rosa Internet service provider Sonic.net. Cutting off the entire site's traffic and funds amounts to an "Internet death penalty" without a trial, he said.

Shifting site policing

The next section of the bill offers even less in the way of due process, while broadening the definition of sites that can be affected.

Under it, a rights holder could direct an ad network or payment processor to suspend services for a purportedly infringing site. A court process would begin only if the site files a counter notification within five days or the ad network or payment processor declines to comply with the directive.

This section of the bill appears to apply to both U.S.-based sites and foreign ones, or even a portion of a site, if it's "dedicated to theft of U.S. property." One of the key definitions of that is if a site "is taking, or has taken, deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability" of infringement. Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C., public interest group, helpfully boiled down that clumsy legalese to: "lacking sufficient zeal to prevent copyright infringement."

In other words, it would place the responsibility for detecting and policing infringement onto the site itself, rather than content owners, as required under the DMCA.

"There's really not much question that this bill is designed to do an end run around the DMCA," said Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group in San Francisco. "What has been affirmed by court after court is that service providers do not have to affirmatively police infringement. That's a good thing because it's a terrible burden to put on a service provider."

Who is in favor

A large number of big business trade groups are pushing for the measure, including the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The organizations argue that the bill only targets the worst offenders. They further point out that online theft costs the U.S. economy billions of dollars each year and that consumers can be harmed by defective goods purchased on rogue sites.

These are compelling arguments that something should be done, but not something this broad and heavy-handed. The language leaves too much room for rights holders to determine what sites to target. Recall, these are groups that, had they had their druthers, would have killed YouTube and Napster in their infancy.

In the end, those sites fundamentally altered the way we buy and consume media - for the better, most would argue. Even the much reviled (and ultimately unsuccessful) Napster pointed the way for a service like Apple's iTunes. That created a way for both consumers and media companies to benefit from digital distribution.

Protecting Internet

Protecting intellectual property is critical, but so is protecting the Internet and all of the innovation it delivers.

"The Internet has worked because it is open," Jasper said. "That brings with it some negative effects: hate speech, harassment and crime. But it has also enabled a communications and education revolution that touches every corner of the globe."

"To tamper with that," he said, "is an area fraught with much risk."