A broad coalition of some of the biggest and most powerful technology companies in the world have teamed up to fight what they claim is an attempted resurrection of SOPA-like provisions. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo and Tumblr teamed up to fight an injunction request from the MPAA targeting third parties.
In a lawsuit against pirate site Movietube, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association Of America) requested that search engines and other websites be prohibited from linking to or doing business with the site via preliminary injunction. Together, the tech giants argued against the issuance of the injunction.
The technology consortium submitted a joint amicus brief arguing that third parties should not be included as part of the injunction, and that the MPAA is attempting to revive the same type of web-blocking provisions included in the failed SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) legislative initiative. An amicus brief is a legal brief submitted by a party who, although not a litigant in the case, nevertheless has a strong interest in the matter.
"Plaintiffs now appear to be repackaging the excesses of SOPA ... Indeed, the injunction proposed here would require the same online intermediaries targeted by SOPA to engage in the same kind of content and domain blocking that would have been required under SOPA had it been enacted," the tech consortium states in the brief. "The Court should not allow intellectual property rightsholders to obtain through the existing statutes the very sort of third-party blocking orders that failed to gain legislative approval."
Although this is not the first case of its kind, it is the first time a coalition of large tech companies have joined together to oppose an order ruling that sites that are not directly involved in activities for which a preliminary injunction is being requested be required to halt any associated activities, such as linking to the site in question. The group is clearly concerned that the MPAA is attempting to set a precedent for such activity via court rulings, therefore avoiding the legislative process and back-dooring SOPA-like provisions into the legal system.
Instead, the coalition wants the court to rule definitively against the ordering of website blocking by uninvolved third parties like themselves.
"Such a ruling would be all the more appropriate in light of the fact that Congress recently rejected a push to change the law to authorize exactly these kinds of broadbased online blocking orders," the group argues, clearly referring to SOPA.
