[aero142]

I find it disturbing that even though I am still against SOPA and the likes, that the opposition seems to be willfully ignoring this portion. Unless I am totally misreading it, it would be very difficult for the likes of Youtube or Facebook to be included.

The language is still dangerous though, because the designed for clause seems to open things up. I can easily see BitTorrent being brought in to be "designed for" downloading illegal movies, because judges aren't likely to think downloading linux distributions is very significant alternative use. The thing that concerns me is that smaller companies or companies outside of the mainstream might not get much credit for having other purposes. Imagine if reddit had r/stealmovies, a judge might not care much about the rest of it if there are thousands of people using it to talk about infringing.

There is enough wrong with this bill to oppose it without resorting to hyperbolic threats.

edit: Thinking about it more, youtube might be a great example. Current youtube won't be brought down with this, but youtube in it's infancy very well might have been stomped out. Imagine explaining to a Judge, "no, you don't understand. Right now it might be used for mostly unauthorized music videos, but showing home videos of cats is going to be HUGE!"

[pkteison]

A farmer has successfully been prosecuted under the -Interstate Commerce Clause- for growing his own wheat on his own land for his own use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

It never left a state, it never left his farm, it was not for sale, it is definitely not interstate commerce, yet he violated the interstate commerce clause (reasoning was that if he had not grown his own wheat, he would have had to buy some, which would affect the market, which would affect interstate commerce.)

It's because of things like this that cause people to interpret legal language in the worst possible imaginable light - 'very difficult' has happened many times.

So I think it's quite reasonable to assume that at some point Youtube and Facebook will be found to be "...marketed by its operator or another acting in concert with that operator for use in offering goods or services in a manner that facilitates [illegal things]"

One ad that says "Post comments without logging in!" would be sufficient to meet the letter of that language. You really think this is a 'hyperbolic threat'?

[toyg]

The problem is actually with the definition of infringing site: "The term 'U.S.-directed site' means an Internet site or portion thereof that is used to conduct business directed to residents of the United States".

By this definition, a Youtube channel of people posting rickroll mashups and served, say, under a .fr domain, without paying Rick Astley, would make Youtube an infringing site as a whole. A Google group dedicated to memes based on captions of The Hurt Locker and served under the .za domain would make Google an infringing site as a whole. A subreddit dedicated to... you get the idea.

[pemulis]

The important part, as the video points out, is the phrase "enables or facilitates."

Google, Facebook, Youtube, and other sites that either allow user-generated content or generate links through web crawlers are "offering goods or services in a manner that (...) enables or facilitates [copyright violations]." Since linking facilitates copyright violation, this affects every site that doesn't manually vet every single link it makes.