Florida Bills a Throwback to SOPA, PIPA, Says CCIA

The Computer and Communications Industry Association slammed two bills under consideration in the Florida legislature, saying they're “similar” to the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act that Congress shelved in 2012. The identical bills in each house are referred to as the True Origin of Digital Goods Act and mandate that website owners and operators that post copyrighted works also publicly list their names, addresses and other contact information, the text of the Florida House version said. Rightsholders would be allowed to file for injunctive relief against those website owners who fail to make their information available, it said. That is a “violation” of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe harbor provisions, which have been “essential to a thriving Internet industry,” said CCIA CEO Ed Black in a news release Tuesday. “Effective uniform national tools exist to address these issues; the Florida legislature need not and should not reinvent the wheel,” he said. “The public has resoundingly rejected legislative efforts to draft online services into policing Internet content through site-blocking,” Black said, referring to SOPA and PIPA.