Colbert Gets Saucy with SOPA – Stop Online Piracy Act

Last night, my second favorite satirical news anchor, Stephen Colbert, told the Colbert Nation, “I am wholeheartedly against the infringement of copyright.”  In fact, he’s so much against it that he “had the phrase trademarked and emblazoned on a Mickey Mouse® doll,” as you can see above.  Take that, Disney!

Now, I checked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) TESS database, and, well, while I hate to break it to Mr. Colbert, I think his attorney misled him about that trademark registration.  Of course, we all know that Colbert’s attorney is Trevor Potter, and Trevor Potter is a Federal Election Commission (FEC) lawyer, so I guess that’s what Colbert gets for relying on a FEC attorney to protect his brands for him.  No wonder none of his other marks (like Stephen Colbert, Colbert Report, Colbert Nation, Threat Down, Food for Thought, the Colbert Report theme song, etc., etc.) are protected either.

If you’ve been reading this blog with any frequency, then you also know that U.S. trademark rights are acquired through common law, meaning that rights are acquired through trademark use, rather than through registration.  Hence, it is possible that Colbert does in fact have trademark rights in the phrase, “I am wholeheartedly against the infringement of copyright,” so long as he’s using the mark in interstate commerce, which I kinda doubt, though that’s neither here nor there, really.

But back to SOPA . . .

SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act (somewhat more comprehensible explanation of the 79 page Act found on Wikipedia here) would allow the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and/or copyright holders to shut down websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement and bar online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with such sites.  Buh-bye YouTube, Facebook, Google . . . not that we need them anyway, right?  I mean, who uses those sites anyways?

So what do Colbert’s guests, music manager Danny Goldberg and Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain, have to say about this?

While Goldberg claims that we need a new law to create internet cops to pursue thieves (infringers) for stealing (pirating) intellectual property — including music, movies and books — on-line, Zittrain claims the new law over-reaches by classifying internet piracy as a felony punishable by three years imprisonment.  As if our country’s federal penitentiaries aren’t crowded enough; let’s throw the YouTubers in with the potheads and call it good!

So who else supports this crazy legislation?  The members of the Business Software Alliance, that’s who.  Who else is against it?  Just about everyone else in the world.  Meanwhile, SOPA is making its way through Congress, presently before the House Judiciary Committee, which will complete a mark-up of the bill on December 15, 2011.  It will be several more months before there’s a full vote on the bill so we won’t know for a while if the rules of the game of the internet have changed, and if so, how.

Whether or not SOPA passes, you can bet content providers will continue to “bring the hammer down” as Colbert says on infringers and possibly those who view infringing content.  CLICK WITH CARE.