go to booktv.org and click on after words in the booktv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. >> this week on "the communicators," senator ron wyden talks about anti-piracy legislation in congress including his own proposal to discourage counterfeiters and others from selling bad products or products that are not their own over the internet. >> host: well, there are a couple pieces of anti-piracy legislation working their way through the capitol hill process as we speak. the author of an alternative to that legislation is senator ron wyden, a democrat of oregon, who joins us on "the communicators." senator wyden, first off, what are your issues with the protect and the sopa anti-piracy legislative pieces? >> guest: both of them are,

essentially, using a bunker-buster bomb when what you need is a laser beam. look, there is no question that there are some bad actors out there. there are people who sell tainted viagra or fake roll lexes or movies they don't own, and as far as i'm concerned, you ought to handcuff them. but these bills go way, way beyond that and particularly they do a tremendous amount of damage to the architecture of the internet. i mean, basically, what they do is they turn web sites into web cops. i mean, basically, you'd have web sites trying to monitor enormous, you know, amounts of data. youtube alone gets, like, 24 hours of content, you know, every second. it would be impossible to monitor. nobody really even tries except for the chinese and the iranians. >> host: so saying that, that they go too far for you, what is your alternative proposal that you and representative darrell

issa, republican of california, have proposed? >> guest: what we do is offer an approach that's built around the proposition that we're essentially dealing with international commerce here. and we've got an agency that deals with physical goods, the international trade commission. and we think you use the same kinds of principles when you're dealing with digital goods. those principles are essentially transparency, consistency and due process. for example, there are hundreds of federal judges who are issuing opinions with respect to these issues, they widely diverge. you don't see that sort of thing at the international trade commission. >> host: and yours, your act is what is so-called the open act, and it cuts access to foreign rogue web sites engaging in counterfeiting -- >> guest: when they engage in it willfully, and then we take a follow the money approach so that when you see somebody who's

willfully engaging in these kinds of copyright infringement practices, you basically cut off the money, paypal and the like, and also their ad networks. >> host: you also use the trade laws as you talk about to restrict the rogue sites. how is that different from the sopa and the protect act? >> guest: the sopa and protect acts, the essence of them is they start meddling with the domain name system, and that is the fundamental architecture the to the net -- to the net. not only is it bad in terms of social media and business opportunities and the like, it would do a whole lot of damage to our effort to try to deal with cybersecurity. i mean, everything our country is trying to do in cybersecurity is built around the current internet architecture. and i think you're going to see substantial opposition, probably very soon, from the national security community because we are hearing there's growing concern there.

>> host: well, we should also introduce gautham nagesh who is our guest reporter this week on "the communicators." >> host: thanks, peter. senator wyden, you discussed your objections to pippa and sopa based on concerns by the web companies, but we've also heard broad concerns from civil libertarians, free speech advocates, people concerned this bill would lead to censorship. and i believe you have cited some of those concerns. can you explain them, please? >> guest: the two bills beyond the question of damaging the domain name system, they really do implement a censorship regime, and it could be as simple as a discussion. language that's used here to kind of trigger the various efforts to deal with the content owners is incredibly broad. it talks about facilitating copyright infringement. that could be practically anything. now, i have to tell you and people don't know this, i'm kind

of sympathetic with the content folks. my late father was a writer and an author. so all the time i can go to web sites, and i can see his books quoted at great length without citing him, and the authorship of his publication. that doesn't mean that i'm going to rush out and pursue a whole lot of approaches that particularly would start chipping away at the domain name system which is the fundamental, you know, architecture of the net. but what this does, the domain name system and linking, i think, will damage a lot of the openness and what i think is the appeal to all. i mean, we've got great concern about income inequality in this country. the internet is the place where you can do something about it. you have a good idea, you can get it out around the world as much as the money interests. >> host: proponents of sopa argue that they are not asking for any kind of censorship, but rather they are asking for laws that apply in the physical world to transfer online regarding

stolen property and intellectual property violations. can you explain why asking google, bing or another provider to delete copyrighted content would constitute censorship, in your view? >> guest: my view is we ought to go after the willful infringers, and we've outlined in the open bill specifically how we do that which is to cut off their money. if you try to get internet service providers, search engines and others into the censorship business, there's no way it can possibly work, and it would, in my view, retard a lot of the innovation that we need in our country. it also is a policy we've rejected now for 15 years. going back to the fight against smut, and it was literally 15 years ago. it was clear we were all horrified at some of the really ugly material that was getting in the hands of our kids. and at that time the congress was just starting to debate internet policy, and there were

two approaches that were offered. one was by the late senator exxon, it was largely to set up the kind of censorship regime that you're describing. the other is the approach that i and former congressman chris cox offered on a bipartisan basis which said, look, let's do everything we can to empower parents in the private sector with filters and other kinds of tools to weed out some of this horrible material that was going to get to very young children. otherwise, let's not hold the intermediaries liable for some content that they really, presumably, wouldn't have even known much about most of the time. and it's often said that the fact that we weren't holding intermediaries liable is what caused the growth of social media and a lot of these web sites over the last saw 15 years. there's a better way to go, and for more than 15 years starting with section 230 of the communications decency act, the law that i wrote, we have

rejected that approach. >> host: as you said, google in particular has come under fire during this debate, basically, as a gatekeeper to the internet. at the hearing they were the only witness that testified against the sopa act in the house, and they were really the target of criticism from lawmakers who repeatedly referenced their ability to find pirated content on the internet. why do you think google is specifically become sort of the face of the opposition or the target of this legislation, and do you think that your colleagues in both the house and senate understand the nature of the search business well enough to make those sorts of determinations? >> guest: well, obviously, the senate and the house are just getting familiar with these issues. copyright law, the digital millennium copyright act and the like, i guessyou could say is not on the lips of every single member of congress, but this debate is really not, in my view, about the big, powerful

companies. this has often been framed as a debate between silicon valley and hollywood. so this is not primarily about google and facebook. this is about where we're going to have pro-innovation policies so that we'll have future googles and future facebooks. and when you look at these bills, you can take the fundamental proposition about the american dream which people call two guys in a garage, you pass these bills, and you're going to have, perhaps, two people in a garage, but you're going to have a whole upstairs full of lawyers telling them whether or not they can open a web site. that is not going to be good for innovation. >> host: this is c-span's "communicators" program, we're talking with senator ron wyden, democrat of oregon, about his bill which is called the open act, online protection and enforcement of digital trade acts legislation. and it is a different version of what we have been talking about, the sopa and the pipa or the protect act which are senate and house bills, and they're very

similar. now, the stop online privacy act sponsored by lamar smith who is chairman of the judiciary committee in the house cuts access to foreign rogue web sites engaging in counterfeiting, uses the justice department and federal courts to restrict rogue sites, focuses on foreign sites and leaves existing law to block domestic sites engaging in counterfeiting and piracy, and advertisers and credit card companies must stop doing business with rogue sites. senator wyden, the difference there seems to be you're using the itc, and senator smith and -- i'm sorry, representative smith and senator leahy's bills would use the courts. what is the problem with using the courts? >> guest: first of all, the single biggest deference between the -- difference between the two bills, both of them acknowledge you ought to go after the bad actors engaging in

copyright infringement, our approach does not involve censorship, and it doesn't involve dismantling the domain name system. we believe that so much of the growth in this country and our ability to innovate, social media sites and the ability for folks to communicate depends on the architecture of the internet being preserved and strengthened. that's what it's going to take to deal with these cyber threats, and that's why the national security community is so concerned about the pipa bill and the sopa bill. and that's the single biggest difference. yes, we do think that there's fundamentally a question of international commerce rather than narrow, legalistic, you know, issues that ought to be brought up in the judicial system. but the single biggest difference is we do not dismantle, do not undo the fundamental dns system, the architecture, damage linking, and i also want viewers to know

because we haven't talked about it, i put a hold, a public hold, on the senate bill in december of 2010. had i not done that, it would have passed right at that time because people weren't aware. i've also put a public hold on the senate bill that was passed late in the spring of this year. i've made it clear that i will filibuster with every ounce of my strength against this bill. i have not done that before, but i think this is very ill-advised legislation both from the standpoint of what it would do to innovation, what it would do to entrepreneurs, what it would do to small businesses, and i think you will see growing concern from the national security -- >> host: have there been companies that have endorsed your legislation? >> guest: a number. i mean, certainly a number of the technology firms have been very interested. our bill is newer, and that's one of the reasons why i hope that the senate schedule will

not immediately go to the pipa bill so that we'll have a chance to walk through for colleagues what our legislation is all about. there's a great deal of interest in our approach as well in the house, darrell issa, zoe lofgren, but they haven't had enough time to walk the house through it, and i hope given the concern that has emerged over the last week or ten days we'll get that time. >> host: has google and the googles and the binges of the world endorsed -- >> guest: largely, yes. they sent a letter saying that they favor the approach. i'm sure if you ask them, they'll say they're looking at various sundry details, but again, for viewers and listeners, there's no debate here that copyright infringement is a serious, you know, question. we've got a system for dealing

with it now, it's called notice and takedown, digital millennium copyright act. it's not perfect. there are ways in which on a bipartisan basis we can improve on it. that's what the open legislation is all about. but the big difference, the fundamental difference between our bill and the others is that we would not do all the damage to the architecture of the internet. we would not tamper with the domain name system, we would not start a censorship or blacklisting program. we would not turn web site into web cops. >> host: and just to make it clear, lamar smith, the chairman of the house judiciary committee, and the author of the sopa legislation, has been invited on this program as well. gautham nagesh of "the hill." >> host: now, you referred to some of the political support for your legislation. obviously, protect ip has considerable support as well. we saw it pass the senate commerce committee fairly, with bipartisan support, and you've threatened to filibuster it.

first of all, do you believe that the bill as it now stands has a strong chance of passing the senate, and secondly, can you speak to the support for the bill? very strong from the entertainment industry, the retail industry. do you think they can be convinced that the open act is the correct solution? >> guest: we know that we are up against one of the most sophisticated and savvy and powerful lobbies in the united states, and they've been at it a long time. they've poured millions of dollars into their various and sundry lobbying and campaign efforts, and frankly, we know that our side is going to have to fight above our weight. this is going to be a tough battle. but if you look at what's happened in the last couple of, couple of weeks, certainly well over a million americans have signed petitions against these bills, and people are coming to understand what some of these issues are all about. regrettably, some of our points

have a long -- our opponents have a long track record of defending outdated business models, essentially business as usual. it was not very long ago when the head of the motion picture association said that the vcr was to the movie industry what the boston strangler was to women home alone. and that was just a preposterous kind of comment because the vcr made a tremendous amount of money for the movie industry. >> host: now, we've seen a lot of heated rhetoric from both sides in this debate as you've just referenced, but we have also seen an unprecedented level of public engagement in intellectual property issues, tumbler, wikipedia, we're seeing web companies really mobilize their users to protect both ip and sopa. why do you think the public is so engaged, and have you been hearing from the public? >> guest: i have, and i think it's fair to say that, um, copyright and trademark issues which historically would not

exactly be household words, you would not have people talking about copyright law around the kitchen table, people really have followed this, and they've followed it with growing concern. there is an awareness of the stakes. we had a big debate about network neutrality, for example. this goes way beyond network neutrality. in fact, this goes to the architecture of the internet and not just whether once you sign up for your internet service, you get to go where you want, when you want. this is a question whether in the name of dealing with a serious problem just like the challenge was with smut, you know, 15 years ago, are you going to do something smart that really goes in and attacks the problem with a laser beam, or are you going to do something that does an enormous amount of collateral damage?

and i think if these two bills, the alternative bills, sopa and pipa, were passed in present form, they would do a great deal of damage to the internet. >> host: senator wyden, your former colleague, chris dodd s now head of the motion picture association of america, and on the different side of the issue, he's strongly in favor of sopa and pipa. have you talked with him about this? >> guest: well, of course, under the ethics laws he's not allowed to communicate with legislators. i see him from time to time, he always looks very -- can't talk, can't talk. and it's, in a sense, too bad because he has been a coalition builder in his years as a legislator. and i think there's a real opportunity to try to bring those who have tech-savvy and, you know, the content creators and say let's try to come up with something that makes sense. the fact is, there are products that do that. if you look at products like netflix and itunes, these services and the likes, these

are ones that show you can be successful and have innovation and content. and that's the kind of thing that i'd like to try to promote. >> host: what is it about oregon? several oregonians are very involved in tech issues. you, senator, former senator smith is head of the national association of broadcasters, greg wall den on the house side is a republican from oregon. >> guest: we're freedom folks. we like the first amendment, we like to be able to communicate, we like to debate, and we're pretty egalitarian. we like everybody to be a shot, not just the moneyed interests, and that's what the internet represents. of course, congressman walden had a small radio station for quite some time, senator smith's representing the broadcast. i can tell you what happened in my case is when i became oregon's first united states senator, i said, look, i'm going to do everything i can for our traditional kind of industries. but i said in addition to that

i'm going to try to find some new opportunities for us to really lead and innovate. and it always kept coming back to technology. for example, i'm now the chairman of senate finance committee on international trade. i think the internet is the shipping lane of the 21st century. so i'm very interested and anxious, for example, to promote the export or our digital goods. senator thune and i have introduced a bipartisan bill to do that as well. so if you look at the areas i've focused on -- authoring the communications decency act, that we wouldn't hold the intermediaries liable and damage innovation, i wrote the internet tax freedom bill, in effect, twice, the digital signature law in which people are viewing and listening often use when they're, in effect, signing real estate documents, and now a group of us were involved in the y2k legislation -- i've tried to

look at policies that would ensure we do no harm which is why i'm concerned about sopa and pipa and all the damage done to the domain name system, and then try to lay out a strategy for tapping some of the opportunities like digital trade. >> host: senator ron wyden, democrat of oregon who is the author of the open act, anti-piracy legislation. thank you for being on "the communicators." up next, a guest who is in support of the sopa and pipa acts. >> host: and now joining us on "the communicators" is sandra aistars, she is the executive director of the copyright alliance. ms. aistars, what is the copyright alliance, and which anti-piracy bill are you supporting? >> guest: thank you for having me, peter. the copyright alliance is a nonprofit educational and public interest organization that represents about 40 institutional members who represent individual artists and creators and the folks who

support and invest in them. we also represent about 8,000 individual artists and creators who are part of our one voice artist/activist network. so we like to say that we speak for the copyright holder next door. >> host: and what anti-piracy legislation are you supporting? >> guest: we are very much supporting both the stop online piracy act and the protect ip act that are pend anything the house and the senate respectively. >> host: why? >> guest: well, the internet is critical for all of our members whether they're small businesses or artists or entrepreneurs across america. but the promise of having a better connection with fans and better communication with consumers is being steadily eroded by criminal foreign web sites that are operating offshore. and we're finding that there is an entire underworld of sites that exist, basically, to market unlicensed, unregulated and unsafe products to u.s. consumers, and they're threatening not only artists and

creators, but legitimate businesses online who are distributing these sorts of works. and it really renders the work of many of our members, economically meaningless. and so we're very much in support of the stop online piracy act and the protect ip act because we think they offer targeted remedies that will be helpful in stemming some of the piracy that we see on the internet today. >> host: gautham nagesh with "the hill." >> host: thank you. sandra, there are two main concerns -- there are many concerns from opponents, but there are two that seem to appeal most broadly. one is a concern about undermining the security of the internet and the dns system, and the second has to do with free speech and concerns that giving the government authority to shut down sites would inevitably lead to some form of cent shoreship -- censorship. do you have any response? >> guest: sure. they are definitely concerns we've considered, and as you can

well imagine, artists and creators rely very heavily on freedom of speech and first amendment rights and especially for individual artists and creators, it's very important to have a direct communication with fans. so we would not back any bill that would infringe on that ability to have that sort of communication. um, in terms of the security arguments, there were some arguments that were raised with regard to the original version of the stop online piracy act that largely went to the issue of dns redirecting. and the manager's amendment that was introduced by chairman smith really takes that off the table entirely and, i think, it also goes, you know, a far way to limit other concerns that people might have about the adverse impact on the domain name system. so there's a rule of construction that's included in the amendment that disallows the

court from issuing an order that would harm the domain name system. it directs courts to modify order ors before they're carried out by service providers if it's shown that carrying out the original order from the court would have a detrimental impact, and it also commissions an interagency expert study to make sure going forward that what we expect to be the case will, in fact, be the case and that there will be no impact of the bill's remedies on the dns system. >> host: thank you. there's been a lot of talk about the coalition of support. you referred to your organization as representing the copyright holder next door, but there are some very influential organizations supporting this bill from the major movie studios to the u.s. chamber of commerce to the afl-cio. to what do you credit this broad coalition of support for this legislation, and why is the content community so much more effective at raising money and invest anything this sort of legislative outreach than, say,

the technology community? >> guest: i'm not sure that the content community is more effective in raising money and doing legislative outreach. we ourselves are, actually, a very small nonprofit organization with only a handful of folks in the office. so i can't really speak to those sorts of fundraising abilities. but as for the coalition of support, i think it's important to note that, as you did, that the coalition includes big labor as well as big business interests. it includes a very broad sweep of folks who are interested in consumer safety including various, you know, fraternal orders of police and the better business bureau and various consumers' organizations. and i think the real reason is that all of us who rely on the internet, um, are very, very concerned that the internet remain a safe place to do business and a good place to do

business. and so the consumer interests in terms of insuring health and safety when folks are getting, you know, poorly manufactured drugs, drugs that don't include all the required ingredients or include ingredients that you'd never want to have in a drug, i think that plays into the coalition as well as the fact that there's truly a very diverse group of businesses and rights holders that are impacted by online theft. >> host: sandra aistars, what do you say when the head of google calls this bill an internet kill switch, and jimmy wales of wikipedia threatens to take down all its content? >> guest: well, i think it's really sad that people are resortingsorting that to that kf hyperbole. i think there's been a good faith effort by some companies to have a constructive dialogue about the big to offer constructive suggestions, and i think the manager's amendment

reflects that. there have been other organizations that will equally have to implement the bill's requirements that really care about the way that their customers interact online and want to make sure that their customers aren't being misled by rogue web sites. and so you see entities like visa and mastercard and the american bankers' association coming forward to support the bill as well. so i think it's a question of money sometimes as well. i think these sites that are being targeted by the bill are incredibly popular, and it's very profitable for some companies to offer, um, advertising against them and to monetize search results, um, for very popular content. and so i suspect that plays into those sorts of view points as well. >> host: sandra aistars, thank you for being on "the communicators".

and gautham nagesh, very quickly, what are the legislative chances? it's now late december. what are the legislative chances of this legislation going through the second session of the 112th congress? >> guest: it's very much in doubt right now as to what's going to happen with this bill. obviously, the senate bill when it was introduced had very broad, bipartisan support, but senator wyden has said he will filibuster the bill, and whether or not they have the votes to overcome that remains in doubt. on the house side, the judiciary committee has strong support for the bill. we have seen some signs there is wavering of the support, so it is very hard to determine what's going to happen in the house depending on the challenges. >> host: and as always, thank you for being on "the communicators." >> guest: thank you for having me. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> up next from the01