It’s “disturbing” that lawmakers are asking online advertisers...
It’s “disturbing” that lawmakers are asking online advertisers to create a “blacklist of alleged ‘piracy sites’ and refuse to serve ads to those sites,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz in a Thursday evening blog post (http://bit.ly/1jIZoJz).…
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That idea was “an integral part” of the Stop Online Piracy Act, which never passed into law, said Stoltz. He pointed to an April 21 letter sent to the Association of National Advertisers from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. (http://bit.ly/RxnmwR). Stoltz took issue particularly with the letter’s call for “a commitment to use actionable and freely updated data, from reliable sources, concerning piracy sites.” The letter also suggests this data should be used for the “negotiation of ad transactions,” which in some cases could “prevent the appearance of ads on online piracy sites.” Stoltz said “it’s downright shocking for them to ask ad networks that compete with one another to agree amongst themselves that they won’t do business with certain websites.” It’s anticompetitive and raises First Amendment concerns, he said. “Certainly, there are ways that the Internet advertising networks can cut off ad revenue to truly bad actors without running afoul of the antitrust laws,” he said. But these suggestions aren’t it, said Stoltz.