Could SOPA Be Coming to Canada?

After widespread online protests that saw several sites including Wikipedia go dark, the U.S. House of Representatives effectively killed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) last week.

But the spirit of SOPA lives on in a bill before the Canadian Parliament, according to at least one law professor.

Michael Geist, who specializes in Internet and ecommerce law at the University of Ottawa, says that Bill C-11, currently under review in Canada’s House of Commons, could bring SOPA-like copyright law to the country.

Bill C-11, titled the Copyright Modernization Act, aims to replace the country’s current copyright law with something more compatible with the days of broadband.

Geist says it goes further than that. Citing a document that appears to be a set of proposed amendments to the legislation from a music-industry representative, Geist makes the case that the same lobbying groups that backed SOPA are laying the groundwork for SOPA-like rules in Bill C-11.

“While SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S.,” Geist writes, “Lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other countries. With Bill C-11 back on the legislative agenda at the end of the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style rules.”

In particular, Geist says the idea of blocking sites from the Internet — or at least the Internet in Canada — is on the list of proposals. The note, dated March 1, 2011, suggests that the bill should “permit a court to make an order blocking a pirate site such as The Pirate Bay to protect the Canadian marketplace from foreign pirate sites.”

Besides that, the proposals would incentivize Internet service providers to terminate users who infringe copyrights more than once. Geist points out that there’s no mention of due process or what sort of proof would be required. Also under consideration is an “enabler” provision, which would target sites that aren’t necessarily pirate havens, but are primarily used for piracy.

Empire Avenue, a virtual-currency and gaming site based in Canada, came out against SOPA, and its CEO says he expected such legislation to come to his country and elsewhere after SOPA failed.

“One of the points I made when the SOPA debate was happening was that if SOPA failed, which it did, at least this time around, what would end up happening is that similar bills would be [proposed] in Canada and the U.K.,” says Duleepa Wijayawardhana, CEO of Empire Avenue. “The idea is to get these kinds of bills passed in other places and the say, ‘Hey, U.S., shouldn’t you be on board?’”

Wijayawardhana is optimistic that just getting the word out will be enough to ensure that any copyright legislation that passes will be fair.

“There’s a chance lobbyists will succeed. Our job as startups, innovators and entrepreneurs is to make sure people understand what about these laws will prevent stuff from happening. And I think as we explain to people why they’re bad, people get it.”