SOPA sponsors break their own laws
Ars debunked this a couple of days ago:<p><i>But we're also a news site, so we contacted James Grimmelmann, a copyright scholar at New York Law School, (and judging from his tweets, not a SOPA supporter) to get his expert opinion.<p>He was skeptical. The new anti-streaming provisions would apply only to willful infringement. "A good-faith belief that one's actions are legal is sufficient to defeat a finding of willfulness," he told Ars. SOPA even codifies this principle by excluding from liability those who have "a good faith reasonable basis" to believe their conduct is not infringing.<p>"Even if the Representatives are infringing (and I think they have a good fair use defense, and may well have licenses we don't know about), they're unlikely to be willful infringers," he told Ars.<p>He also pointed out Smith and his colleagues would only be liable if the value of the streaming performances exceeds $1,000, and it's not clear how valuable a few short clips of local news broadcasts are.</i><p><a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/on-wednesday-reddit-which-like.ars" rel="nofollow">http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/on-wednesday...</a>