SOPA goes to Ireland

Ireland may enact a SOPA-like law without much debate.

The Stop Online Piracy Act in America may be “dead” for now, but the United States isn’t the only country that wants to fiddle with the internet.

Net heads in Ireland are revolting against a proposal from Sean Sherlock, Minister for Enterprise, Jobs and Innovation in Ireland. His proposed law would curtail access to websites in Ireland by forcing ISPs to block sites that are noted to link to infringing content, as stated by StopSOPAIreland.com.

As stated by the site, Sherlock plans to enact the law by ministerial order rather than sending it to Oireachtas, which is basically Ireland’s version of Congress. It would be like the Obama administration making an executive order to implement SOPA without letting Congress have a say.

Officially, the law is “S.I. No. of 2011 European Communities (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2011”.

Much like SOPA, site owners would be considered guilty until proven innocent — and that wouldn’t be easy:

Site owners faced with one of Minister Sherlock’s injunctions will have no legal recourse without a €30,000+ legal warchest. The fresh law mandates no warning process, no mediation and no appeals process outside the High Court. Smaller sites counting individual blogs, podcasts and independent news sources who don’t have the money to mount the costly legal campaign needed to defend themselves will automatically lose out to corporate interests with deep pockets.

StopSOPAIreland.com has over 300 petition signatures less than one hour following being online.

Among the people raising awareness is Michele Neylon of Blacknight Internet Solutions.