The Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN Act) is a bill introduced in the United States Congress proposed as an alternative to the Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act, by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, and Representative Darrell Issa of California, a Republican. The text of the bill is available for public comment at keepthewebopen.com . Wyden first introduced OPEN in the Senate (S. 2029) on December 17, 2011, with co-sponsors Jerry Moran of Kansas and Maria Cantwell of Washington. Issa and 25 co-sponsors introduced OPEN in the House (H.R. 3782) on January 18, 2012. The Senate bill has been referred to the Finance Committee, and the House bill has been referred to the Judiciary Committee. On January 14, 2012, in response to two White House petitions, White House technology officials Victoria Espinel, Aneesh Chopra, and Howard Schmidt stated: "Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small...We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet."
Comparison with SOPA and PIPA/PROTECT IP Act The OPEN Act was proposed as an alternative to the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), which was approved by the United States Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2011, and the closely related Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was introduced by House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) in November. After an initial description on December 2 as an outline of possible approaches written by a bipartisan group of eleven lawmakers, a draft text was made public on December 8, 2011, in advance of a House Judiciary markup of the SOPA Act the following week. The OPEN Act seeks to stop transfers of money to foreign websites whose primary purpose is piracy or counterfeiting, whereas SOPA and PIPA also seek to require Internet providers and search engines to redirect users away from viewing the sites. The PROTECT IP Act proposed to do this by blocking domain name resolution, whereas SOPA imposes a broader requirement for network providers to "prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States" including blocking by IP address and possibly deep packet inspection. OPEN places enforcement responsibility on the United States International Trade Commission (ITC), which currently adjudicates patent-related disputes, rather than the United States Justice Department. The ITC would be given power to collect fees from complainants and to hire additional personnel for investigations. Proponents of the OPEN Act describe it on the KeepTheWebOpen website as a way to protect the rights of artists like SOPA and PROTECT IP, but differing from its rivals by not introducing new internet police powers or undermining calls for open internet in closed societies, and by protecting legitimate internet businesses, social media, legitimate websites and internet innovation. They say that their proposal, but not its rivals, ensures that intellectual property cases will be resolved by intellectual property experts, and will target the actual criminals running foreign rogue websites. They criticize SOPA, but not PROTECT IP, for failing to apply due process to judging websites.
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