Republican congressional candidate Matt Doheny is attacking his potential rival over his support of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act.

The act is intended to curb misuse of copyrighted material such as music and films that are easily obtained illegally online, but Doheny says the act as proposed has the potential to censor the Web, stifle startups, and even undermine security “without actually solving the problem.”

23rd District Rep. Bill Owens, a Democrat from Plattsburgh, said he supports the proposal but is open to suggestions.

Doheny, the Watertown lawyer and businessman who wants to unseat Ownes in November, says the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) “would give overly broad powers to the U.S. Justice Department to police the Internet. This bill is a bad deal. It would censor the Internet, stifle start-ups and undermine security without actually solving the problem.”

Doheny said the Piracy Act “would not have the power to take down these rogue websites, since they are based overseas. Instead, the government would put the hammer down by forbidding Internet providers to allow their users to connect to these sites.

“Supporters of this bill – including our current congressman Bill Owens – see it as a way to end piracy. I see it as an avenue for government and corporate censorship.”

Owens says the effect of such a bill, as it is currently written, could result in things like “cutting off access to YouTube because the world’s next Justin Bieber uploaded a video of himself singing a copyrighted song.

“The Piracy Act would also forbid search engines, such as Google, to link to these rogue websites – or face shutdown themselves. The bill’s proposal to use filters to limit access to the offending sites also introduces the possibility that an innocent site with a similar name could be blocked as well. This would kill commerce.

“The bill would block sites by destroying a basic function of the Internet: the connection between the domain name we enter, like Yahoo.com, and its IP address. That’s like the government trying to make sure no one could call you by taking your name out of every phone book,” Doheny said.

“As an alternative, I would support legislation that concentrated more on limiting a rogue site’s ability to profit from pirated goods and less on breaking the way the Internet works and hurting innocent sites. I want to stop the theft of intellectual property, not stop online commerce.”

Rep. Owens says the bill “will have to be shaped, and shaped very carefully” to address such areas of concern, and that they should be addressed, and that he is open to ideas.

“The intention is to stop illegal content,” Owens said in an interview with techcrunch.com [http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/23/the-congressional-grill-house-co-sponsor-defends-sopa-tctv/].