RESTON, VA Jan. 18 (DPI Commentary) — With surprising speed Congress appears to be backing off SOPA and PIPA, two pieces of legislation intended to reduce online theft of intellectual property.
The proposals, perhaps intentionally, spurred a huge dialogue, coming to a head yesterday, when Wikipedia, Reddit and other sites shut down in protest.
Even among the highly trafficked non-corporate sites, the message was the same: yes, copyright theft is wrong, it’s still widespread on the internet and it needs to be addressed. But with these new laws, would we be throwing out the baby — a free and dynamic internet — with the bathwater of illegal downloads?
The answer turned out to be yes — especially after looking under the hood of the legislation. The proposals would have allowed powerful corporate interests to shut down any site even suspected of abetting IP theft, and on any scale, without any genuine due process.
Wikipedia, Reddit and other sites routinely post links to copyrighted content — they protested the legislation by shutting down, prompting the highest volume on the matter yet.
Huffington Post is correct when it reports that, until today, the major news sites and broadcast news organizations either buried the story, or didn’t fully report on its broad implications. The Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch, is treating today’s site blackouts as just another news item. Amazingly, The Washington Post site, reflecting a kind of proud ignorance surprising even for wounded old media, splashed the snarky headline “When The Internet Gets Mad” to lead its coverage.
And in a wonderfully ironic twist, the LA Times posted an article assisting readers on getting around the Wikipedia blackout:
The problem of Internet pirating is complicated – how does the civilized world rein in theft of copyrighted material without stifling the dynamic that is the digital age, without Big Brother not only monitoring and controlling even more of your online activity?
Sadly, the honor system still doesn’t seem to work – perfectly decent people every day go to illegal websites to download songs and television shows they don’t want to pay for.
But there is some evidence that today’s debate may start changing some behavior online. All large operators on the internet understand better now than yesterday that draconian and arbitrary laws could be the result if more voluntary action isn’t taken.
Here is a young techies’ take on the legislation, and it is pretty straightforward:
http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html
Readers comments across the internet were vibrant and largely well informed. Below was the highest recommended comment on NYTimes.com as of 1pm 1/19)
(LG, Albany, NY)
“The issue is not protection of copyright but the means advocated within these proposed laws. To translate this into a bricks and mortar analogy, these laws give copyright holders the ability to:
a. Command banks to stop processing that store’s finances.
b. Command the city to barricade the store’s door.
c. Command the map makers to remove that store from all maps.
That’s an absurd way to punish a copyright violator and one that also destroy the credibility of maps and our confidence in information accuracy.
To make matters worse, any underground pirate site can simply change its name, jump to a different ISP and reappear within a few hours or less. If vigorously enforced, this will become a giant whack-a-mole game where RIAA and MPAA struggle to keep up with the constantly changing pirate site.
Finally, the US only has jurisdiction over the resources within this nation. There is no way to prevent networks in other nations from continuing to list the pirate site. Hence, those who wish to access the stolen information need only route their information requests through servers in another nation. Meanwhile, the entire Internet will need to deal with resolving conflicting information from different portions of the Internet. Simply put, this law will lead to a technological mess for little or no actual benefit to the copyright holders.”