The attempt to wholesale remove a certain type of content from the Internet via legislation would ultimately fail due to the many technical complexities which legislators are not trained to grasp.
SOPA or Stop Online Piracy Act (Not to be confused with the much awaited Stop Online Protests ActTM), is a United States Bill proposed to prevent theft of intellectual property which is being marketed in various digital forms viz., software, games, music, movies, ebooks, etc. It is predominantly directed against sites based in other countries. File sharing sites make money in two ways. Advertising revenue and charging users for secure data storage. So this bill along with its Senate counterpart PIPA aims to take down these so-called “rogue sites” (as opposed to rogue nations) by cutting down their financial sources (Ad agencies) and asking financial processors (Paypal, MasterCard) to freeze payments via court orders. If the said website has evidence of not infringing copyright violations, then they can file a counter-suit in the US court challenging the aforementioned piracy claims.
Proponents: Most media companies, proprietary software companies, news agencies, the RIAA, the MPAA…The Hollywood in general.
Opponents: IT companies, Wikipedia, Bloggers, MessageBoards, RageMakers, Independent Artists, Hackers, Free Man, Hitler…The Internet in general.
A lot of money had been spent on
As a result, the bills started losing support from legislators in both houses and were shelved indefinitely or that’s what we’re made to think. As of now the sponsors (people who introduced the bill) are working some changes in the bill hoping to present it at an appointed time (see Patriot Act). Meanwhile in Europe, the EU has introduced ACTA on similar lines but at a larger stretch.
The arguments put forth by its supporters being
· US losing billions of dollars every year due to widespread piracy leading to content providers paying lesser salaries…also lesser jobs
· Current laws such as AHRA and DMCA not effective on curbing piracy
· Foreign sites don’t come under US jurisdiction
The main problem with the bill is that it allows companies to have the offending sites removed from the Domain Name System regardless of whether or not there was evidence of actual infringement to begin with. This means when one types www.piratebay.org it won’t show up. The same bill has provisions which outlaw circumvention measures that allow users to gain access. This would mean that any website that links to the aforementioned website can also be banned. Web-proxies and VPN servers will have to be blocked too. One should note that citizens living in suppressive regimes (Middle East, China, North Korea etc) use proxies and VPN servers to communicate with the outside world and this have been instrumental in the recent uprisings in the Middle East and Africa. The language used in the bill is so vague that a media company can single-handedly take down thousands of websites just because some users posted copyrighted content or even linked the content in the sites.
The sites challenging the closure should provide evidence against the claims at a US court and that’d mean thousands of dollars of lawyer money. Startup companies with low capitals get the most damage and hence shareholders would not choose to invest in them. Any site could be shut down and pronounced guilty until proven innocent and the plaintiffs aren’t the good kind of people who strictly verify whether actual infringement has been committed or not.
This is too much power -Morgan Free Man on SOPA
So why are History:
When CD recording systems for household use were introduced in the late 80’s the Recording Industry Association of America felt that this could lead to widespread piracy of music that was previously made in Professional Studios. The Home and Audio Recording Act was made in their favour in 1992 requiring all digital recorders to include Serial Copy Management System. This allows people to be able to make only first generation copies. Also for each blank CD sold to the public a part of the revenue goes to the recording industry. Conveniently, this didn’t go really well with amateur artists who wanted to record their music at home.
The internet became popular in the 90’s with computers evolving in storage and power. So had become the need to get a hold on digital content. US introduced Digital Millennium Copyright Act in ’98 which mandated the use of Digital Rights Management which prevented copying of digital content between machines. Measures to get around the DRM are outlawed. However, the law had a lot of exemptions provided for Fair Use. One can take portions of a movie for his work/review/criticism or educational purposes etc. User submitted infringing content is not the site’s liability but can be removed upon notice from the copyright holder. Sites linking to pirated content were not liable for action.
Did it Help?
Not a bit. Sites quickly found a way to get around the laws and piracy was more rampant than ever. File-sharing sites decided to cash in on this by charging users for data storage and downloads offering premium packages etc. What’s more amusing was that there were other sites offering free premium accounts to the said file-sharing sites which would also gain some revenues through advertising. Even if SOPA gets through there are many ways a pirate can do his business and infringe copyright.
The main reason why piracy still exists because the media companies have failed to conform their marketing effectively on par with technology. The other one is them being apprehensive about selling their products to 2nd and 3rd world countries. For example, let’s say a new TV series has been aired in the US. If the response to the Pilot is good enough, the series will be aired simultaneously in only select countries viz., Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand etc. Other countries will have to rely on the success of the first season, and then wait for the DVD’s to come out the following year. That’s not really fair because we deserve to have the fair share of entertainment, even at a reasonable price. Moreover, the episodes are freely streamed on the network websites in case they couldn’t watch it on TV. But they are viewable in their country only. Why would someone wait a whole year just to watch a series which might or not be good when there’s a Good Guy Greg out there providing it fast and for free? Just because it does not fit your business model does not mean that you should seek to ban other providers. This argument can be extended for all ‘intellectual properties’. It all comes down to this- People will always buy from those who provide a better service. Piracy is wrong for sure but if you can’t attract people in buying legitimate products by providing quality support, obstructing pirates being committed to the same will help in no small measure towards increasing their profits. Companies must reach out to foreign countries rather than cut off services provided by third-parties. This approach might not be enough to bring balance to the force but will sure give a moral boost to customers trying to buy legit goods.
The Bigger Picture…
The demand for a law that prohibits proliferation of copyright over the internet by people in foreign countries looks to be as if inevitable. But the same law allows companies to censor/block sites at their will (till proven innocent). Such vague language on the bill could give the government an opportunity to control the flow of information over the internet, thus control over the internet self. Meaning which, it could be apparent that, certain people within the government might have had a hidden agenda on their own.
Because…
The advent of Wikileaks forced the government to draw a sharp line between journalistic freedom and censorship. Not that wikileaks has caused a serious damage to the US foreign policy but there arrived a need to prevent future disclosures which could have a threat to the National Security. In layman words, they needed to get a hold on the internet so that any damage could be dealt with in a short time.
2011 had been a year of protests en masse. It was almost everywhere. There was Occupy Wall Street in America which spread to Europe and other countries. The Arab Spring Revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Yemen etc. Not to mention the anti-corruption movement in India and the recent protests in Russia.
Even the Greeks had a really bad year
The success of these movements in getting the attention of both the public and the respective governments is that they were all co-ordinated through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. There were thousands of blogs reporting and detailing on the events to help make the people aware. Citizens with sites blocked had to go through Web-proxies and VPN services. Government agencies usually conduct surveillance on sites having user-generated content looking for terrorist threats. Learning from what had happened over the past year, governments are assumed to be in the process of being prepared for future mass protests. If a revolutionary movement threatening the political stability of a country is on the cards, a government might want to undermine it by crippling the communications between protesters. What one can expect in future are bills that can empower governments to filter out ‘objectionable content’ as they please while its citizens continue to live in the dark.
The fight against piracy should undoubtedly be an international effort but it should not threaten the very existence of the internet as we know it. It is supposed to be a vast network of infinite human knowledge, expression and creativity. SOPA is a cure worse than the disease. The world has bigger problems than just being unable to pay the entertainment industry.
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