First of all, a major problem with these bills, aside from the very negative side effects they may carry that I will outline shortly, is how ineffective they will be at achieving their stated goals. There are already many laws on the books to try and stop online piracy, and look how well those work. Granted, none of the current laws are quite as extreme as SOPA and PIPA in what they allow the government and copyright holders to do, but they are still very ineffective. Piracy is extremely prevalent, and those that take part in it tend to be very clever, especially the big suppliers. Those who download a movie or a new album here or there aren't really doing enough wrong to be bothered with, and those who upload mass quantities of media are good enough at it to not get caught. We have to look at the two sides of this war. The pirates are young people that have grown up surrounded by the Internet and technology their entire lives. They know how to move around on the Internet undetected. The ones fighting the pirates, the ones that drafted and support these bills, are a group of people, with an average age of 58, that have no real expertise with the Internet and technology. They are not the products of the digital age like their enemies are. To put it in context, they are the British Army, standing in line firing waves of musket shots, and the pirates are the American rebels, adept at hiding in the dark and avoiding direct conflict. (NOTE: This is not to say that the pirates are starting a revolution and should be supported, just that they are better at adapting to the new environment.) Finally, even if these bills were perfect at stopping piracy, they do not even touch upon file sharing. There is nothing in them, and possibly nothing exists to really fight it, to stop people from simply giving each other files. Ripping and burning DVDs and CDs, copying legally downloaded files into Dropbox or onto flash drives. There will always be a way for those who want to find it.
Now we have to look at what is truly dangerous about these bills: The destruction of a free Internet. Essentially, these bills would allow for the government and/or copyright holders to file court orders against websites they deem to be enabling, allowing, or facilitating copyright infringement. If a judge finds the website guilty of the alleged offenses, it could potentially force Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to the website. This would mean torrent sites such as ThePirateBay and Demonoid would be shut down definitely and almost immediately, but it also means something else. Websites that allow user content, such as Reddit, Youtube, blog sites, and even Facebook, are subject to being blocked. All of these websites have instances of copyrighted material being posted for free, and could effectively be shut down. These bills are essentially attacking free speech on the internet. A worst case scenario would be that the government and corporations use these bills to broadly interpret something, anything, on a site that they don't like as copyrighted material, or even allowing for copyrighted material, and they can shut it down, eliminating opposing opinions. Anything with a comment box could be torn down. Since the drafting of the Constitution, the United States has stood for freedom of speech as one of its core rights. This freedom extends to the internet, and we need to protect it. Internet censorship is one of the most frequent criticisms we make of nations like China, so why are we following in its footsteps?
There is good news however. The most recent polls show that the number of Congresspeople in both houses opposing these bills outnumbers the ones supporting them. This doesn't necessarily mean they won't pass, because all of those Congresspeople except for maybe Ron and Rand Paul could flip their positions if given an...incentive...by corporations. Obama has also come out against SOPA recently, making it clear that he will veto any bill like it. He said the same thing about the 2012 NDAA, the bill that allows for indefinite detention of American citizens without charges, but then passed it when he saw Congressional support. We'll see if he takes a stand for something this time. Hopefully he does.
Well said Pericles. People don't realize the gravity of the situation but at the same time, can't we benefit by their passage? It showcases just how weak this generation is that we won't take to the streets to protests, we have big Internet corporations and sites doing it for us on their websites. We need to get mad, we keep skidding by because the things that would fuck us up the most don't pass or get a signing statement (detainment); maybe this is exactly what we need to wake us up and get us out from behind our computers to protest for our freedom like never before. It would be a truly American branch of Occupy but would also fall over to the rest of the world because there are many countries (ie China, Iran, etc.) where their governments have cracked down on Internet usage. I think we need this desperately man.
ReplyDeleteThink about all of the criticisms that have been made about our government. One of the most important and most frequent ones is the incredibly high degree of partisanship. How can we expect our government to cooperate with itself peacefully if we can't do the same thing with it as a whole. We need to work with the government, after all it is (ideally) only an extension of ourselves. Congress dropped both SOPA and PIPA, largely because of the protests against them. On January 18th, they had 80 supporters and 31 opponents, and on the 19th, they had 65 supporters and 101 opponents, because the Congressmen saw what their constituents wanted. We criticize the government for acting in favor of corporations and not their constituents, and don't get me wrong I think money definitely needs to be taken out of the system of politics, but look what happens when they actually HEAR what their constituents want. It isn't everyday that 13 million people protest something, and a large number of those protesting actually wrote to or called their Senators and Representatives. We don't need riots in the streets to get what we want, we just need to actually voice our opinions. If we don't then we have no right to complain when the things we want don't happen and things we don't like do.
Delete