SOPA Blackout
Bravo, Internet Bravo.
Today, January 18th, marks a web-wide protest of the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) bills that are attempting to pass through the United State’s Congress. Anyone who knows anything about these bills knows that they will break the internet.
What do these bills allow? Simply, it allows the censorship of entire websites due to accused piracy fraud. Not only will this not stop piracy, it will fundamentally limit free speech and the unlimited resources available to everyone around the world for free.
Why is this bill being pushed? The Entertainment Industry, mainly Hollywood, Movie Producers, and Record Companies, all live in fear of the general public, and because of this brandish all of us as thieves. They put DRM, or Digital Rights Management, on their content to limit it’s distribution. This has proven severely ineffective, and sites like the Pirate Bay and Limewire have continuously distributed countless numbers of songs and movies across the entire net.
The problem with DRM is two-fold. One, is that it is easily broken. Copyright protection on DVDs was broken in a matter of weeks by a high school student, and new forms of DRM are always being cracked. The other key element is that on the Internet, content is infinitely distributable. This means it only takes one leaked copy (usually found and released before the original content is) to spread to the entire internet.
Copyright law now is appalling. Thanks to Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney Corp. had paid huge sums of money to extend the time copyright has on material by the original creators. These laws were originally intended to allow new content to be unique, but then available to the public to improve upon. Now, content is released and the creators are so terrified of you not buying their content, they essentially try and hunt down any sources of piracy.
There is only one true solution to piracy – and that is producing better quality content. It is not a matter of restricting the web, because that defeats the very essence and purpose that the Internet was created for in the first place. If content is of high quality, people will be willing to spend money for it, to support the artist(s). When corporations alienate their consumers, or place a burden on consumers for being assumed thieves, it makes piracy much more likely.
January 18th was the selected day of protest against SOPA. Reddit has shut down for 12 hours, instead placing information and resources about the two bills, Google has a new doodle, blacking out their traditional logo, and WordPress has “censored” the “Freshly Pressed” portion of their website. These efforts are done to jar people into realising what the implications of SOPA or Protect-IP would actually mean.
What can you do? Like this post, and distribute it. Post status messages protesting SOPA, and the corporations that support it. And, most importantly, call your congressmen. Find out if they support SOPA, and talk to them about why it is such a bad idea. Get the word out, and help preserve the Internet from the restrictive hand of a few greedy corporations that do not understand how to effectively manage their content.
