The Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act legislation is currently being discussed in the US, these laws are supposedly there to combat online piracy. The bill states that anyone sharing copyrighted content without permission 10 or more times could face up to 5 years in prison. The worrying thing about this legislation is that it can be used to shut down whole websites just if they have one link to a suspect site or a site with some copyrighted content on it, which in all reality is probably most sites as many contain images that are copyrighted without permission. In particular those sites which are more based around activism and social change could easily be shutdown overnight and furthermore US based Internet service providers, payment processors and advertisers would be outlawed from doing business with that organisation. As the UK is so enthralled by the US then you can see this act coming to country near you soon.
How it works
So in theory this could be used to shut down a site and completely destroy it’s ability to restart through banning any company working with them. Furthermore, they will also outlaw sites that contain information about how to access blocked sites. Also those who use a US search engine will no longer be able to find the site. This is like China’s approach to the Internet and it is a slippery slope as once they start forcing the Internet Service Providers to take down content, then what happens next, what is the next thing to be censored in a world that is going through a massive economic crisis where billions of people are going to want social change. When will sites that come out in opposition to governments and the dominant ideology come to be seen as a problem that should be removed. Would Wikileaks constitute copyright infringement.
Vested interests
Lets not forget that these corporations supporting these bills (to the tune of $91million lobbying) don’t just own film companies, book companies and music companies they are also the Murdoch empires and the like, massive
multinational corporations that wish to control the content and information we consume. I make films and produce music and I would obviously like to see more income from that as would many smaller artists, we all need to develop new models to do this based on the changing times and will do in some form or another. This bill is not about protecting artists, it’s about policing the internet, its about controlling the narrative of the world. It is about centralising control over a decentralised common resource that is currently accessible by a large majority of the world.
Dan Gillmor hits the nail on the head in his article for the guardian when he states about what the powers that be are really thinking:
“The internet threatens our longstanding control of information and communications, and that is simply unacceptable. Therefore, it is essential to curb the utility of the internet for everyone else.”
Thats why it is crucial that this bill is stopped, the genie is out of the bottle and thats the way we like it.
Critics include Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yahoo, eBay, LinkedIn, AOL and Zynga.
What do you think about this bill is it a threat to the internet or a godsend for artists and film makers?
Further Information:
SOPA is the equivalent of smashing the Gutenberg press