Country unites to fight Congress and SOPA
Wednesday’s Wikipedia blackout was not a hoax, the work of hackers or a consequence of a seriously delayed Y2K glitch. The site’s operators blacked out the site to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) that are currently being considered in Congress.
SOPA and PIPA aim to protect copyrighted material in the United States — from movies to pharmaceuticals — from being exploited by foreign sites. The bills’ controversy centers around their proposed methods for preventing access to such sites.
Under SOPA, as it is currently written and available on the Library of Congress website, Internet service providers must “take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site,” the site states.
SOPA also requires search engines to prevent infringing sites from being available to users. Online advertising services are also forbidden from advertising such sites. Advertisers, search engine operators and Internet providers are allowed five days after notification of illegal activity to remove or block such content or to appeal the notification to the Justice Department.
Mikey Rodgerson, president of the USU College Republicans, said he opposes the bills because they “are trying to fix the symptoms, not the causes, of piracy. Criminals will just get more creative.”
The founders of Google, YouTube and a host of other online organizations have also stated their reasons for opposing the legislation. In an open letter to Washington, they wrote, “We’ve all had the good fortune to found Internet companies and non profits in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online … we’re worried that (SOPA and PIPA) … will undermine that framework.”
The letter goes on to state that the bills would have a “chilling effect” on innovation, and it compares the bills to censorship laws in China, Malaysia and Iran.
These kinds of doomsday predictions are not a new phenomena, stated Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, on the CNET news website. He wrote that during domestic file-sharing debates of earlier years — such as LimeWire — many critics predicted the end of online innovation. However, he said legal alternatives to such file-sharing systems have thrived and innovation continued.
Laura Anderson, president of the USU College Democrats, said though she opposes the legislation as it is currently written, she can understand the reasons for its creation.
“Piracy is an economic loss and does infringe on the creators’ rights,” Anderson said.
According to the House Judiciary Committee, the bills’ supporters range from Actors’ Equity Association to Zumba Fitness, LLC. Many of these organizations cite loss of revenue and protecting their creators as their primary motives for supporting SOPA and PIPA.
Representatives from the Motion Picture Association of America stated, in a letter supporting SOPA, “more than $58 billion is lost to the U.S. economy annually due to content theft.”
Despite being initially popular in both the House and Senate, the bills’ popularity in Washington, D.C., has taken a sudden nosedive.
According to the news website ProPublica, the bills had 80 supporters and 31 opponents in Congress on Wednesday morning, and by Thursday afternoon the bills had 65 supporters and 101 opponents. The remaining Congress members have yet to release official opinions.
This sudden reversal of congressional opinion came in response to widespread public protest. On Thursday, a Google spokesperson told the Washington Post the site had collected 7 million signatures on its anti-SOPA and PIPA petition.
“Our generation is the first to grow up with computers,” Rodgerson said. “The people legislating in Washington are older and have a different relationship to technology than we do. College students need to pay attention to congressional actions regarding the Internet, because those actions will affect us in ways they haven’t before.”
Revisions on SOPA will take place in February and the Senate is scheduled to vote on PIPA on Jan. 24.
– rouchellebrockman@gmail.com