The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act are dangerous ideas that may become law soon. Both of these bills are different, and they each have their nuances, but I'm lumping them together here because both suffer from the same short comings. If you follow me on twitter, you may have seen me tweet about this a couple of times already. But, in case this is new to you, I'd like to give you a run down on what these bills are and why I think they are ... well ... evil.
The Unattainable Goal
The Goal of SOPA and the Protect IP Act is to put an end to online piracy. I think that every law abiding citizen out there would agree that piracy is an overall hurtful thing that stifles creativity and profits. So, please know that I believe putting an end to online piracy is a noble goal. The means however are frightening. The most egregious online piracy sites are not (technically) US based. So, it makes it hard to do much of anything. Thus, these bills do a few things.
- Empower the government to force Internet Service Providers to "block" websites that are claimed to infringe on copyright laws.
- Empower the government to sue Search Engines, Directories, Blogs and/or Forums that link to a site that is claimed to infringe on copyright laws.
- Empower the government to force advertisers to terminate their accounts with websites that are claimed to infringe on copyright laws.
Why It's Not Going to Work
Like I said, it's a great thing to want to put an end to piracy. When creative people do good work, they should receive full credit and compensation. Unfortunately, these bills will not help ensure that. Even if a website is "blocked" it can still be reached by entering an IP address. Search Engines cannot render comprehensive results when worrying about censorship. Advertisers will still be liable for their contracts and become very wary of advertising anywhere online.
Why It's Not Necessary
Here in the US we have plenty of laws that protect the art, creation and intellectual property of people, groups and organizations. For almost all of us, these laws have been working just fine. In fact, they are often used as standard bearers for other countries seeking to protect their creative classes. (This would be a dangerous precedent.) So, who are these few who will benefit? We'll get to that in a second.
Why It's Scary
Perhaps most concerning is the ambiguity of the bills. Once a bill is signed into law, it is up to the judicial system to interpret its meaning and application. These bills put the onus not on individuals for their own actions, but on website administrators. If one were to leave a copyright infringing comment on my wife's blog, she could be sued for not filtering the comments well enough. She might then be forced to not merely remove the comment, but remove her site and pay a hefty fine.
It is also likely that if ISPs have to start blocking and filtering and censoring that the internet itself for the average user will become not only unstable but insecure.
Who Will Benefit
Here's the crazy part. You would think that a bill spawn by the internet, directed at the internet and seeking control over the internet would have been thought up by internet companies, right? Wrong. In fact Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, eBay, AOL and Yahoo all oppose the bills.
So who were the chief consultants? Who stands to benefit from these bills? The entertainment industry. After all, these bills seek to stop sites that provide a way to see a TV show or hearing a song without paying for it. Who would you be paying exactly? The entertainment industry.
These are scary bills that stand to not accomplish their goal, cripple internet start-ups, target internet flagships and pad the pockets of wealthy corporations. Send your representatives a message telling them that you don't want SOPA or Protect IP to be passed into law.