America seems to have come out with a new (although hardly an innovative) way to censor links it feels violates copyrights–although the fact that they do not have to justify themselves makes one wonder if they will not also ban legitimate links that work against them, as many have begun to see. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is more than meets the eye; following in China’s footsteps–but going one step too far–the US government hopes to pass a bill that, will give them absolute rights to decide what one sees and what one does not, on the Internet.
The Web has often been celebrated analogous to freedom in more ways than one: speech, art and in general expression of almost any form. But, leveraging on a few acts of piracy, and apparently using it as a veil, the government hopes to gain the rights to ban stuff on the internet, and–as giants such as Google, Yahoo!, eBay and Netscape see it–effectively the Internet itself. Either way, SOPA is slowly being seen as a technique to undermine the framework of free expression.
Dissecting SOPA
While more and more people around the world are slowly finding out about SOPA–and a number of non-US sites–are writing (read: fighting) against it, there happen to be a much lesser number who know the full implications of this act.
In a nutshell, SOPA is a bill targeted at sites hosted outside the US making them susceptible to be banned, should the US government feel so (which is the catch here, as I see it.) Delving a little deeper into it we find SOPA to list the following clauses1:
- Order internet service providers to alter their DNS servers to prevent resolving the domain names of websites in foreign countries that host illegal copies of videos, songs, and photos.
- Order search engines like Google to modify search results to exclude foreign websites that host illegally copied material.
- Order payment providers like PayPal to shut down the payment accounts of foreign websites that host illegally copied material.
- Order ad services like Google’s AdSense to refuse any ads or payment from foreign sites that host illegally copied content.
The main concepts behind SOPA happen to be piracy and copyright infringement. While these are problems to a good extent, SOPA is an immature approach to solving them, following on the lines of the repeatedly disproved procedures of strengthening copyright laws to protect piracy. This, as Mike Masnick puts it2, will only increase cases of infringement as the main problem centres on consumers being underserved: it has never been a question of being free.
Historically, infringement has never been about “free,” but about indicating where the business models have not kept up with the technology.
What is interesting to note, however, is that this will not apply to domains ending with .com, .net or .org because they all are hosted under existing US laws, and SOPA targets non-US (or, more specifically, US-directed) websites.
Continuing onto the next section, Section 103, of SOPA, it requires payment processors and advertisors to shut down accounts should they receive the right kind of letter from a copyright owner — a system modeled on the notice-and-takedown provisions of the current Digital Millenium Copyright Act3 which has been both used and abused and is retained simply because it allows YouTube to avoid direct responsibility for the actions of its users — it would have been otherwise sued out of existence by now.
(While we are on that topic, it is interesting to note that the film production house, Viacom, which is a major supporter of SOPA is suing YouTube for $1 billion and has equated free to stealing stating ‘piracy costs money and jobs.’ Ironically, as RT reports, Viacom’s able CEO made $84 million in 2010 alone.)
The Anti-SOPA Stance
A number of major Internet players have joined in protesting against SOPA. Google–whose ruling over half the web is arguably the most important voice needed to oppose SOPA–has recently come out with a massive public whiplash stating “the bill would give Washington Internet censorship rights similar to China, Malaysia and Iran.” Google is openly opposing the views of a number of big entertainment companies (which constitute the main supporters of SOPA) such as Viacom, Disney and TimeWarner. And, in agreement with others boasting an equally big presence (such as Wikipedia, Yahoo! and Flickr, PayPal and LinkedIn) are urging Congress not to risk the “tremendous benefits the Internet has brought to hundreds of millions of Americans and people around the world.”
Another idea worth noting is the support Google can give: right now, Google is busy in world domination intelligently buying the most successful participants in every niche of the Internet. Google currently owns services like Android, Picasa, YouTube, Google+, AdSense, AdWords, Maps, Analytics, Docs, Talk, Chrome, Panoramio, FeedBurner, Blogger, Flights, Calendar, Books, Translate, TV, Voice, Local, Goggles, Places and — perhaps their one main product Google is synonymous to — Google Search.
(Courtesy, FORBES/Paul Tassi)
Another important contributor to this opposition of SOPA happens to be Reddit. The social news site has officially laid plans to black out the active website from 8AM to 8PM, for 12 hours, in opposition to SOPA. On their blog, Reddit made their intention clear:
Instead of the normal glorious, user-curated chaos of reddit, we will be displaying a simple message about how the PIPA4/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like Reddit. A few months ago, many people thought this legislation would surely pass. However, there’s a new hope that we can defeat this dangerous legislation.
The new hope that the Reddit team mentions happens to be a major flow of stance-shift among both Republicans and Democratics in the Congress with politicians from Ron Paul to Nancy Pelosi openly offering their support to Anti-SOPA activists.
The Lamar dilema
US Congressman Lamar Smith, who perhaps contributed most to creating this entire hullabaloo called SOPA (and whose intentions, to me, seem shady at best,) seems to have forgotten to cover his tracks after he changed the look on his website where he had been using stock photographs without credit, and therefore, by his own bill, would have ended up in places he probably hoped to avoid.
The wonderful sleuthing work was done by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete over at Vice.com when he examined an older, cached version of Lamar’s campaign website and found at least two major cases of copyright violation which, on the one hand Lamar pretends to hate, but on the other, he began using it as his surefire ticket to a seat in the Congress.
Supporting Lamar are a whole bunch of companies who are jumping at the first chance to get SOPA passed. In a letter addressed to the Congress5, they have pledged their support to the bill. Alongside this, Vice.com has begun its innovative ‘Shop a SOPA’ Copyright Hypocrite Hunt (which you can join) to spot copyright infringements on websites of SOPA co-sponsors (of whom Lamar happens to be the main candidate.) As it turns out, Lamar’s office has conveniently decided not to reply to the letter Vice.com sent them demanding an explanation.
Wikipedia, GoDaddy and others
In a note on Wikipedia, founder Jimmy Wales wrote, “I’m all in favor of it, and I think it would be great if we could act quickly to coördinate with Reddit. I’d like to talk to our government affairs advisor to see if they agree on this as useful timing, but assuming that’s a greenlight, I think that matching what Reddit does … is a good idea.”
Another big issue that arose was against Internet Domain Provider, GoDaddy. In fact the place most of the opposition stemmed from was Reddit. A short time ago GoDaddy was a big supporter of SOPA, but soon Reddit was overhauled with Boycott GoDady shouts and in no time the company switched its stance in a blog post and is now a big Anti-SOPA activist.
Individuals are also making great efforts to protest against SOPA. Paul Tassi made a profile picture (below) urging Anti-SOPA people to move a step further by using this image as their profile pictures on social networks; there is also his Facebook event for people posting censored images (such as the one below, sporting a censored under HR 3261, SOPA banner.)
Courtesy Paul Tassi
The Pirate Bay
Now comes the underbelly of SOPA. To most people–at least to us who are familiar with the ways of the Internet and the laws governing its use–it is quite clear who the main target of the SOPA bill is: The Pirate Bay. The website is, to many, the resource of everything they cannot otherwise lay their hands on; everything that should really be in the public domain but is not: from films to software.
As the trust CNet News recently reported, SOPA is all about going after one website, and because the existing OPEN Act does not provide provisions to bring down Pirate Bay.
Yet, SOPA has equivocated, thwarted and confused itself so much that, as Masnick rightly points out, the provisions in the bill do quite the opposite: they make The Pirate Bay immune! SOPA cannot touch The Pirate Bay’s main website, ThePirateBay.org, which is a .org domain hosted under US-laws (i.e. a US website) while the new bill only targets US–directed websites and as we saw earlier this puts The Pirate Bay out of SOPA’s jurisdiction.
This is an important point to note. As I see it, formulating a complex bill, although consisting solely of alphabets, actually requires good logical and mathematical calculations to see no clause renders another null and void. I do not expect any congressman to have this ability.
To take this surprise further, note that the US Congress statistics of rogue websites getting 53 billion websites that the government still childishly dwells upon is actually unaddressed (or rather addressed once and then once again, rendering it void the second time.) At the centre of this entire argument, apart from The Pirate Bay, were file hosting websites RapidShare and MegaUpload. Both of these are also effectively immune to SOPA.
In Conclusion
Am I against SOPA? In a way, yes. The intent of the bill is appreciable, but the lousy way in which it has been formed as it now stands is not. The Internet was the one place on Earth that was never run by a government of people, never constrained by strict laws and never curbing creativity and freedom. In fact, I often quote the Internet as the perfect example of how beautifully people can govern themselves. Do think about this.
However, on the other hand, I could not care less about SOPA because in the pith it is just a bunch of words with no solid execution mechanism. Unlike a common parliament bill, SOPA cannot be enforced on the Internet. We come back to my previous point here, the Internet is run by people around the world, not the US government. In case you failed to understand my point, let me elaborate: As TechDirst points out, even if SOPA is passed, the game becomes the word of the US Congress against everybody with technological knowledge around the world. It is hardly an even match because, at the end of the day, no matter what big blockade SOPA puts up, people can go around that with ease. They can, for instance, adopting a foreign Virtual Private Network system–which, if you are wondering, is absolutely legal!
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Yes, I want the ebook and free subscription!- Paraphrased, read this extract for more details on Section 102 [↩]
- Read Mike Masnick’s article [↩]
- This requires a services, like YouTube, to pull down infringing content after the copyright owner complains. [↩]
- PIPA, is an acronym for the Protect IPA Act, a U.S. Senate version of SOPA. [↩]
- You can read the 9-page long, entertaining letter here [↩]
About V. H. Belvadi