Since the inception of the internet, people have exchanged and posted various files on the web. These have evolved from text files to music, movies, video games and more. With the arrival of Youtube, Flickr, Deviantart and other websites that thrive on user-generated content, the question of what we can use, share, or even view on the internet has been rapidly growing.
The hotly contested issue of today is to define what is a violation of copyright law and how copyright law can be enforced in such a way without penalizing those that acquire their content “legally.” One possible solution to this problem has arisen in the form of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). This act authorizes the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to obtain court orders against foreign websites that have been accused of infringing on copyrights and/or being a medium to facilitate copyright infringement. Afterwards, the United States Attorney General could force Internet service providers, search engines, and many other companies to cease doing business with the offending parties.
On paper, this may seem like an easy solution: remove the offending links and punish those that continue to infringe on copyrights by potentially cutting off their income. However, when we look deeper into what this actually means, frankly, it is frightening. Picture this scenario: a person who we will call Bob uploads his favourite clip from last night’s episode of the Big Bang Theory to Youtube and then links to it and writes a post on his blog about it. Bob’s blog post is then linked to on Reddit and subsequently spread to many other websites via RSS feeds and word of mouth. Enter SOPA. If CBS, the copyright holder of the TV show, complained to the DOJ about Bob’s clip and others like it, a chain reaction would occur. Youtube, Bob’s blog, Reddit, and any other website that is deemed as perpetuating the spread of infringing content could be blacklisted and be forced to shut down permanently. All of this occurs from Bob simply wanting to show more people this awesome clip from one of his favourite TV shows.
Another major problem with SOPA is that it violates one of the most important freedoms that we have in our society: freedom of speech. Currently, anyone can freely exchange information, whether it is one’s opinion or content. If SOPA were to be enacted, it would set a precedent for the censorship of the internet. Recently on TIME Magazine’s Techland blog, Jerry Bit wrote, “Imagine if the U.K. created a blacklist of American newspapers that its courts found violated celebrities’ privacy? Or what if France blocked American sites it believed contained hate speech?” If any of these were enacted, they would be similar to what SOPA is trying to do for copyright violations. If the United States can enact legislation that targets foreign websites, why can’t a hostile country like North Korea or Iran enact similar legislation and cause chaos on the Internet?
Another factor we can analyse with SOPA is whether it will actually work. Previous legislation in the United States and many other companies has attempted to take down, and bankrupt, many websites that link to copyright infringing files. The most prominent of these attempts, the case Sweden vs. The Pirate Bay, is currently wracked in a multitude of legal challenges and appeals. As of today thepiratebay.org is still working. So what does this mean for SOPA? If Sweden can’t take down a single website, how does the United States expect to blacklist thousands, if not millions of websites?
Another area that SOPA cannot regulate is local peer-to-peer networks such as our own DC++. These services are only accessible by those directly connected to the network and as a result are virtually undetectable. If SOPA were to be enacted more of these networks would arise and sharing would still occur in a more incognito fashion.
We’ve talked about why SOPA is bad and how it would be flawed legislation but the question that remains is what would work to protect copyright owners?
The first solution proposed by many is to decrease the presence of Digital Rights Management (DRM) software that currently restricts how users can access and share software, movies, music, etc. that they have purchased. At first this solution seems counter-intuitive; by making it easier to share this content, how can you actually reduce the amount of copyright infringing that occurs? However, in practice this works. For example, when the game Spore was released, there was a great outcry about the DRM included with the game. Once the game was released, it became the most pirated game for the subsequent weeks after its release. Once the DRM was removed from the game, these statistics dramatically dropped.
Another proposed solution is to make it easier and worthwhile to obtain content without violating copyrights. For example, instead of withholding clips of television shows, content providers could post them to Youtube or other content-sharing websites (FOX already does this for clips from Family Guy).
To conclude, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has good intentions, but it is poorly thought out and has drastic consequences for content sharing websites like Youtube, Flickr, and Facebook. Furthermore, it violates our basic right of freedom of speech and moreover, SOPA’s ability to prevent piracy is still unknown. Instead of blacklisting and bankrupting, we should focus on motivation people to not infringe on copyrights.
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