Jan. 22, 2012
A victory for the internet
The year 2012 has been forecasted to be the end of the world. So far, however, we have been able to avert the end of the Internet. It's been almost five months of fighting since the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) were proposed, and just when the stakes could not have gotten any higher, SOPA and PIPA were tabled and dropped from Congress in response to the massive protests generated from the internet community.
Since the inception of the bill in September, SOPA has received backlash from sites such as Reddit, Wikipedia and even the media conglomerate, Google. The internet responded so vigorously against SOPA because the provisions under the act were so broad and absurd that the bill would allow unprecedented power to do anything it deemed "necessary."
Under Title I of SOPA, courts could force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to completely cut off websites that engage in trademark counterfeiting, copyright infringement and theft of trade secrets from their servers. While this seems like the perfect countermeasure against online piracy, this will also hurt the integrity of honest websites that cannot control the content users upload. For websites, such as YouTube, that manage millions of videos a day, it is almost impossible to delete every single copyright infringing video promptly. If this bill had been passed, it would only take one video to bring down the entire network of websites such as YouTube, Reddit and Facebook. It was necessary to put down this bill as soon as possible to not only save these websites, but also save the internet from turmoil and government oversight.
The reaction against this bill has been enormous, with large threads and forums in Reddit dedicated towards finding ways to stop this bill from occurring. The largest coordinated action against SOPA from the Internet was the Internet blackout on January 18. Over one thousand websites, including Wikipedia, Reddit, Huffington Post, Craigslist and Mozilla Firefox, blacked out in order to give the world a taste of what life with SOPA might feel like.
Through the blackout, the people responded with the largest online protest in history. According to Google representatives, 4.5 million people signed the company's anti-SOPA petition, with millions of other signing similar petitions. Twitter was booming, with about 2.4 million messages about SOPA and PIPA exchanged in only 16 hours. Over one million emails were sent to Congressmen through the Electronic Frontier Foundation during the blackout. Two days later, amid large protest, the bill was dropped.
If there is one thing that SOPA has proved, it is that the Internet can unite people under a single cause and help spread activism like wildfire. Through the Internet, millions of Americans were able to rally and express their discontent with the acts by signing petitions and writing letters to their Congressmen in order to stop this bill. In a way, it encouraged citizens to become their own lobbyists and develop a sense of government efficacy that has been absent in policymaking for quite a time.
Tabled bills have been able to make their way back into Congress and the bill might resurface in legislation with looser provisions, but when that happens, the public will be ready. For now, the collapse of SOPA represents a defining moment for the Internet that championed all odds in fighting social injustices and preserving freedom. The internet – and the people - have spoken.
Since the inception of the bill in September, SOPA has received backlash from sites such as Reddit, Wikipedia and even the media conglomerate, Google. The internet responded so vigorously against SOPA because the provisions under the act were so broad and absurd that the bill would allow unprecedented power to do anything it deemed "necessary."
The front page of Reddit celebrated SOPA and PIPA being tabled with a popular homage to the movie, "Braveheart."
The reaction against this bill has been enormous, with large threads and forums in Reddit dedicated towards finding ways to stop this bill from occurring. The largest coordinated action against SOPA from the Internet was the Internet blackout on January 18. Over one thousand websites, including Wikipedia, Reddit, Huffington Post, Craigslist and Mozilla Firefox, blacked out in order to give the world a taste of what life with SOPA might feel like.
Through the blackout, the people responded with the largest online protest in history. According to Google representatives, 4.5 million people signed the company's anti-SOPA petition, with millions of other signing similar petitions. Twitter was booming, with about 2.4 million messages about SOPA and PIPA exchanged in only 16 hours. Over one million emails were sent to Congressmen through the Electronic Frontier Foundation during the blackout. Two days later, amid large protest, the bill was dropped.
If there is one thing that SOPA has proved, it is that the Internet can unite people under a single cause and help spread activism like wildfire. Through the Internet, millions of Americans were able to rally and express their discontent with the acts by signing petitions and writing letters to their Congressmen in order to stop this bill. In a way, it encouraged citizens to become their own lobbyists and develop a sense of government efficacy that has been absent in policymaking for quite a time.
Tabled bills have been able to make their way back into Congress and the bill might resurface in legislation with looser provisions, but when that happens, the public will be ready. For now, the collapse of SOPA represents a defining moment for the Internet that championed all odds in fighting social injustices and preserving freedom. The internet – and the people - have spoken.
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As an avid user of thepiratebay (fairly extensive and mostly reliable), I can say that piracy is definitely a double-edged sword: obtaining large quantities of video, music, e-Books, software, or any files in general for free is absolutely wonderful, but it also means that if I (independently or even with a company of any size) take part in the creation of any software which is definitely worth something, chances are that after a while it will find itself on a pirating site and people will be obtaining and using it without any credit (apart from possible recognition) going to me.
TPB on their site has their message regarding those two bills, which provides the interesting example that Hollywood emerged because no one would enforce Edison's rights on audiovisual recording devices in that area (or something of that sort).
The "I agree to these terms of use" option is essentially always selected but almost never fully read and in these instances of privacy, it is simply ignored. The difficulty lies in enforcing and tracking one's actions with regard to such an agreement. There seems to be no simple way to do this, as any attempt to do so would require incredible effort and raise significant backlash. The whole system and idea will most likely be scrapped in the future. The "free and open source" advocates will eventually have their victory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=citzRjwk-sQ
Sites like the piratebay are definitely going to be put into question, and it seems like another one of those radical bills that will try to change how the internet works.
Don't get too comfortable just yet.
I was noting that since the fight was not really won, just delayed, that eventually someone would be made accountable for enforcing the agreements one makes when one uses a software or online service which are violated every second on pirating and other "sharing website." Because of this, something else will crop up, but having done it once, the Internet wouldn't mind doing again what it did to express its dissatisfaction with the whole idea. That's why I predict, not necessarily settle to assume, that eventually such agreements will be essentially void, and the software which dominates will be mostly free and open source.
Once again, congratulation conscious people who've spoken out loud.
blair, i am dissapoint