For those that might not be aware, several large websites (like Wikipedia) participated in an “Internet Black Out” yesterday as part of a protest against two bills circulating through congress that they think could hurt internet freedom and encourage censorship. The two bills are known by their catchy acronyms “SOPA” and “PIPA.” But don’t let their innocuous names that sound like low-ranking royalty fool you.
I can’t pretend I’m completely well versed in this issue, but here’s what was on Wikipedia’s main page yesterday: “For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. We are instituting a 24 hour blackout in order to raise awareness to this issue.” And there was also a link for people to contact their local congress member and tell them NOT to vote for these acts.
And Wikipedia’s blackout did have a great effect in my eyes because it forced me to actually pay attention to these bills and discover what’s in them, what they would mean for the internet, and especially what they would mean for a small site like mine. My ultimate conclusion is that these bills wouldn’t have much effect for Alabama Liberal and wouldn’t mean fundamental changes in the way my site operates. Everything I’ve ever written is copyrighted, protected, able to be taken to court if I really feel like protecting any violations, very rarely borrows from any other sites, and my comments section is pretty wide open in terms of freedom. [As it stands now, I’ve tried to make it as easy as possible for people to comment and also not fear any privacy invasions, by just giving out any name they feel like when commenting and making their email address optional…Although of course registered users are appreciated and also safe.] Still, although the bills themselves aren’t that bad they do set up a slippery slope precedent for people to keep coming back and asking for more regulations on the internet.
The allegations are that SOPA and PIPA, through trying to stop online piracy, will essentially make the entire internet a much less free and uncensored place. Now I realize that online piracy is a very serious problem and the big media companies can’t keep losing billions to torrent sites that allow people to download content (movies, TV, music, and sometimes books) for free. It must be enormously frustrating to make a movie like The Descendants and have only half the audience actually pay to watch it in theaters. I get that absolutely and it also worries me that one day there won’t be any Barnes and Nobles or movie theaters because everyone is at home downloading things for free. But the way these bills are set up goes beyond simply trying to catch large piracy networks. It COULD use that as a scapegoat defense (same as Homeland Security used terrorism to spy on citizen’s emails and cell phones) so they can really go about squeezing smaller sites that can chip away at larger media company’s empires.
Unsurprisingly, Lucifer himself Rupert Murdoch is all for these acts and has sent out a series of moronic tweets accusing Google of promoting Piracy by being against these bills. Well, just from personal history, I can tell you there aren’t many issues where Rupert Murdoch is right and Google is wrong, but this one is much more of a gray area (for starters, Murdoch’s Fox Searchlight financed The Descendants…and wouldn’t finance smaller films like that if piracy isn’t curbed and profits don’t go up). I can’t say that I’m entirely against these bills because something DOES need to be done about online piracy that hits Hollywood’s bottom-line and therefore makes smaller movies harder to finance. Still, I doubt these bills will be successful and don’t see them having much chance at getting past the 95 million dollars that Silicon Valley spends in lobbying every year. And if you believe the equally valid point that these bills could lead to further internet censorship down the road, then that’s not a bad thing.