The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) tabled in the US House of Representatives and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) proposed in the US Senate are Bills that aim to prosecute websites on the Internet that cater to illegally provided copyrighted materials like movies and music. [break]
The online community that has been built up on open and free access to knowledge and information is threatened and online communities as big as Google, Wikipedia and Wordpress have protested the bill by placing black censor bars on parts of their logo or their websites.
Lamar Smith, the US Representative (Republican) from Texas, is the brains behind the law that so many Internet users have now come to oppose.
“To enact legislation that protects consumers, businesses and jobs from foreign thieves who steal America’s intellectual property, we will continue to bring together industry representatives and members to find ways to combat online piracy” Lamar says in a press release.
Lamar Smith and his bills are supported by representatives from the movie and music industries which have suffered the brunt of the rogue piracy and file sharing that has been taking place on the Internet.
Supporters of the bill argue that online piracy is posing a huge problem for struggling musicians and filmmakers and is leaving the large dent in the US economy.
The online piracy has been recorded to cost the US economy US$200 to US$250 billion per year and has been responsible for the loss of 750,000 American jobs. As an Act against these illegal communities of downloading and file sharing, SOPA and PIPA aim to bring websites and people behind these websites to justice, whether these websites be operating inside the US or outside.
On an ongoing lawsuit, the Sweden-based torrent website, the PirateBay, has come to be known as the most resilient bit-torrent website. PirateBay, the leading figurehead in the anti-copyright movement, has managed to stay online even through various lawsuits and hacks on their trackers and servers.
The law has spurred the wrath of online communities, including the Open-Source community that advocates free distribution of knowledge.
“These legislations are written by people who have no knowledge of how the web works,” says Prashant Shrestha, web manager at Young Innovations Pvt. Ltd. (YIPL).
“These legislations could be detrimental to the open and free nature of the Internet. Although it aims to do good, it is way too vague and can lead to misinterpretation and can attack the very fabric and infrastructure of the Internet. This can in effect completely shut down legitimate websites which have absolutely nothing to do with piracy, like Google, Youtube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit, among others, that are based on user-generated content,” he adds.
SOPA and PIPA, although proposed in the USA, will drastically change the Internet as we use it. It will come to affect not only users in America, but also users all around the world, including Nepal.
Many of the websites that we are accustomed to, like Facebook and Google, are based in America and the government can shut down even websites not based in America if they have been suspected of catering illegal contents.
Online communities have been calling this the end of the Internet, as the Bills provide new power to the government to create blacklists of sites and then force Internet Service Providers (ISP) to block access to these websites, giving the government the right to censor the open and free Internet and control what information users can have access to.
So not taking into account the piracy side of the Bill, the legislation will provide power to the government to control the Internet by stripping away the very rights the United States were built on, the right to free speech and expression.
Wikipedia, the largest open encyclopedia on the Internet, is based on community-based articles and corrections. Most of all the articles on Wikipedia are user-entered, and SOPA and PIPA can cause a complete shutdown of Wikipedia, among others, like Google or Wordpress.
Wikipedia, pioneering the blackout on January 18, blocked access to its contents giving the message, “Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge.
“For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the US Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet.”
“It’s a very stupid thing to try and blow the candle on free speech,” says a 19-year-old MBBS student. “I use the Internet and communicate with so many other users sharing information and knowledge. The Internet has turned into an essential part of the learning process and what these bills are doing is cutting the fingers of the billions of open-source developers who advocate free sharing of knowledge and up their works up on the Internet for everyone to see and learn from,” he adds.
The Internet is free in its form and is a platform for many young people to find their voice. With many online magazines or news portals that make up the fabric of the global society, people from all across the globe have access to our people and our culture.
Making pen pals, debating on forum sites, or just watching short movies to pass the time would all come to an end.
But as Alan Moore’s famous comic character, V, said, “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
The online protests have succeeded in sinking the ship of SOPA and PIPA by successfully getting it postponed indefinitely. But Billsvvlike these are silent threats that could pop up any time.
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