currently, the US congress are trying to pass two bills: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PROTECT IP or PIPA). geez, these bloody governments are their acronyms! who comes up with those names anyway?
anyway, what these acts basically (based on what i've read and summarized for myself anyway) is that they give the entertainment industry in the US (read: Hollywood) the power to order the government to shut down sites in the US that contain copyright infringing content. here, copyright infringing content basically means anything that the industries churns out. and by anything, it could be posters, a screenshot of a game, a tiny portion of a song and basically anything that includes stuff owned by someone. that includes that photo you uploaded to facebook of you holding a dvd you just bought since the cover of that dvd is owned by that dude in a suit in Hollywood.
the main problem with these bills is that the copyright holders are able to do this without any prior investigation on whether the sites are actually responsible. say, randomdude16 uploads a video of him/her jumping around to the sound of queen's "don't stop me now" (i'm not saying i do, it's just an example. stop asking), the music company who owns the rights to the song would be able to shut the entirety of youtube just for that single insignificant content. every site would be liable for the actions of ALL of it's users, including whatever comments they post.
the takedown affects a site in multiple ways: search engines (e.g. google, yahoo) won't display it, US users can't access it, and perhaps the most severe effect (as i see it) would be the block of ad-revenues (aka, the site's paycheck).
sites like youtube generate money almost purely on ads and a single shut down could cost them millions, which ultimately would cripple them. hence, most sites would then need to scour their site and purge it of anything copyright infringing. that's a fuckton of time and money, especially for user-driven sites like youtube, wikipedia and reddit. the site would be responsible for anything the users do, and repercussions of a moment of respite would be dire. heck, with this bill, google would have to work very damn hard to somehow prevent copyrighted content from showing up in it's results. i mean, how would that be even remotely possible?
yes, the sites that are taken down would be able to argue that they're innocent (in all likelihood, they probably are) but they'd have to take it to court, which is a time-consuming process. in the meantime, they'd have lost weeks worth of revenues, not counting legal fees. worst still, there's practically, wait, screw that, there is no penalty AT ALL towards the copyright holder making the claim should the reported site be found innocent. they don't even have to say sorry.
tl;dr, so for easier understanding, an infographic by the folks at http://americancensorship.org:
wait, doesn't this just affect US citizens? why the frak should i care when i'm half a world away?
true. but you'd be incredibly naive (and stupid) to think that this doesn't affect you at all.
here's my argument(s):
a. the Internet would cease to be the Internet.
think of it like this: if say, youtube was reported, at first glance, it's true that only US citizens wouldn't be able to access it. but if you think further, you'd come to realize that their funding is cut off for the entirety of the takedown. they might be able to hold on for a while, but a couple of reports later, they'd have lost millions of dollars worth of revenue that they'd never recuperate. then we, the rest of the world, lose youtube. apply the same concept to wikipedia, facebook, twitter or anything else, and soon we'd be out of sites to visit since they've all gone bankrupt. just imagine, a world without those things: who're you gonna turn to for that essay that you need done tonight? how are you gonna write messages (less than 140 words) without cost? and God forbid, where are girls going to post photos of them in front of a bathroom mirror for the rest of the world to see. okay, that's sexist, so guys included too. (on a personal note, i'd miss reddit. and 9gag. yes 9gag would be affected too)
taking into account that most of the top visited sites in the world are US-based, i'd say the Internet is screwed.
*note that the bill considers any sites with a ".com" as a US site, and hence liable. that's like, half the Internet right?
b. America's a pretty big a$$ place.
and being a pretty big a$$ place, it's also got some pretty big a$$ influences. be it economical or political, the US of A is right up there with... well, i'm pretty sure only those nice China folks can compete economically. as for political, America say wank, the world wanks, or whatever the american equivalent to wank is (yes, i know what it is, but wank sounds nicer!). do you really think old Uncle Sam won't start telling other folks to do the same thing? and eventually, sooner or later, other nations will follow suit. and then who's going to start crying? you, you, and you. yes, you too.
it might take at best a decade or two, but mark my words, if SOPA & PIPA do pass, every other nation on the globe would draft up something similar eventually.
c. it's the first step to 1984.
as in, George Orwell's masterpiece novel, 1984. you know, where the government controls everything including your brain. i mean thoughts.
sure, it's technically supposed to stop piracy, but really, it's just a start towards internet censorship. SOPA and PIPA practically gives the government unprecedented power over the Internet and as we all know, there's no way the lovely government's going to abuse that power right? i mean, the government is like, completely, totally incorruptible, right?
with SOPA & PIPA, governments would easily be able to censor anything on the Internet, effectively dealing crippling blows to any attempt to voicing out opinions that are even remotely against the administration or organizing rallies to combat oppression.
the African-Americans had Martin Luther King Jr.(happy belated birthday btw), India had Gandhi, the world has the Internet. and it's threatened.
free speech is going to die, unless the world takes a stance now. sod off SOPA, frak off PIPA, leave teh webz alone. we like it as it is.
so, what the frakking frak can we do, seeing as we're not US citizens?
there are plenty of petitions for non-US people, such as this and this.
but mostly, just get the word out. spread it out on twitter (#stopSOPA, #stopPIPA, etc.) or facebook so that more people will know about it. if you've got friends in the States tell them to write to their representatives in Congress.
more on SOPA, and PIPA:
http://americancensorship.org/
reddit: SOPA faq
reddit: how SOPA can affect netizens outside US
reddit: technical examination of SOPA and PIPA
Wikipedia: SOPA Initiative
CNet: sites blackout in protest of SOPA & PIPA
and a bunch of other stuff if you google it.
p.s. hats off to the sites participating in the January 18th blackout, even though it most certainly hurts them financially. thank you Wikipedia, reddit, and the rest. kudos to Google too for including info on SOPA & PIPA on it's front page.
images credit to reddit: SOPA awareness graphics
