January 26, 2012
The recent debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) comes down to two vastly contradictory sets of claims, one of which is much more valid and sound than the other. The stated purpose of both bills is to protect copyrighted material from illegal downloads on the Internet. Opponents of the bills argue that not only will the legislation be ineffective but also that it could potentially “break the Internet” by compromising the security of domain addresses, the free flow of information and free speech.
Proponents of the bills counter, naively, that there is no language in the bills that would have any impact on free speech and that there are no technical issues related to filtering sites out of the Domain Name System. Supporters argue, contrary to much evidence, that SOPA and PIPA would benefit the economy by increasing media jobs and income, while opponents argue that the bills would harm the economy by smothering innovation and growth on the Internet.
It is obvious that parties on both sides are arguing at least partially from self-interest. Content producers want to be paid for their work while search engines and other websites do not want to spend inordinate amounts of money and efforts to police themselves under threat of being blocked from the internet in America. This is a legitimate and perhaps inevitable conflict between the enormously profitable—and therefore politically powerful —media industry and the popular, dynamic, nascent, yet also enormously profitable industry of information networking that has exploded with the rise of the Internet.
In this case, the evidence stacks up strongly against regulation of the Internet in the way SOPA and PIPA propose. Many Internet security experts have stated that the implementation of the bills would severely undermine Internet security. In an article for Ars Technica, Julian Sanchez points out numerous economic indicators that the media industry is outperforming the rest of the economy. A study by the Swiss government suggests that individuals who illegally download content actually spend more money on media content than people who do not. A reasoned view of the situation shows that SOPA and PIPA could not be safely and effectively implemented, and regardless, the problems that SOPA and PIPA are supposed to solve do not really exist as vital economic issues. What do exist, however, are the civil liberty implications of restrictions on Internet usage.
Columnist Dan Gillmor contends of SOPA and PIPA that “these ‘fixes’ are designed to wrest control of these tools from the masses and recentralize what has promised to be the most open means of communication and collaboration ever invented.”
He goes on to warn against an “information monoculture” in which the government and corporations exercise complete supervision over the content of the Internet. Gillmor’s fears may or may not be related to actual intentions of media executives and the politicians whose campaign war chests they so generously endow, but the fact remains that SOPA and PIPA are misguided —even dangerous—efforts for the benefit of a small interest group at great expense to the rest of the world. Until widespread outrage convinced politicians that they needed people’s votes more than lobbyist’s money, Congress was willing to jeopardize constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties to impose legislation that is likely to cause much more harm than good to the general economy.
The effectiveness of protests through the Internet and beyond has been a dramatic show of force by opponents of the bills. The fact that so many people feel threatened by the bills indicates a growing wariness of handing tools to control the flow of information over to the government, or perhaps more precisely: the governmental-industrial complex.
In a country and era in which civil liberties have been openly under siege by legislation such as the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act, wariness of and vocal opposition to attacks on liberties is the obligation of good citizens. The recent protests in defense of Internet freedom are a refreshing indication that Americans will not surrender their liberties without a fight. Apathy is simply not an option when basic freedoms are being sold for the benefit of corporate interests.