Last week, on Jan. 18, many individuals were shocked when they attempted to access Wikipedia and found the site to be completely blacked out. Other websites, such as Google, refrained from completely blacking out, but still placed a large black box over the logo. In total, an estimated 7,000 websites had blacked out in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).
Essentially, both of these bills were intended to stop Internet users from pirating copyrighted material. Which is not, in and of itself, a horrible thing. People are entitled to some kind of payment for the materials they produce. That’s a basic concept of our economy. We work hard because we are rewarded for the effort we put into what we produce.
The problem comes from the fact that these bills read as if they were written by a combination of Congressmen who don’t understand how the Internet works, and by lobbyists of the entertainment industry. Many of the sites that facilitate pirating are based outside of American borders, meaning they are outside of American jurisdiction. So, in an effort to control them, those sites will be starved of any revenue.
The Attorney General has the power to stop ad networks from dealing with sites that pirate material, essentially telling ad networks with whom they can and cannot do business. And, just to give the Attorney General more power, he or she could even stop Internet providers from allowing users to visit those sites.
One of the biggest issues is that any sites which allow for the embedding of copyrighted material are also held accountable, and thus liable for lawsuits. Say a friend of yours has a blog, and they post a video link from YouTube of a song they like. Since you like it and want to share it with more of your friends, you post it to Facebook. Suddenly you, your friend, YouTube, and Facebook could all be in trouble. Also, in a complete mockery of our idea of a judicial system, if an entertainment company accuses you of using copyrighted materials, it’s up to you to prove they are not copyrighted, not the company making the accusation.
Then, last week, something incredible happened. Millions of people took a stance, refusing to allow the greatest source of knowledge and communication that the world has ever known to be censored. Social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter, exploded with people deriding the bills. Anyone who went to Google was asked to sign a petition telling the government they were opposed to the bills. By the end of the day, Google was reporting more than 4.5 million people had signed the petition. Other websites set up forms that allowed you to fill in your address to automatically have a letter sent to a local or state Congressman, telling them you opposed the bills.
The most amazing part is that it worked. At least it has for the time being. On Jan. 20, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that consideration of the bill would be postponed.
The attempt to censor the Internet was halted by the voice of our generation, being vocalized through the very thing that would have been censored. That is an amazingly powerful thought. Now imagine what could be done about so many other issues if we could harness that same sense of unity again.