What Happened to the Internet? SOPA/PIPA Blackouts Planned

UPDATE: Great success! SOPA and PIPA were dropped by Congress (for now). See the numbers ... http://www.sopastrike.com/numbers

SOPA and PIPA Blackouts are planned across the web tomorrow in protest of the two acts before the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. The web is going on strike as a protest to legislation that tampers with the participatory culture of the web for the sake of large corporate and government interests.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

What is SOPA? What is PIPA?
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) aim to prevent online piracy of films and other forms of media by giving the US government and copyright holders the right to seek court orders against sites they believe infringe copyright or enable infringement.

Sites affected include search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, ecommerce sites like eBay, and participatory sites like Wikipedia and Reddit. Really, every site is affected but these are the big players opposing SOPA and PIPA. Other opponents include Reporters without Borders, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch and tech-news sites like Boing Boing.

So what’s the big deal? Copyright infringement is wrong.
Copyright infringement seems to be at the heart of this legislation, but the real opposition is that the legislation introduces censorship and abuse by larger powers while not stopping piracy. People who want to pirate media will always find a way around censorship. In this particular case, downloaders will simply enter the IP address for the site vs the domain name. For example, http://198.171.79.36/ is the IP address for http://www.whois.net/.

The legislation does not stop piracy but if passed, gives the US government and rights holders the ability to get a site censored. On top of that, US-based internet service providers, payment processors and advertisers would be prohibited from doing business with alleged infringers. SOPA, in particular, could force search engines to remove infringing sites from their results.

Opponents to SOPA and PIPA say the legislation is destructive, unconstitutional, an extraordinary measure and that it endangers free speech and has an impact on users beyond the US.

1. Both bills would allow the blocking of entire websites, even though the site may contain a large percentage of perfectly legal speech.

2. Sites can be shut down whether or not they’ve done something wrong. Enabling or facilitating copyright infringement could be flagged due to a commenter linking to a site that uses a copyrighted image inappropriately. The site with the comment is liable to the full extent of the broad enforcement powers.

This is a big deal for social media sites and participatory sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit, and any site with comments open.

3. SOPA doesn’t stop real pirates (not the cap and eye-patch kind but the real infringers) but it does mean that an ordinary user who posts copyrighted work could go to jail for five years. If you post on YouTube or Facebook a link to your cat dancing to a copyright song, that means you could face prison.

4. SOPA affects how domain names and registrations are handled, which may open security loopholes and give hackers easier access to websites.

5. It will cost $47 million tax dollars a year for a bandaid that doesn’t stick to the right injury.

At all points of transition in cultural and entertainment history, we see panic from the establishment and energy wasted seeking bans to protect the old ways. The first recorded music freaked out musicians. TV freaked the movie makers. The written word upset the orators. Go further back, electricity upset candlemakers. The printing press upset the scribes. It’s all so misguided.

Related Articles
Yahoo! News on Wikipedia’s planned blackout

Copyblogger on the problem with SOPA (and how to stop it)

Wikipedia is going dark for 24 hours. Google has a protest planned

Here’s a nice bit of content that infringes in the best way to explain SOPA.
“You don’t destroy the internet because it doesn’t fit your business model.”