Roshan Ravishankar ’14
In response to SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and the PIPA (Protect IP Act), online “free encyclopedia” Wikipedia recently went on a one-day blackout, protesting the radical and unreasonable approach Congress has decided to take to minimize Internet piracy, an approach that, if passed, will prove economically detrimental.
While the bills are supported heavily by the entertainment industry, companies like Google, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo and Wikipedia have ardently crusaded against the bill. Internet piracy has become a major issue for the entertainment industry. Megaupload, a Hong Kong based company, was recently shut down by the government, costing copyright holders more than 500 million dollars, according to USA Today.
Intellectual property needs to be protected, but SOPA and PIPA’s draconian tactics to thwart Internet piracy will prove not only ineffective, but also dangerous. The entertainment industry faces serious problems with “rogue” sites. These are sites that are based in the United States and whose sole purpose is the distribution of copyrighted material. Though these bills claim to focus on these rogue sites, according to Article 103, any site (including Facebook, Google, etc.) could be censored or shut down if even a single user post is found to violate copyright law.
With millions of users, it is unrealistic to expect sites like Facebook and Youtube to monitor the activity of each and every one of its users, especially when these sites are already willingly compliant with copyright law. Youtube, for example, will remove a video from its site if the video’s copyright holders so request. Moreover, the heavy-handed punishments proposed by SOPA and PIPA would dampen the spirit of our creative minds and hamper the growth of revolutionary Internet technology. A budding company could be struck down in minutes if by some misfortune an irresponsible user links to a site that infringes copyright law. If these bills were around several years ago, innovative websites like Facebook and Twitter, websites that have played vital roles in events as momentous as political revolutions, could have been shut down in their infancy.
In addition these bills will do little to prevent the spread of piracy. Even if sites are blocked, numerous ways exist to circumvent the government’s will. PirateBay, one of the most prominent torrent sites, said in a statement that if its site were to come under attack, it would in the “worst case change the top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use.” Thus, even if the government was able to block a site dedicated to copyright infringement, the site would simply need to relocate. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If Congress truly wants to stop piracy, it needs a multi-dimensional, well thought out plan, instead of the unreasonable ones currently being proposed.
Still, SOPA and PIPA highlight an important issue: how can intellectual property be preserved? Movie producers, actors, and musicians should be free to create their work and sell it without fear of losing a majority of their profit, regardless of merit. Stripping them of these rights is inconsistent with our constitutional spirit. Companies like Google and Facebook should meet the entertainment industry halfway, and do the best they can to prevent internet piracy. Youtube has already started, creating a program called Content ID, which according to its website, scans over one-hundred years of video a day. While reform is needed, SOPA and PIPA prove to be hazardous and unfruitful, doing little to protect intellectual property and instead putting a frightening amount of power in the hands of the wrong people.