SOPA, PIPA and Digital Demon Banishing – Wikipedia Style

The most influential players of the web banded themselves together on Wednesday in protest against what they see as the most serious threat to the freedom of expression on the internet.

The two demons, identified by Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, Wordpress, Reddit and a few more well-known sites, are SOPA – Stop Online Piracy Act – and PIPA – Protect Intellectual Property Act – were the two bills to be taken up by the US Congress for a debate.

On Wednesday, there was a total blackout of Wikipedia and the supporting sites. Google, meanwhile, attracted nearly 7 million users to force the US Congress to listen to the voice of people. In short, the effect was glaringly obvious.

In a matter of two days, the US Congress appears to have backed down; it halted the debate for the ‘time being’. "In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday's vote on the PROTECT IP Act," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said in a statement on Friday. The supporters of the Bill, both from the Republican camp and Democratic camp, made no effort to conceal the circumstances which forced them to do so. Rather than admitting that they got it wrong, they promised to take on board the concerns raised by the critics seriously when addressing the issue of online piracy.

It is very noble of Congressmen/women to respond in the spirit of give-and-take, indeed. It was the right decision to make rather than being dictatorial.

The bills, in their original form, contained plans to punish the website owners for publishing copyrighted materials – especially movies and music – by banning them. Without stopping at that, the bills wanted to punish those who ‘educate’ the eager visitors how to access the banned sites.

Then, it shows the alarming spread of venom of the bills through the physical hierarchy of the internet: a court order issued on behalf of a victim of copyright can stop advertisers and online payment sites from doing business with the offenders; an order of this nature can stop search engines from listing ‘rogue’ sites and eventually forces Internet Service Providers – your local internet provider – to block the access to the sites.

No sooner had the online protest wound up successfully than the website of a prominent backer of the bill – The Motion Picture Association of America was hacked by Anonymous, the notorious hacking group, which caused havoc by attacking famous sites last year. The digital rampage took an ominous turn, when the group hacked a chain of websites belonging to the US government, including the US Justice Department and the FBI, US Copyright Office and even the White House.

Anonymous may have been particularly angered by the move by the FBI to block the access to Megaupload.com, a leading file sharing site based in Hong Kong.

Four arrests were made in New Zealand and later they were charged with piracy under existing anti-piracy laws. Some see the speed at which the FBI acted against the site as something more than a coincidence, in the aftermath of the U-Turn by the Congress.

In fairness to the US Congress, we have to admit that piracy – online or otherwise – is not trivial. If the trend continued unabated, artists, musicians, writers, comedians, educationists, programmers, designers and many more in other fields would not see stimuli in their respective fields for creativity.

For instance, piracy has already brought the music industry to its knees, if Apple’s iTunes – encouraging them to sell a song at as low as 0.69 cents - taught them how to bend.

The online giants, which organized the very successful protest against the bills, are fully aware of the flip side, though. However, they were, quite rightly, scared of the extent to which the legal tentacles could be extended to punish, not only the culprits but also the others for merely associating with them owing to technical complexities, which in turn could leave them collectively at the mercy of corporate lawyers and bureaucrats.

Therefore, there is a genuine need of a balance to be struck. The lessons learnt by the US lawmakers - for bowing to the pressure of corporate giants while not taking seriously the views of millions of online users - send a clear message to any government, which, may be tempted to make attempts to stamp its authority against the flow of information through the internet – and the nature of facing the music when it horribly goes wrong.

- Asian Tribune –
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