It’s a NOPA on Sopa, or so it would seem.
The world of the Internet is possibly in jeopardy with a few bills to be voted upon in congress. The bills, PIPA and SOPA, revolved around the concept of Internet censorship, the ability to shut down websites that hosted illegal material. These bills have been making their way to the US congress for a while now; this week, however, they were due to be voted upon and accordingly the Internet responded with a lot of its major websites holding blackouts and sure enough the bills were postponed. That said, it’s not the end as a new European law, ACTA, they sure do like their abbreviations, being announced and the business MEGAUPLOAD being shut down despite the laws not being voted on.
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| The blackout which raised a lot of awareness. Incidentally , please don't arrest me for linking to these things! |
The bills mean that if Google, Facebook or Youtube, some of the Internet’s largest businesses, could be shut down if they were to link people to illegal material. People would be monitored to see if they were perpetrating this. Now although this seems good to begin with, finally a way to defeat Internet piracy, the further you dig the more extreme these measures seem. ACTA would mean, for example, that if you quoted a copyrighted poem in an email, or attached the chorus to your favourite track more than 3 or so times then you would be disconnected from the Internet and prosecuted! SOPA would hold linkers accountable for their users, similar to prosecuting the postman if he delivered a copyright DVD to your door. Essentially it would be punishing the unwitting middleman, no matter the measures they take to prevent piracy.
The blackout got a lot of internet press and was enough to postpone the voting, with most famously Wikipedia, going down for the day, although there was a work around the message still got out to, according to Wikipedia, over a hundred million people, with Google signing up over 7million people to a petition against the bills.
So why did MEGAUPLOAD have to die? The creators are going to court due to the 10% of files shared on the file-sharing site, which had some customers having subscribed to, being pirated. Compared to other websites like pirate bay, which is set up for almost the sole purpose of pirating. But MEGAUPLOAD was in New Zealand and there they were able to raid the founder’s house, break the servers and arrest him. This came in the wake of it’s temporary shut down and a campaign/music video made by many celebrities in favour of the file sharing site, which was also temporarily removed for Copyright reasons! Bit stupid, to be honest.
So what’s set for the future? Large corporations do possess a lot of power and will continue to push such legislations, although with boycotts being instigated their support will probably become less visible. It is undeniable that the Internet is the modern day Wild West and is in need of some taming but over the top bills aren’t the best way of going about it. Instead of trying to maintain old business models, the companies should aim to follow the same principles of companies like Google, Facebook, Spotify, Apple and Netflix that are creating services which are viable competitors to piracy. The fact is that when given a choice between piracy and non piracy consumers will likely avoid the hassle of piracy for some adverts, a subscription or a small payment and that is how these companies thrive. Therefore, record labels and other firms should look to instead of alienating consumers with legislations and hindering new companies, like Spotify, they should try and invest in them, let Netflix users get newer films, give Spotify a larger library and then people will be more likely to use them than pirate and such!
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