The Internet Strikes Back!

Up until this week, it's safe to assume that very few Americans had ever heard of SOPA or PIPA, much less formed an opinion about them.

But all of that changed when the Internet giants like Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia joined forces to make all of us realize what our world would be like without a free and unfettered net. Google blacked out its logo, Wikipedia's English version went offline, and site after site offered links for users to contact their representatives in Washington to protest these proposed bills.

By the end of the day on January 19th, Google had collected over 7 million signatures opposing SOPA and PIPA, and members of Congress, even those who had supported the bills, were practically tripping over themselves to run away from them. For the moment, SOPA and PIPA are off the table, but it's unlikely that Hollywood and the Chamber of Commerce will give up easily.

There are so many things wrong with SOPA and PIPA that it is difficult to know where to start, but perhaps the most obvious one is how these bills distort the balance of power between a creator and an end user under copyright law. According to these bills, the movie and record industries would be entitled to a “private right of action” in which they could directly target any site they believe is dedicated to or even “facilitating” infringement of copyright and have full immunity for doing so if their claims are proven false.

Not only is this a recipe for blackmailing any website hosting material a corporation doesn't want public; it would also eviscerate any remaining rights to the “fair use” provision of copyright law. No one would want to play the Talking Heads' “I want to make him stay up all night” as background music for their baby videos, or parody Lady Gaga's “Telephone,” since it it could be interpreted as “infringement” according to these bills, and no internet provider would take the risk of hosting this kind of material on its site. These bills would foster a “guilty until proven innocent” atmosphere on the web that would be tantamount to corporate censorship and destructive of the kind of creativity that thrives on the access the internet offers to all kinds of art, media, and information.

But the most frustrating thing about these bills is that this kind of legislation has been proven over and over again not to work. Since the 1976 Copyright Law, content providers have gone to Congress sixteen times to create more and more restrictive copyright laws, and these laws have done absolutely nothing to solve the problem of pirated copies and illegal downloads. Taking down websites will not stop piracy, and prosecuting people for downloading movies and music will not ensure that they then purchase a legal copy.

In fact, one reason that music sales are on the rise again, may well be that new technological devices like the iPhone and iPad are making people want more content accessible all the time. Yet the corporate content providers continue to try to muzzle the very technology that increases demand for what they supply.

I am not denying that illegal downloading is an issue. The very qualities that make the Internet so attractive and so powerful are also those that can make it quite a dangerous place. Every flavor of pornography is accessible with a few keystrokes, viruses come disguised as love letters, and there are few of us left who have not received one of those “our database has been hacked” notifications, meaning that some unscrupulous person now knows our name, address, and other private information.

But these dangers do not stop us from using the Internet every day (and probably every hour) of our lives. In fact, what I find so exhilarating about yesterday's protests is the way the Internet can magnify the voices of individuals into something so powerful that it can topple governments and turn corporate lobbying on its head.

Yesterday millions of people used the Internet to strike back at legislation written by corporate lobbyists solely for the benefit of corporate media that would have undermined our fundamental values of free speech, fair use, and the right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. We witnessed more than the defeat of some terrible legislation; we also witnessed democracy in action on an unprecedented scale, and that is truly something to celebrate.