Both of these bills, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) are being vehemently hated by everyone except those who proposed them in the first place. The two bills are being termed as ‘the most hated bills’ in the recent US legislative history. But now finally the protestors can breathe a sigh of relief as the bills have been postponed until wider consensus. Some critics are dubbing the delay to legislate on the bills as a victory sign for the opponents, while others are saying that the delay does not mean their complete deaths. Both the bills have generated intense controversy from every corner, both online and offline. The bills are being viewed as ‘making no common sense’ for the wider public as they cater to a smaller group and lobbyists.
Many Hollywood studio heads have on the condition of anonymity even expressed to reporters that they did not agree with Obama’s approach regarding SOPA and PIPA. He has disappointed them intensely that some are even considering not giving any donations to his re-election campaign. Now it has become a matter of Obama’s votes than a matter of votes for the two bills. But one thing is for sure that since they have been delayed, they at least won’t be seen around this year. But others are comparing them to zombies and warning about them returning to haunt the fighters for freedom of expression, citing the example of the Health Care Bill which prior to being signed into law by Obama in 2010 was moving around in the Congress for over two decades for proper legislation. For these two controversial bills, one has to wait and see till after the November’s U.S. Presidential elections when Obama might take risks to pick it up again, if he remains in the Oval Office.
Just as a man has a right to speak his mind and express his opinions regardless of how different they are from a majority opinion in a democracy, freedom of the internet is also a basic human right in today’s post-modern world looming with advancements in technology daily. This cannot change the fact that internet piracy is a clear and present cyber-crime that cannot be ignored. The social media has developed so far that there are dedicated online publications for vast number of fields which do not get printed and hence intellectual property rights have to be safeguarded as well. Not to mention the monetary loss that piracyis costing online brands which spend billions of dollars for their sole copyrights to an image, a video, an article or any piece of online content.
The very outreach that a mass medium like the internet provides is the reason why top online brands like Facebook, Wikipedia, WordPress, Mozilla, and others have backlashed against the passage of SOPA and PIPA. The web is now a global entity where most companies from the U.S. operate. Legislating a bill relating to internet usage in the U.S. Congress will then not only have an impact for the U.S. internet companies and customers but internationally on the global internet which has become a common entity for the global community to share with each other. A word has to be said about the richness of internet without it being censored and scrutinized, which also helps in maintaining innovation. A lot of production companies of films, music, games and design are for passing of the bills but not without proper assurance to technological innovation remaining unharmed. For someone whose creativity is being stolen without recognition, reference or monetary compensation, their side is worth assessing definitively.
Both SOPA and PIPA bypass the protections from liability provided by Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which is a better copyright law. Hence, for the Americans in particular these bills meant trampling upon their Constitutional rights, but for the non-Americans it meant that a lot of the internet content would get censored under unrestricted government authority that deems a certain online content to be of questionable nature in their book, hence reducing freedom of speech. Internet is thus one place where people can express their views without a shred of unease about consequences. It will also be robbing people of one platform where they could criticize without any media bias which is an element lacking in most mainstream media.
An entity such as the internet is a complex one to legislate bills about which further brings its complicity to confusing technical aspects. Though bills are always written in a legal jargon that only lawyers and legislators could understand, but their domain of influence and implementation is a common man upon whom they will be acted. He needs to be certain that his voice and opinion has been counted for and represented in formulation of an Act. For SOPA and PIPA, these bills did not pass through the process of public debate and evaluation. If America is to function as a democracy and present a world model of that, then it has to tread these dangerous “cyber-waters” carefully. Some experts believe that till the time the bills go through a rigorous open arguments by the public it is a folly to have had pushed them in a hurry like this. May be U.S. lawmakers are teasing the internet users with a tinge and a trailer about what is to come their way.
What would be better yet is for them to take up a right route where they satisfy the internet companies against piracy and also guarantee the users their freedom of an online experience where they can download and enjoy online content under the law and also articulate views. Rather it would be rational to take actions against copyrights trespassers on individual cases than to put everyone under same pressure. But if the bills are to be carried forward, then they should guarantee both creative and technological innovation as well as allow the public a sense of freedom to surf online without a threat of being supervised for their online activities.
Although one thing is for certain that when internet history is written, there will always be a case of success for the people’s movement against something they felt was their right to be facilitated with rather than legislated upon. Not only did the people come out in large numbers against the passing of the bills, but many internet companies also took a strong stand against them by blacking out for an entire day on January 18. I think the consensus on SOPA and PIPA is quite clear to most people going by what happened on January 18.
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