Internet Black Out
The Day the Net Goes Dark
Source: Flickr user Antoon's Foobar
Tomorrow, Wednesday January 18 at 5:00 UTC Wikipedia is going to go dark. Reddit, MoveOn, TwitPic, WordPress, Mozilla, and more are all going to shut down for 24 hours to protest two pieces of legislation in America that could be the worst things to ever happen to the Internet: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). These two pieces of legislation, so innocuously named to sound like good things, could be the gateway laws that usher in a new authoritarian regime of internet censorship all in the name of protecting intellectual property.
In reality, all these bills would do is allow for the flagrant censorship and criminalization of free speech.
Screenshot of Wikipedia banner on 17th Jan 2012.
Protest SOPA and PIPA
Simply put, SOPA and PIPA seek to further criminalize the sharing of copyrighted material on the internet. They allow for the punishment of internet users who use copyrighted material and the blacklisting of websites that facilitate such activity. Sounds good so far if not for the fact that posting copyrighted material online is already illegal in the United States and that the US Justice Department already has ways to seek prosecution on foreign owned and hosted websites that provide pirated material.
Obviously though, online piracy still occurs, so perhaps a strengthening of those laws is in order. SOPA and PIPA strengthen such regulations to the extent that sites like YouTube and Twitter – major forces in the free exchange of ideas that have led to the spread of democracy worldwide – could be shut down because some people choose to use those sites to break US copyright law. So vague and all encompassing is the language in these two bills that almost any site that allows for user generated content (e.g. a comment section at the end of an article) could be at risk of being shut down.
Censorship Map from Wikipedia
It seems only appropriate that given the stakes of this battle – their very existence – that major websites that depend on user generated content are going to protest this legislation but doing just that: shutting down. It is a major indicator of the severity of this issue that Wikipedia is opting to join in. As the Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner explains,
In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That’s a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them.
But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not.
That’s exactly what’s at stake here, the existence of Wikipedia and other websites like it. Over the past months various political action groups including Fight For The Future and Demand Progress have petitioned the United States Congress to shoot down these bills. The White House has released a statement addressing these petitions. Despite the uproar of protest from the people of the United States, the bills seemed to still maintain almost overwhelming support in both houses of Congress until recently.
When it comes down to it, SOPA and PIPA are the last ditch efforts of the entertainment industry to grab onto and try to maintain a marketplace that allows them to control the flow of media and protect the padding on their profit margins. It is another way for film and music executives to try to keep the entertainment market in a place where they can continue to exercise control over it. But the truth of the matter is that the internet changed the entertainment market, and it is changing the way that the world views information, ideas, and what it means to own media. Before digitization, the world market was based on materials: a product based system where it cost a finite amount of money to produce, manufacture, and distribute media. With the advent of the internet and the free and open exchange of information that it allowed, this materialistic economy became less and less viable as more and more companies moved towards service based markets. When media becomes information that is infinitely replicable at no cost instead of physical grooves cut into vinyl, how do you quantify what one should pay for it? When every product can be reduced to free and open information, the basic tenant of economics – scarcity – becomes entirely obsolete.
Tomorrow when you log into your favorite websites and are greeted with a simple blackout message, know that this is what the internet of the future could look like. If we in the United States allow our government even the opportunity to perhaps maybe abuse censorship powers, that opens the door for future authoritarian control of the engine of free expression. What it means to be a free and just society has changed with the internet, and what it means to have a free market economy in such a liberty based society is also changing. Don’t let anyone, not big business CEO’s, not legislators, not anyone, decide what the internet can and cannot be for a free society. Sign the petitions. Support the protests. Stop these bills and those like them in other countries.
There are so many falsehoods, mischaracterizations and utter flaming pieces of rhetorical B.S. in this that it's staggering.
The US Chamber of Commerce and Unions back these pieces of proposed legislation which are still in flux.
The complete lack of comprehensive understanding here would be sad, or infuriating, but it's so off the charts that it's just funny. Dude, you're the anti-SOPA-est! Rad! Next time there's a complex issue in front of Congress, whose voice will you parrot?
Flux or not, the bills are deliberately ambiguous (read: misleading) in their structure and form that one cannot unequivocally reel off the ramifications that they will have on the web. Therefore, the only logical way to come at the situation is to take the advice of experts, and worry about how confining the new set of laws will be on an international spectrum.
But then again, if unwaveringly taking one side of a debate means that you are immediately parroting anyone that has taken the same stance before you… The introduction of PIPA and SOPA is going to be even more restricting than I first thought!!!!
It's true that the bills are still in flux (PIPA in the senate for example has been postponed until next year – likely because the current President has said he would veto them as they are – and SOPA in the House has had many of its wide array of supporters pull out or ask for further review), but you are completely right: don't trust my editorialized version of the story, go find the facts for yourself.
You might find out that the Chamber of Commerce has deliberately misconstrued data and boldfaced lied about numbers in order to backup their support for DNS seizures. Or you might find out that major copyright and constitutional lawyers (including Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe) say that the bills are too blunt and too aggressive at best and unconstitutional at worst.
Seems like someone DID do their research. Owned.
Maybe you oughta check your rhetorical arguments before you wreck yourself, broham. Wouldn't want to look like a hypocrite.
Star, I don't understand – are you pro SOPA? This is a well-written article that gives a great overview of the potential dangers of a vaguely worded – proposal. Please explain what makes your own understanding so comprehensive, because I'd love to see a solid argument come out of your fingertips that isn't parroted..
Awesome piece Wesley. Ignore this douche.
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I didn't notice the URBAN TIMES go dark….
Their homepage had a big old banner about it!!
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