SOPA

So, today is January 18th - the official biggest day of protesting against the SOPA act being submitted for the government to vote on later this month. News of this is all over the...well the news. And some sites have blocked service for the day, others are posting images and links to draw attention to the SOPA protests. It was all over the public news, all over the local news, all over the national news, all over the radio and TV and internet. You'd have to be living under a rock to not have heard of it as of late. I'm sure people are still talking about it - I know I am.

So, what is it I can say about SOPA that hasn't already been said? Not much. I am sure you've all heard how SOPA was created to solve a large problem over the internet today, which is media piracy. I understand the need for action too - especially when everything is going digital. We're looking at a not-too-distant world where everything is stored on the cloud and a world where everyone is connected to the same line that every bit of information ever written down, broadcast, thought, or drawn resides. Intellectual property is more online than ever, easier to obtain, and harder to police. So there is a relevant need to lay some laws down on this lawless internet landscape we're currently living in.

SOPA itself is not a bad idea. It is a good idea to protect intellectual property and protect people's right to create and own their works. It's a good idea to crack down on sites providing illegal downloads, provide more strict penalties to offenders, flag harmful or illegal sites, and really reveal this monster on the internet for what it is. I am all for intentional and unrelenting pursuit of sites that are themselves purposely and knowingly participating in piracy an other illegal acts online. What I am against, and what I believe the majority of anti-SOPA movement members would agree upon, is the fact that SOPA would lay the groundwork to take down companies on bogus claims, on the smallest technicality, and from posts from users they can't always police themselves.

The internet has so many sites and tools available to it and the users, there is no way that a large site such as Google or Facebook or Wikipedia is going to be able to always monitor everything that is going on with their sites at all times. If they were to comply with laws that required this, it would take away a lot of user generated content - both currently in existence and in the future. Many items already out there may need to be removed and new items would be more difficult to submit and share. People wouldn't be able to post links, videos, blogs, articles, music, forums - none of this unless it was either all personally approved by a company before submitting, and even then many features would need to be disabled just to be safe. People would become very paranoid and the internet would no longer be about free speech.

And that's the thing - the internet is made up of privately owned computers, servers, switches, routers, hubs, ports, and addresses. These are not owned by the government. The government has their own information posted on the internet and they own their own equipment, but they don't own the internet. If I want to email my friend, the government does not and can not own that. If I want to share a video clip link to my cousin - that is between me and my cousin. If I want to post something on a web site, that is between me and the site owners. As long as I am not stealing any copyrighted material, claiming someone else's work as my own, or distributing pirated content - then what business is it of anyone what I post, share, or view online? What part of anti-piracy would play into information completely unrelated to piracy?

If we want to control the internet, we can do this on our own dime, as we see fit. We can set up firewalls, create anti-virus programs, use the right tools, block sites on a personal level, and choose what we will allow into our computers. Companies can restrict content as they wish, but it shouldn't be mandated. What we can't feasibly stop the internet from doing is allowing people to create their own content, share their thoughts, post their links, and do whatever they feel they want to use the internet for. We can't control this anymore than we can control what shoes someone chooses to buy, what tie they want to wear, which car they want to drive, and who they want their friends to be. At the heart of the internet is that thing that makes us human - the freedom to be and act and express ourselves in the way we choose. To take that away from us, it's inhuman and very anti-American.