January 19, 2012 by claudia.smith
On the 18th January some of the biggest global sites were blacked out in a protest against the proposed changes to US legislation, that would make publishing just about any web content a minefield, as Google explained in their official blog post on Wednesday 18th:
“Right now in Washington D.C., Congress is considering two bills that would censor the web and impose burdensome regulations on American businesses. They’re known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate, and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House.”
Extending their reach outside of the States and across global internet sites, the act will allow intellectual property owners to shut down foreign sites where they have a copyright claim, demanding that search engines such as Google remove the site from their listings, and that ISP’s prevent visitors from accessing the site, as Gizmodo’s Brian Barrett explains:
“The language in SOPA implies that it’s aimed squarely at foreign offenders; that’s why it focuses on cutting off sources of funding and traffic (generally US-based) rather than directly attacking a targeted site (which is outside of US legal jurisdiction).”
The main cause for concern, should the bill go through, will be the ability for IP owners to demand that sites are shut down, once a notice has been served to those believed to be infringing copyright laws, with nothing more than a “good faith belief” that their copyright has been infringed. Sites such as Google will be given five days, from the point a quarantine notice is issued, to comply with the demands.
The global blogging platform WordPress joined the blackout on Wednesday, in protest against the proposed SOPA bill, which saw their usual homepage replaced with the following statement:
“Many websites are blacked out today to protest proposed U.S. legislation that threatens internet freedom: the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). From personal blogs to Wikipedia, sites all over the web — including this one — are asking you to help stop this dangerous legislation from being passed.”
The implications would be far reaching; completely annihilating any opportunity for plurality across worldwide internet sites, and giving IP owners the opportunity to monopolise markets, with the flimsiest of unregulated claims against a given site, claiming a “good faith belief” that a site is infringing their copyright ownership.
The term “good faith” in itself is a paradox under the circumstances, when it has the potential to be used in order to eliminate all existing competition on the web, as Barrett goes on to note:
“Google could easily take it upon itself to delist every viral video site on the internet with a “good faith belief” that they’re hosting copyrighted material. Leaving YouTube as the only major video portal. Comcast (an ISP) owns NBC (a content provider). Think they might have an interest in shuttering some rival domains? Under SOPA, they can do it without even asking for permission.”
Momentum for campaigning against the bill has been slow, perhaps because potential backers felt it was unlikely to be passed, but the progress of the bill has been such, that the White House is now opposing the proposed legislation, side by side with influential business men and women and founders of internet technologies. The bill is still popular amongst the House of Representatives, and although the vote has been postponed, with recommendations that alternatives to the SOPA act be reviewed, to maintain the ‘structure’ and ‘entrepreneurialism’ of the internet, many are still campaigning for it to be thrown out completely.
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