Combating Piracy by Listening, Not Lobbying

Even though it got covered up in the throes of Christmas and, later, the Republican Presidential Primary process, I’ve kept on top of this ruckus concerning SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act).

From their birth to their ‘death’, these pieces of legislation were emblematic of what’s wrong with Washington today (and I don’t know if it’s possible I could have said that in a more clichéd term if I tried). However, for those who weren’t affected by Wikipedia’s blackout and Google’s censored main page this January, I’ll offer a primer on what I am discussing.

The stated purpose of SOPA, in the Senate, and PIPA, in the House, was to curb online piracy and help protect the copyrights that American companies held. Like most bills, they were introduced without fanfare and, for most Americans, puttered along under the radar until their committee hearing. However, due to a truly grassroots education effort, online opposition to these bills grew with increasing amounts of petitions and “Call your Congressmen” efforts before finally culminating in the Wikipedia Blackout on January 18^th that, alongside a phone campaign that shut down the telecommunications system on Capitol Hill, caused the mainstream media to report on the opposition to these bills.

In response to an online petition posted to the White House’s website, President Obama had written a blog post denouncing the content of SOPA and PIPA a week previously and, following the blackout, support and sponsorship for both bills fell off rapidly. Currently, SOPA and PIPA are in legal limbo while their backers have promised to rewrite the legislation.

The vehement opposition to these bills, especially from Silicon Valley, isn’t surprising when you realize how SOPA and PIPA were written in order to enforce their goals. In essence, both pieces of legislation made it legal to block Domain Name Systems for all websites that either the Attorney General or copyright holders determined were dedicated to infringing on copyrighted materials.

However, the execution of this idea is flawed in many ways. First of all, the definition of what websites are allowed to be DNS-blocked is unnecessarily broad which, combined with the fact that copyright holders are allowed to submit takedown notices, would lead to situations where YouTube could be blocked due to someone posting a video of them dancing to a copyrighted song or having a copyrighted piece of artwork displayed in the background.

Secondly, DNS-blocking itself is problematic, as doing so would literally erase a website from the Internet. Search engines like Google would be unable to search for a DNS-blocked website. Many websites that depend on such traffic would have to enact draconian measures in order to not get a takedown notice from a copyright holder with lawyers on retainer.

Yet, the Internet today is all about sharing. I can write this blog and post it on a website for free, before putting it on Facebook as well as Tweeting about it to my social network, at which point you can read it and opt to share it amongst your own social network if you find it entertaining or educational enough. This is what’s fueled the creativity that the Internet is renowned for and American companies have profited off of.

If the burden of policing the millions and billions of pieces of content that’s generated online for copyrighted materials is placed on small Internet startups, all this innovation our country is so proud of is going to be frozen in its tracks. Yet, these bills were given the green light in committee to go ahead, despite the fact that, even when they were obscure, there were many respected technological experts that were sounding warnings about these bills.

What this SOPA/PIPA saga reveals is multitudes. It shows that our elected officials in charge of passing legislation about the Internet don’t understand the Internet. It shows that lobbyists were able to still keep these bills going strong for three months after the magnifying glass was turned on them, right until multiple industry giants took all of their services down for a day. It shows that Hollywood and other content producers are still unwilling to evolve how piracy should be fought online when it requires them to change their business practices. After all, my opposition to SOPA and PIPA does not make me a piracy supporter, despite what Hollywood might say.

I believe that protecting the content that Americans make is unshakably important to our continued economic growth. However, any solution to America’s foreign piracy problem must be found through listening to Silicon Valley and technological experts, instead of paying lobbyists to promote ill-researched legislation. After all, protecting content can’t be done at the expense of American creativity, thought, or speech.

Reprinted from State Senator Curt Thompson's (D-5th) blog. Also, check the Senator out on Facebook and Twitter.