Sunday, January 15, 2012
SOPA, PIPA protest to stand for the right of liberal democracy
The Arab Spring revolutions, especially in Egypt were called, "Facebook Revolutions."
With pending legislation in committee mark-up session in the the House of Represenatives HR 3261 many who spead information on the internet are using the "Youdia" to protest what could be a serious threat to liberal or substansive democracy in the United States and around the world. Political Warrior will follow the lead of Ken Wedding's Teaching Comparative Government and Politics in honoring a "No Blog Wednesday" Protest.
The SOPA acronym (Stop Internet Piracy Act) might sound like a good idea, but the fear is that it could fundamentally change the way we have, as Thomas Friedman may say, flattened the world. It is also a great example of the way our Congress works/or doesn't these days. Roll Call outlines the lobbying groups fighting hard to have influence the blocking or passing of this legislation:
Groups Ramp Up Lobbying Before SOPA Vote
David Carr of the New York Times spells out the danger of passing SOPA:
The Danger of an Attack on Piracy Online
The bill's author, Lamar Smith (R-Tx), defends the proposed legistlation here:
Fighting Online Piracy
However, despite the Congressman's claim, foreign websites, inluding Chinese blogs, etc. that are used here to study comparative government and politics could be restricted or censored. As Ken Wedding wrote in his blog:
"On January 18, Teaching Comparative will join Boing Boing, Reddit, and other sites around the Internet in opposing SOPA and PIPA, the pending US legislation that creates a punishing Internet censorship regime and exports it to the rest of the world. Teaching Comparative could never co-exist with a SOPA world.
There will be no blog entry on Wednesday.
If the proposed legislation passed in anything like its current form, I could never quote the contents of another site or even link to another website unless I was sure that no links to anything that infringes copyright appeared on that site. In order to link to a URL on any web site, I'd have to first confirm that no one had ever made an infringing link, anywhere on that site. That would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages. Even for an old guy like me with lots of time, that would be impossible. I'd be unable to tell you about potentially valuable teaching material.
If I failed to take those precautions, my finances could be frozen and depending on which version of the bill goes to the vote, my domains confiscated."
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House to take up anti-piracy bill in February
(Reuters) - The House of Representatives will resume work next month on a controversial bill aimed at stopping online piracy of movies, music and other content, a leading lawmaker said on Tuesday.
The anti-piracy legislation has been a top priority for entertainment companies, publishers, pharmaceutical firms and others, who say it is critical to curbing online piracy.
Internet companies vigorously oppose the bills, arguing they would undermine innovation and free speech rights and compromise the functioning of the Internet.
The debate escalated over the weekend when White House officials raised concerns that the legislation could make businesses on the Internet vulnerable to litigation and harm legal activity and free speech.
Representative Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was needed to protect American businesses from intellectual property theft, and that legislation would move forward.
"Due to the Republican and Democratic retreats taking place over the next two weeks, markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act is expected to resume in February," added Smith, a Texas Republican. "I am committed to continuing to work with my colleagues in the House and Senate to send a bipartisan bill to the White House."
There's one serious problem with our generation. We're lazy. If anything takes longer than 30 seconds to read, forget it. If it costs me time or money, however inconsequential that amount of time or money, you're going to find a way to get around having to deal with it.
Take for example, the library system vs. torrenting books on the Internet. In the United States, libraries buy from jobbers, which in turn obtain books in quantity from publishers. There's a system called Public Lending Right, it's called different things in different countries. The government allocates a pretty substantial amount of money and then gives it to authors in proportion to the popularity of their books. However, the amount an author can earn each year is capped so that writers like Stephen King or John Grisham, who don't need financial assistance, don't earn disproportional sums. The system is effective and fair. A book at a public library could possibly see between 10-20 circulations. An illegal copy, receiving absolutely no retribution to either the author or the publishing company, are usually downloaded many, many times that. With a library, let's say 15 people check out a book in a year's time. However, at the end of that year, there is just the one copy. The distribution is kept in check by the nature of the system. If you pirate that same book, 2000 copies could be in circulation within a year's time.
Two completely different systems: one is legitimate and retributive, the other isn't. If you want to have books to pirate and thieve in the first place, someone is going to have to pay the writers and the publishing companies. The same general principle applies to alternative media outlets, music, news. Subscriptions to the Chicago Tribune have plummeted in recent years, for reasons of which I need not speak. In order to compensate for the lack of funding, they gave way to corporate interest. And now it sucks. It's all just a bunch of shit corporate propaganda. But unfortunately, they had no choice. The same trend will be perpetuated throughout the next several years.
"Stop SOPA." "Save Wikipedia." This means absolutely nothing. I'm not saying the bill is perfect, but something similar is inevitable in the fullness of time.
The SOPA argument is not one-sided. It's not partisan. This is not a matter of free speech. It's a matter of paying people to provide services. That's how it works. If we want people to do things, we have to incentivize. In the grander scheme of things, a dollar for a song, 10 bucks for a book, is a consolatory expense. It's little to pay in order to uphold the notion whereby we who are well off must share what we have in order to make sure that the unconditional availability of information is preserved, in order to become less frightened and self-absorbed people.
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