Many of the critics of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and other legislation seeking to combat intellectual property violations on the Internet, say they are fighting efforts to “censor” the web. Assuming there must be a definition of censorship with which I was unaware, I went to Wikipedia to check the crowd-sourced meaning. Alas, I’ll have to wait another day as Wikipedia has gone dark to protest the bill.
SOPA is many things, but if words still have meaning it cannot be fruitfully described as censorship. So what are we to make of federal efforts to balance the interests of intellectual property (IP) holders with the interests of the public at large in the digital age?
It’s useful to start with areas of broad agreement. Both the Internet-industry opponents of SOPA and the content-creation industry (the motion-picture and recording industry folks, for example) agree that IP violations on the Internet are a genuine problem.
The extent of the problem is subject to debate, and the perception typically depends on where one sits. Technology firms can make money when content flows unencumbered, and oftentimes the more unencumbered the better; content creators do not make money if they can’t earn rents from its exchange, and so content creators see Internet piracy as a significant threat.
The public’s interest is in between. The public wants sufficiently robust property protections in place so creators can raise and sustain capital to generate the content the public wants. But the protections must not be so strong that they needlessly hinder the exchange and flow of ideas, images, sounds, and other information from which the public benefits.
Where those lines get drawn — and how those lines are enforced — is the source of contention with respect to SOPA.
The SOPA fight comes a little over a decade after that last rhetorically bloody battle over IP protection and the Internet, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The “information wants to be free” crowd vehemently opposed that bill at the time, and similar claims that it would “break” the Internet were voiced. The legislation passed, and the Internet emerged largely unscathed.
Despite the at times overwrought rhetoric of the SOPA critics, they are right to worry about overly blunt regulation of the Internet. Former senator Chris Dodd has led the push for SOPA from his new perch atop the motion picture lobby. Dodd is no stranger to exceedingly broad and imprudent regulation (viz. his crowning Senate achievement, the Dodd-Frank Act regulating the financial-services industry).
The good news here is that the criticism of the legislation has prompted changes in the bills floating around Capitol Hill over the last several months, addressing some of the key legitimate concerns.
It has also prompted an alternative from Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), whose so-called OPEN Act would empower the International Trade Commission to target the system of payments that enables foreign IP pirates to profit from property violations. It’s a sensible incremental step toward enforcing the rights of IP holders in cyberspace.
Of course, if the OPEN Act proves insufficient as a guarantor of reasonable protections for content creators, we’ll be right back where we are today soon enough. So now is a good time for further creative thinking about how strongly and in what ways intellectual property ought to be protected in the Internet age.
Given the recently voiced White House objection to SOPA, the search for a way forward is on. The OPEN Act should emerge as the sensible alternative. There’s a lot of cynicism about democracy today, much of it deserved. But the OPEN Act compromise indicates that despite the noisy clang of politics that’s so off-putting to some, our democracy still works pretty well sometimes. To understand why, go to Wikipedia tomorrow and look up “Madison, James.”
— Nick Schulz is DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and editor of American.com.
You can still access Wiki. Just do a google search of what you want to see, and click the "cached" link. Case in point: External Link
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's true that SOPA does not permit censorship directly, but the increased power it gives content creators to attack what might even be 'fair use' quoting, etc., will lead there.
You only need to look at the case with the copyright trolls at Righthaven and how they attacked everyone using even fair-use citations in blog articles, etc., and the use of takedown notices issued to YouTube to allege copyright violation to remove certain political ads, and it's easy to see how this ends.
The broader powers of SOPA would enable content creators of all kinds to try to force the political takedown of unfavorable materials.
I'm not familiar with the OPEN act, but will look into it and learn more about it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe writer of this piece has a basic and fundamental misunderstanding of why SOPA/PIPA is so bad.
From Heritage:
" One of the main issues of SOPA and PIPA is that they force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to websites that have been accused of facilitating copyright infringement. Blocking access will likely slow down domain name resolution for the entire internet, while eroding the necessary trust the system needs. It would also set a dangerous precedent of allowing our government – and others – to filter domains. Fortunately, all sides have signaled this provision could be dropped.
Further, the legislation would put a tremendous legal burden on websites accused of third-party copyright infringement and would cause them to be removed from search engines. Opponents have compared the legislation to China’s online censorship. Even if they made an honest mistake, they would be faced with litigation from the U.S. Attorney General. Fighting the accusations would cost so much time and money that smaller sites would likely go out of business fighting. Private lawsuits could also be brought against the websites. This would open up the potential for massive lawsuit abuse – even though the vast majority of online piracy occurs through a small number of websites. "
External Link
Imagine if a commentator here at NRO were to post several links to a pirated movie site in the Caymans. The mods here don't notice it for one reason or another, and a complaint is filed by some lefty who works for a movie studio; presto! NRO is now accused of facilitating copyright infringement (by failing to police their comment section in an adequate manner) and is summarily de-linked from many search engines, and must spend quite a bit of time fighting to clear their name.
Doesn't sound like a free and open internet to me. I'm also pretty skeptical of claims that piracy really is all that harmful to copyright holders; with the exception of dead-tree papers, other media sources (Movie, music, TV) seem to be making money like gangbusters.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe issue is lawmakers are by and large woefully ignorant of technology. They create laws in response to often equally misinformed public outcry or lobbied interests and they don't understand the business and societal impact of enforcing those laws.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat is exactly the problem.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe public wants sufficiently robust property protections in place so creators can raise and sustain capital to generate the content the public wants.
Your astroturf is showing.
The public wants economically accessible entertainment media, period — and the free market is proving remarkable at meeting such a fast-evolving demand. Most end-users aren't, nor want to be, engaged in piracy or other forms of theft. So long as content creators stay attuned to market realities, they won't have to worry about raising capital or making Faustian bargains with the state to protect their interests.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseiTunes is a great example of this. There is a safe, easy, LEGAL, and cheap way to get download digital music now, thanks to pirates.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd yet for every legal use of iTunes, there are a dozen kids out there who have one large library that they copied down to their ipod. I have nephews and nieces who periodically buy a song, but contribute it to a large library that they all copy down to their HDs. This is not an isolated incident, as they learned about it and traffic in these libraries through online forums.
I have no love of the Anti-Piracy bills, but it does no service to insist that theft of IP is essentially the owners' fault and/or that it wouldn't be a problem if they just responded to market realities. You cannot compete with Free, and too many people are working too hard to make this content (illegally) available for free.
That isn't to say that we should have invasive, constitutionally questionable laws to protect this type of content. But the "blame the victim" morality does not help. My children know that I have zero tolerance for pirating IP. It is as absolutely enforced in my house as is prohibition on underage drinking or using drugs. Will my kids still break my rules about this? Sure, but they will know they are doing something wrong- not fighting power, or punishing an evildoer who "had it coming".
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYoungsters (at least, those I know) don't respect the current distribution system in the slightest, as it pays the artists absolutely nothing for their work, and lines the pockets of the production company to the nth degree. It doesn't hurt the artists to d/l music or movies; it hurts the parasites.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is exactly the type of comment I hate hearing, even as I argue against DMCA-like legislation.
Let's set aside the inaccurate statement that artists don't get money from purchased music. Either we have Property protection for IP or we don't. If you believe that artists should have ownership over their IP, then you have to believe that they can do with it what they want (including signing those rights to an EEEEEVIL publishing company) and that doesn't make it right to steal the IP just because they aren't giving it to you in the way you prefer to consume.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Let's set aside the inaccurate statement that artists don't get money from purchased music"
It's not inaccurate. Artists make only a tiny fraction of the money you spend purchasing their music. The vast majority goes to parasites who formerly controlled the delivery mechanism; now that they no longer have a monopoly on delivery, they are quickly being eschewed by the populace they seek to extract inflated amounts from. I have no pity for them whatsoever; their inability to adjust to the times, and lean down their own business models by getting rid of the tremendous dead weight in the industry, is going to be their deaths, and nobody will care at all.
Regarding the rest of your post, I'm against IP laws in general, as they significantly harm our society while providing very little actual benefit - though they certainly do lead to a great deal of profit for some - and need to be reformed badly.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere is existing copyright law! There are existing international treaties respecting copyright. Why can't these vehicles be used to enforce IP? Why do we need new draconian laws?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseActually you can compete with Free, by providing a better user experience. Torrenting and the like is kludgey, involves visiting sketchy websites, can be slow or unreliable, and suffers uncertainty that the content you are looking for is the content you will get. Services like the iTunes store, or Amazon, or gog.com are successful at selling digital content and competing with piracy precisely because the user experience is more desirable.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"User Experience" is part of the product, and as I noted before, there are lots of people figuring out how to make it free. A student within 2 weeks of being on a college campus can have a hard drive full of all the music he will ever listen to. No wizbang itunes experience will ever make a user experience to beat that. Sure, he may buy one or two songs from time to time, but the vast (i.e. 85%+) proportion of his library will be pirated.
This is what frustrates me about this debate. People argue that if a Property Owner would just "do something better" they wouldn't have to worry about violation of their property rights. This is complete BS. Either they have property rights (and the right to sell or otherwise use that property in an inefficient manner) or they don't. There is nothing noble about blaming them for the theft of their property just because they had it coming.
There is ample reason to reject DMCA and SOPA/PIPA because they attempt to protect RIAA's property at the expense of my liberty. It is simply a bad rhetorical tactic to say they don't have rights on that property.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell said.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere's a whole lot more in the equation than you're recognizing. The convenience/portability of digital media makes it tempting to see that a 1 Tb hard drive is thousands and thousands of lost revenue dollars for the creator/distributor, but that relies on the assumption that the user would buy the same amount of content if access is restricted. And that's just not true. A hypothetical college student may indeed downloads gigs of music to his computer (why not? It's free!) But that student still has to invest time into experiencing that music, and if he decides that listening to George Strait's entire catalog isn't a great use of his time, George and his distributors haven't lost any money - the kid wasn't ever going to pay, regardless of the means of access.
Why do people use torrents? Because paying $30 for 25 episodes of a sitcom is too high a threshold for some people. So they risk the possibility of viruses/identity theft of some torrent sites instead. Presented with the option of paying $8 to Netflix or Amazon or whomever, many of these users will decide that it's a better experience for their needs.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if 85%+ of a person's library is pirated if he was never going to pay for that content anyway.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"And yet for every legal use of iTunes, there are a dozen kids out there who have one large library that they copied down to their ipod."
iTunes has sold over 6 billion songs legally. By your math, that means there are 72 billion kids who pirate music.
I find myself highly skeptical.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe public wants the ability to steal whatever they can, whenever they want. Doesn't mean the law should allow that. IP laws are important. These bills go about protecting them badly, but let's not lose sight of the fact that intellectual property is still PROPERTY, and conservatives are supposed to be all about property rights.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe public wants the ability to steal whatever they can, whenever they want.
On authenticity: such an accusation isn't rooted in conservatism.
To pick up from RightEveryTime below, if consumers weren't sincerely assessing the value of intellectual property — however harshly — non-proprietary services such as iTunes and Steam would have collapsed a long time ago. In fact, both are hand-over-fist profitable for distributor, publisher and creator alike. So pace Overt below, you can compete with free. But you have to actually compete.
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