Monday, February 20, 2012

SOPA, PIPA and ACTA. OH MY!

"It’s a medium in which corporations and the general public are on equal footing in terms of reach, in that anyone who has an internet connection can view both a commercial website or a person’s personal web page without having to pay anything extra to do it.  There’s no barrier to entry, anyone can post anything, as long as it doesn’t violate our country’s law."

- "Why SOPA Will Turn The Internet Into A Television", Andrew Dat

I had been wondering if we would talk about the current events in Congress/the Internet in this class, and given the weekly reading topic, this seems like the best time to bring them up. I am talking about PIPA and SOPA, two acts which are being backed by the Senate and the House, respectively. My goal on this subject is not to present any bias towards these acts; however, given their nature, it is difficult to remain neutral when discussing their intended outcomes. Rather, my hope is that I will be able to tie them two what we read in the Access Science encyclopedia article on the Internet, by discussing the technical nature of the two acts as much as possible.

Before we get into the current events, I would like to give a little primer on the Access Science article. It found it interesting, while reading the article, how my response changed several times throughout. At one point I would be somewhat shamed, given that it was the first time I saw some of the acronyms that I know so well, fleshed out: http, DNS, TCP, to name a few. Admittedly, before reading this article I hadn't put much thought into looking in to what they stood for or what exactly their purpose was. At other times, I found myself scoffing at the article, thinking that it was quite out-of-date. If I had been asked to guess when the article was written, without having seen the citation, I definitely would not have guessed 2008. I'd be curious to know how many other people were caught off-guard by this. Really what this shows though is how much I take the Internet for granted, and I suspect this applies to quite a few others in my generation, though I don't wish to generalize. I finally have some perspective of how lucky I have been to grow up in an age where Internet speeds and general connectivity are taken for granted. I could have read the article on my phone is I had so desired; less than 25 years ago, I couldn't have even made a call from said phone further than 10-15 feet away from some wall in my house. Wow! (Not that I was even alive 25 years ago, but you get the picture.) 

The other things that the second point brings to mind is exactly how much the Internet has changed in even the last 4 years. In 2008, when the AS article was written, cable and DSL were state-of-the-art in terms of Internet connectivity options; fi-os was just creeping on the stage. Fast-forward 4 years, I'm not sure I know a single person that is still using DSL. As we speak I am sitting in my apartment, forced to physically connect to the Internet modem by Ethernet cable, since the walls are not conducive to transferring wireless signal. On any other night I would be upset by this, though given my current perspective as a result of the readings I have just finished, I'll settle for being able to upload this in the next couple of minutes, for potentially hundreds of millions of people to see, should they happen to stumble upon it.

This is a good place to tie in the SOPA/PIPA legislation - as I muse about just how extensive and powerful the Internet is... Lets just say that if SOPA is passed, the Internet will be a shade of what it is today. The first article that I read gives a pretty spot on analogy for this circumstance, comparing the watered-down, post-SOPA Internet to "little more than an interactive TV." While the most outright aim of SOPA - Stop Online Piracy Act - is to prevent access to overseas sights that traffic copy-right material, the ultimate affect that it could have could spell the end for websites that many of us use everyday without a second thought. Under the act, any copy-right material that is posted without consent would be considered a criminal offense. Bye-bye Youtube, Reddit, Facebook, etc... The bill would accomplish this by requiring ISP's, search-engines and administrators to restrict access to blacklisted sites. Initially, they hoped to achieve this by allowing these providers to change the Domain Name System (DNS) communication, which switches recognizable URLS, to unique IP address for execution. Thankfully, this provision was removed because it required a significant change in the internet's infrastructure, and could also potentially lead to security issues. Still. however, access to these sites would be restricted. Additionally, VPN's used nowadays to provide advanced security measures against spying and filtering - used legitimately by some businesses and government websites - would be prohibited, as they could potentially be used to prevent access to websites trafficking copy-right material from being restricted. Imagine the increased security risks.

Ultimately, the Internet would become a web of domains and websites completely controlled by corporations that have the necessary authority, or own significant amounts of the copy-right material. The playing field, as one can derive from the quote at the beginning of the post, would no longer be level. Currently, these big corporations already have the resources to battle infringement. With the aid of SOPA and PIPA, there would be little standing in the way of them potentially 'corpritizing' the Internet. One of the best things about the Internet is the freedom you have explore, and the potential communication lines that you wouldn't otherwise have. There are limits, certainly, to what you can and should legally do. Still, legislation such as SOPA and PIPA would have much more disasterous ramifications than they might be intended for, and they would certainly leave the Internet a much less exiciting place.


2 comments:

  1. Huzzah for an outside-the-box post. I really enjoyed reading more about the implications of SOPA and PIPA and even the unmentioned ACTA. The legislation sets truly dangerous precedents in both the already overreaching government control and the power that corporations will be able to yield. If these or similar acts are passed, is there really a threat of the government restricting the internet as is done in such countries as Syria, Iran, and China? Perhaps not immediately, but I would not rule it out as an impossibility.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The arguments against SOPA and PIPA are so obvious to anyone in a technology industry. The bills introduced where so flawed and full of loop holes that only work to the benefit of organizations like the RIAA and MPAA. Who thought it would be a good idea to let corporations police the internet? ACTA is no better and they are trying to slide this one in under the radar. Good post.

    End Piracy, Not Liberty

    ReplyDelete