Going Dark?

This website will not be doing so-for reasons I will explain later on today. Its been a hectic and not so great couple of days for yours truly. However, here at Far East Cynic HQ-Deutschland, we firmly support all efforts to derail the SOPA Act, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and its companion PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act.  As I have pointed out in my previous attempts to defend Net Neutrality-these efforts to censor the Internet, are nothing more than ways to ensure that internet users are forced to line the pockets of people who already are making plenty of money.

There's been plenty of talk (and a ton of posts here on Techdirt) discussing both SOPA (originally E-PARASITE) and PROTECT IP (aka PIPA), but it seemed like it would be useful to create a single, "definitive" post to highlight why both of these bills are extremely problematic and won't do much (if anything) to deal with the issues they're supposed to deal with, but will have massive unintended consequences. I also think it's important to highlight how PIPA is almost as bad as SOPA. Tragically, because SOPA was so bad, some in the entertainment industry have seen it as an opportunity to present PIPA as a "compromise." It is not. Both bills have tremendous problems, and they start with the fact that neither bill will help deal with the actual issues being raised.

That main issue, we're told over and over again, is "piracy" and specifically "rogue" websites. And, let's be clear: infringement is a problem. But the question is what kind of problem is it? Much of the evidence suggests that it's not an enforcement problem and it's not a legal problem. Decades of evidence from around the globe all show the same thing: making copyright law or enforcement stricter does not work. It does not decrease infringement at all — and, quite frequently, leads to more infringement. That's because the reason that there's infringement in the first place is that consumers are being under-served. Historically, infringement has never been about "free," but about indicating where the business models have not kept up with the technology.

Thus, the real issue is that this is a business model problem. As we've seen over and over and over again, those who embrace what the internet enables, have found themselves to be much better off than they were before. They're able to build up larger fanbases, and to rely on various new platforms and services to make more money.

And, as we've seen with near perfect consistency, the best way, by far, to decrease infringement is to offer awesome new services that are convenient and useful. This doesn't mean just offering any old service — and it certainly doesn't mean trying to limit what users can do with those services. And, most importantly, it doesn't mean treating consumers like they were criminals and "pirates." It means constantly improving the consumer experience. When that consumer experience is great, then people switch in droves. You can, absolutely, compete with free, and many do so. If more were able to without restriction, infringement would decrease. If you look at the two largest contributors to holding back "piracy" lately, it's been Netflix and Spotify. Those two services alone have been orders of magnitude more successful in decreasing infringement than any new copyright law. Because they compete by being more convenient and a better experience than infringement.

Add to that, that it is the begining of a slippery slope. The US complains repeatedly about the Chinese "Great Firewall", yet now it proposes to do pretty much the same thing. It already is monitoring Internet traffic far more than shold be allowed, and when this bill fails to stop piracy there will be a push by the big entertainment companies to pursue even more draconian measures. And after all, the technical approach advoacted in the bill of DNS blocking is essentially the same as China's:

The functional setup of such site blocking — via DNS blocking — is effectively identical to how the Great Firewall of China works. While the intended purpose is obviously different, the actual mechanism for blocking is nearly identical. This creates significant cover for repressive regimes to resist any diplomatic efforts by the US to push back against attempts by the US to promote internet freedom. Furthermore, we have seen how countries, such as Russia, have used copyright law to censor political opposition, using the law to go against activists challenging the government. Even if the intended purpose of SOPA and PIPA are to protect against infringement, opening up the door to censorship for one purpose makes it nearly impossible to avoid it being used for other purposes. It also basically gives the perfect blueprint for repressive regimes. They merely need to claim that their Great Firewalls are designed to stomp out infringement, and then can use it to intimidate and block political opponents. Adding to that is the massive expansion of the diplomatic corp. pushing for greater enforcement, and it's almost as if we're begging countries to set up their own Great Firewalls that will certainly be abused.

 

I am firmly of the opinion that there is a segment of our Teahdist population that would be more than happy with censoring political speech-as means to further their one party government agenda. They will argue differently-but it comes through clearly in the way they attack opposition movements such as OWS. By ignoring the content and ridculing the methods through warped themes like Erik Ericson's "53%".

And finally-Rupert Murdoch likes SOPA and PIPA. This bit of hypocrisy from he of cell phone hacking infamy. The right to keep and watch porn shall not be abridged.