Online Piracy puts Businesses in Jeopardy
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February 9, 2012 • David Pradel
Filed under News
These past few weeks have been filled with controversy, as the US Congress is taking aim to censor and block the web. If Congress follows through with it’s plans American social networks, blogs and search engines will be affected, if the two bills Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act) also known as (PIPA) are voted into law. Congress is looking to stomp on our constitutionally guaranteed rights.
The SOPA bill is from the House of Representatives and looks to fight online trafficking of copyrighted property. PIPA is a bill proposed by the Senate and has the same intentions. Both of these bills were written because copyright holders want to protect their share of profits from their intellectual property and look to put an end to the illegal distribution of their work.
Where is our freedom of speech? It seems that the US government is following in the path that forged by North Korea, Libya, Egypt, China and others that censor the net. If the bills do pass, citizens face much stricter levels of online security; many of the popular websites will cease to exist. These bills in their current form will effectively destroy the very principle this country was built upon, freedom of speech.
Junior Brandon Plascencia says, “I feel that SOPA and PIPA are taking it too far when it comes down to cracking down on piracy. Piracy is a very big problem, but both SOPA and PIPA are taking it way too far and are stripping away people’s freedom.”
Not only do SOPA and PIPA look to crush internet user’s rights, but they pose the possibility of being a “job killers.” The bills would, of course, take away jobs from workers of popular websites and search engines, such as Google and Facebook, and prevent future innovations from impacting the Internet.
“I think these two bills obviously take a strong stand against online piracy. I think that it’s fair for them to be angry of illegal distribution of their work, but I think that if these two bills are passed it will impede online innovation and many people will lose jobs,” says sophomore Matt Silva.
Plascencia adds, “Everything would be very restricted in terms of web sites from outside of the US. Many internet giants such as Google would lose millions of dollars every year if the SOPA law would pass. This would prevent the internet from growing.”
Protest and outrage has occurred all over the US, with many popular sites shutting down for 24 hours on January 18th. Websites such as Wikipedia and Google looked to make a statement, as they encouraged users to send letters to the Congress to oppose these two bills, SOPA and PIPA.
Although these two bills haven’t passed yet, this past week Megaupload.com, a file sharing website, was shut down by the U.S. District Court for federal crimes of copyrighted infringement.
If this continues, then many websites that students use such as YouTube, Facebook, Mozilla, Wikipedia, Tumblr, Flickr, and Vimeo that “infringe” on copyrighted work or trademark counterfeiting will be banned and not accessible for anyone.
One of our most cherished rights as Americans (our first amendment) could vanish right before our eyes. SOPA and PIPA are extreme means in preventing online crimes, there are more rational resolutions. These two acts are a good interpretation of the government’s priorities; they would rather try to stop harmless citizens from downloading the newest movie, rather than fix the struggling economy.
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