January 24, 2012 | Online

Why we need a better Stop Online Piracy Act

If there's one thing US politicians learned last week, it's this: don't mess with the Internet.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate had been considering bills designed to address the issue of online piracy. Supporters of both SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) said there was a need to protect intellectual property, and in turn the jobs and revenue it created, with stronger laws.

Once passed, the bills would stop networks and payment companies from doing business with pirate websites, search engines would not be permitted to link to said sites, and Internet Service Providers would be forced to block access to pirate sites.

Hollywood and the music industry were behind the proposed laws. Many of the big Internet companies -- and users -- were not.

As widely reported last week, some major Internet companies took action against the two bills. Most noticably, Wikipedia blacked out its pages for 24 hours and Google placed a black square over its logo. Other sites created a new landing page on which details of how the bills could negatively alter the web were listed.

Opponents of the bills argued they would stifle the Internet. Popular sites like Facebook and Google and YouTube would cease to exist. Smaller sites could be falsely accused of using copyrighted material, be blocked by Internet Service Providers, and then face a costly court challenge to get back up and running. Still others saw the move as nothing more than the government looking to quietly suppress speech it didn't like.

The strategy worked. Over 7 million Google users signed a petition demanding the legislation be dropped. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to postpone a test vote set for today “in light of recent events.” House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith quickly followed suit, saying the House bill would be postponed “until there is wider agreement on a solution.” Several politicians even removed their names as sponsors of the legislation.

But while the current versions of SOPA and PIPA are much too overreaching, legislation is still desperately needed to protect the rights of content creators. Piracy is completely out of control; all the "free" stuff people are downloading costs money to produce and the ability for gay porn companies (many of which are small operations)  to turn a profit is evaporating. Piracy is directly responsible for the current stressed state of the gay porn industry, with employees being laid off, weaker companies being forced to merge and many others simply closing down. But the government has to be careful in how it addresses this issue; making  sweeping changes without weighing all the consequences is not the answer.

Reid postpones Senate vote on anti-piracy bill amid storm of online protest [The Washington Post]

SOPA and PIPA: What Went Wrong? [PC World]

Collapse of Piracy Bills Leaves Hollywood Seeking a Truce [Business Week]