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SOPA and PIPA- Protecting Rights or Censoring the Web?
While the whole digital community discussed SOPA and PIPA matter out loud making it a trendy topic, there have been those who wondered silently what is it all about
Protecting rights or censoring the web?
Although there are ways to deal with overall piracy on the internet in the United States, foreign domains were safe of lawsuits, making it very hard for U.S. media production houses to fight offshore copyright abuse.
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a House of Representatives bill aimed at foreign websites with infringed copyright material. Although similar to SOPA, Protect IP Act (PIPA), from the U.S. Senate, is slightly narrower in its definition of offenders. While SOPA defines foreign infringing sites as any site that is "committing or facilitating" copyright infringement, PIPA remains limited to sites with "no significant use other than" copyright infringement.
Wide interpretative frames as well as excessive power of individuals are major threats to free speech on the internet according to the high-tech community which flamingly opposed these bills. If the bill was to pass, the U.S. attorney general could seek a court order issued to internet providers obliging them to block access to sites containing some kind of infringed copyright material.
Lead by online giants such as Wikipedia and Google, the whole digital community refused to stand still and organised both online and offline protest. Seven million people signed an online petition by Google, demanding free speech on the internet, protesters assembled outside big media houses which openly support these bills. It was clear that this is a clash of two giant industries, and no one wanted to back up.
Media houses, mainly Hollywood, support the bills claiming offshore piracy is costing Americans billions of dollars, resulting in massive layoffs; therefore it is understandable how they see this issue as a matter of survival. On the other hand, the digital community is trying to preserve internet as an open platform allowing users to freely generate and share ideas. One can only assume what consequences this bill could provoke regarding the concept of internet as we know it.
EU: resolute answer
Despite being American political allies and trade partners ,the EU didn’t back up SOPA. On the contrary, despite being rather reserved in comments regarding state legislature, EU representatives firmly dissociated themselves from this kind of regulation.
"Glad tide is turning on SOPA: don't need bad legislation when should be safeguarding benefits of open net," tweeted EU's Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes concerning this topic, proceeding - "Speeding is illegal too: but you don't put speed bumps on the motorway."
A group of EU members of parliament, as well as few NGO and business sector representatives sent a letter to the U.S. Congress in December 2011, expressing their concern over the controversial bills. In that letter they stressed that the proposed laws could make irretrievable damage to the freedom of the World Wide Web, which could most certainly impose limits to the further development of economic growth.
The group also raised human rights as a major issue, as enforcement of these bills would require internet providers to implement different methods of monitoring user activities. These objections don’t mean that EU is standing still regarding the protection of intellectual property; it only stresses the importance of dealing with this matter in multidimensional manner.
International initiative
Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a multilateral agreement aiming at setting international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement. Some call it an EU reverse of SOPA. However, tThere has been some controversy with the alleged secrecy of ACTA negotiations. NGOs resented negotiating states and international institutions for not including them in this debate.
Although it was one of the creators of this agreement, the EU didn’t adopt ACTA in October 2011 together with United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Morocco, Singapore and South Korea.
EU parliamentarians demonstrated thoughtfulness regarding this issue demanding full transparency from the EU Commission concerning ACTA negotiations. In March 2010 the European Parliament voted 663-13 against ACTA’s enforcement measures demanding certain changes in the draft concerning respect of fundamental civil rights.
ACTA is not a done deal in Europe, therefore it is yet to see in which direction the treaty will go, having in mind Parliament’s doubts. There has been a lot of speculations when it comes to ACTA and problems maintaining a free web. While the pessimistic scenarios are surely intimidating, the tools for reinforcing intellectual property rights are not that clear. It is therefore of utmost importance to lead this debate as openly as possible.
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