Without any knowledge of it, I joked in my status I posted in Facebook yesterday: "Kung hindi na ako makakapag-download ng Survivor episodes dahil sa SOPA (If I won't be able to download future Survivor episodes anymore because of SOPA)... NO TO SOPA! :)) Hoho!" I was quite on track.
Yesterday, the news about Wikipedia blackout spread in the social networks especially on Twitter. Everybody was tweeting about supporting Wikipedia blackout. I became curious as to the reason of this certain online "event". Then I found out, it was all about a proposed bill in the US that, if would be enacted to a law, would certainly affect netizens worldwide.
This house bill is the Stop Online Piracy Act (HR 3261 as introduced in the House) or popularly known as SOPA. It was quite funny when I first read that abbreviation, because in our language (Filipino), sopa would more likely be the colloquial term for sofa bed. Well, I was getting more and more curious about this SOPA. And when I looked for photos about it in Google, these came out:
The bill proposes to allow the US Department of Justice and the copyright holders to seek court orders against websites executing copyright infringement. (Wikipedia, 2012) That proposal is not new, for me personally, since I know there are certain videos in YouTube, for example, that had been closed for violating copyright rules; and even in Mediafire deleting certain audio files reported to be uploaded against intellectual property rules. But these actions are not quite enough for SOPA.
SOPA's intention - censorship of everything that is copyrighted or under a trademark - protects the people who actually created and thought about the ideas originally. I thought that downloading materials such as movies and series is kind of a theft really. I know it is bad, but I still download such, as well as audio files. I cannot help it. I have my favorite series only shown abroad and we do not have cable television for me to watch them. So what is my last resort? Oh, that's right - torrent files. It is like sharing with other people your stuff, but online. Imagine a copy of a handout for class which you photocopy for your professor's lecture. It is something like that. Or, ordering bottomless iced tea in a restaurant and sharing it with your friend who ordered a regular one. The only difference with the torrent and the handout/iced tea thing - the latter has price tag, torrent has not. Online sharing is free. I even take photos from Google whenever I need it for my blog. And all of these things, as well as posting pictures, videos, and comments in social networks, are the concern of SOPA. It is about both online piracy and copyright material censorship. And not only those, censorship goes to whatever the government wants to block for the public to know, for its sensitivity for that matter. If all countries block such sensitive information that is critical to the foundation of citizens' opinion and knowledge, we will be all ignorant to what is really happening to our surroundings.
I watched a video in YouTube as to why and how dangerous SOPA would be. It said that once SOPA is enacted, the freedom of people online would be extremely surging down. Posting of personal videos with music under exclusive copyright (e.g. covers, bar dancing clips), publishing blogs with photos taken from somewhere else (scan my blog for proof), sending emails with copyrighted mp3s would be illegal actions, and anybody caught doing these stuff would be reprimanded. I do not know who would and how. Facebook, Twitter, among other social networks would be very much more different than we know them today. And, it would cost people their privacy, because everybody is being watched of possible violation of the law by veto power, such as private police. Not that it only threatens the freedom of people to express their feelings online, or share something online, but it also threatens personal and cyber security.
Remember the old days when records are still in cassette tapes? And there are also blank cassette tapes for recording audios when you need or want to. I still remember those days when I was a kid. I listened to the radio whole day on a weekend. Very carefully, I listened to the songs played on the FM radio and when my favorite songs came played, I hit the record button. After that, I could listen to my favorite songs over and over again. If SOPA (or more likely would be Stop Radio Piracy Act then) was created and enacted, I probably have experienced the prison, taking my age out of context though. I shared them recorded tapes, or even asked by people to do the record for them. I know that today, it is not radio anymore. It is now digital television, digital video, digital recording, digital everything. But what is the difference of yesterday's analog radio cassette tape recording to today's digital television recording - then sharing them? Is there any difference besides the obvious margin of development in its technology?
Everything has a consequence, even the advancement of the world in technology. Inventions are great, but consequences of it are felt in a long run. But the advancement of digital recording seems to come with a price - the freedom of the online world. It seems like, for SOPA and PIPA, online freedom and technology block economic growth and creativity. Is it really for the economy's growth, or one industry's interests too many? I don't get that. Because cutting and blocking off advertisement to sites known for their service in providing information to public, that is cutting and blocking economic growth, too.
If it ain't broke, don't dare fix it. In a video I just watched, it is said that internet works perfectly just fine and if that works for you that way, then there is no need to mess with it. It has been a very good medium for "free expression, economic innovation, and cultural communications". And alternating what the internet used to be would be a great chaos.
If it ain't broke, don't dare fix it. In a video I just watched, it is said that internet works perfectly just fine and if that works for you that way, then there is no need to mess with it. It has been a very good medium for "free expression, economic innovation, and cultural communications". And alternating what the internet used to be would be a great chaos.
If SOPA would be implemented, I'd ask my parents for cable TV with CBS on it, for real-time Survivor experience (and blogging). And, I will definitely spend huge amount of money to buy Survivor DVDs!!! Well, kidding aside, if it would be passed in the future, and I know it will be, I cannot do anything about it, really. If it would be passed, recording/copying/creating (torrents of) movies, series, and audio files is violating one's intellectual property rights; and downloading it would be illegal. If it would be enacted to law, posting your personal thoughts, videos, and photos would be extremely censored, so no one can get it from you. If it would be executed, online world won't be free at all. The cost of the online world being free is its freedom itself.
But what the hell, there will be another technological advancement in the future that will make sharing stuff online more possible, and more legal. Whether you are for it, or you're against it, one thing is for sure - the hope for more advancement is huge. Let us just hope that in these future advancements, being free does not come with a price.
Thomas More once said, "For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but you first make thieves and then punish them." And from the context of today, people are not ill-educated but actually quite brilliantly educated - inventing digital technologies which are making our lives convenient. People made the digital technology possible by various research and development. The progress is so exponential, we really must keep up with it. But with how I see SOPA, it indirectly blames the increase in people's technical knowledge. It is like More's quote quite frankly. Punishing people for what they've progressed into? Let them invent it, then punish them for using it. Seriously though, right?
Images taken from Google --- This would be a SOPA violation, too. Hoho.