About SOPA: Why I am torn

Filed in Thoughts on January 18, 2012



Wikipedia and many other sites are down today in order to protest SOPA (the "Stop Online Privacy Act" bill currently in Congress). This is a very important issue and also a very complex one.  I find myself somewhere in the middle of the two warring camps.

Essentially, the bill is designed to protect private property on the internet.  That is one of the legitimate roles of government.  When you are not home, a big reason that your house is not constantly burglarized is the deterrent of local law enforcement.

Private property can be physical but it can also be intellectual.  Intellectual property includes patents, trademarks, and copyrights among other things.  Or to be more specific, it includes things like software, movies, and music.  In the last few decades, there has been a huge increase in the amount of intellectual property and its value.

To put it mildly, our government does not do a good job in protecting intellectual property.  Let's take software for example.  In the United States, a huge percentage of installed software is illegal, robbing its copyright owners of billions of dollars.  And outside the United States, things are even worse.  You can go into shops in Asia and buy thousands of dollars worth of US-developed software for pennies.  Of course, it is illegal.

One of the reasons that the United States is struggling financially is because we export so much intellectual property for free in this way.  Of course, exporting is a kind word for it.  What is really happening is outright theft. 

The same theft occurs with music and movies of course.  For example, as I have said before, in the US, 95% of music downloads are illegal.  I am sure the number is no better outside the US. 

Obviously, the internet plays a huge role in the theft of intellectual property.  While the problem was significant before the internet, it is now completely out of control.

This problem is so huge that I would advocate that a solution HAS to be found.  In the US, we do not manufacture physical goods any more but we lead the world in intellectual capital.  If we want to be successful, the government has to find a way to protect intellectual property owners just as it protects the local grocery store.

Recently, someone posted on my blog complaining about Christian musicians who copyright their music.  His point was that copyrights stop the spread of the gospel.  As he put it, if he has a chance to copy and share a CD with a friend for evangelistic purposes, it is selfish of a Christian musician to enforce copyright protection and insist that he pay for the copy.

This viewpoint shows just how out of touch people are with reality on this issue.  I want to discuss this in more detail in another post but what this person is saying is that intellectual property is somehow different from physical property.  He would not be against a musician having a lock on his door to protect his food but is against a musician having a copyright to protect his music?

A big part of our problem is that consumers tend to think this way. They don't understand that intellectual property has to be protected.  They think it belongs to everyone.  And they can't seem to understand that if entities cannot make money from the sale of intellectual property, intellectual property will not be developed (at least quality intellectual property will not be developed).

On the other hand, there are concerns about censorship, free speech and other issues that could get chilling as well.  There is a possibility that this kind of law would change the internet as we know it.  For sure, there could be innocent casualties.  This kind of law could even affect some of the things that I do.

So, I find myself in the middle.  The internet is still in the "Wild West" stage and criminals run rampant.  They have to be stopped.  But we need to be very very careful about how it is done.




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Duncan
1/18/2012 1:49:30 PM

I disagree. Yes, IP should be protected somehow, but SOPA is not the best solution.

http://www.worthwhile.com/blog/sopa-hurts-small-business/

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mitch
1/18/2012 10:41:29 PM

Interesting point, Duncan.

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Greg
1/18/2012 10:57:28 PM

You know, I am sure the bill has problems. I am just not convinced that it is as bad as some people are saying and if it was, it would have to be fixed quickly. I guess I am wary of the doomsday talk like the article you linked to Duncan. It is hard to know what to believe from either side because both sides exaggerate so much.

I just don't see how the scenario in that article could happen, and that comes from my years of experience in this kind of thing. Surely, the government could not come down so hard on a company because another company accuses them of IP theft. There would have to be proof, etc. And for sure, they would have to spend their time on big offenders, not mom and pop t-shirt shops.

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Duncan
1/19/2012 10:47:47 AM

Fair enough. Both sides tend towards sensationalism and that link is perhaps overstated.

But I still oppose the legislation, for several reasons:

1) It doesn't matter if scenarios like that are unlikely. The legislation makes them possible.

2) Sure the government wouldn't be motivated to enforce this, but the government isn't the initiator in this scenario. Scenarios like this would be driven by large and powerful rightsholders, who have an unfair advantage because of their access to lobbyists and funding sources. A government with these powers would be motivated to satisfy the interests of the strongly funded rightsholder to the disadvantage of the little guy.

3) This would create a dangerous precedent for the violation of basic freedoms supposedly protected by the Bill of Rights. I thought Americans cared about that, but I could be wrong.

Now, arguments aside, some personal reflections.

Do I share all the values of the anti-SOPA activists? Probably not, but I am concerned that the internet remains deregulated. It just seems odd to me that Americans who generally reject socialized medicine and gun control might willingly increase government power to regulate the internet and freedom of expression.

How can I have a distinctly Christian perspective on this? I'm not entirely sure of all the ramifications of this legislation, but I believe that it ultimately represents a threat to freedoms I value. I do not participate in piracy, but I believe that the government's responsibility in this area should remain limited until better laws or social conventions can address this issue while respecting individual freedoms.

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Greg
1/19/2012 12:36:32 PM

For me, this is pretty simple--preserve free speech while stopping piracy (including everything from the monster offenders down to the little offenders). The perfect bill does both. This bill may not do that but I think at least we need to start taking steps toward a solution.

Again, government's responsibility here is protection of private property. I believe they should be involved in that whether it is IP or tangible.

My impression is a lot of anti-SOPA people are just freeloaders who want to keep getting their free music, movies and software. That has nothing to do with free speech. Free speech does not mean web site owners can put anything they want online; in fact, we have always had rules that limit free speech in this country.

The biggest potential issue I see is the idea that a website can be taken down just because of an accusation of IP infringement. That is a huge, glaring problem and if it is in the bill, it has to be changed. That would be an absolute nightmare.

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Duncan
1/19/2012 1:03:23 PM

Hey Greg, thanks for your comments on this, I've benefited from the discussion. I just want to make a few more comments, and then I'll let topic rest.

I'm not sure the perfect bill can exist. How this could be regulated without trampling on free speech is not clear.

Are there freeloaders and pirates in the anti-SOPA crowd? Absolutely. I work with a bunch of them at my job.

Then you said something that I completely agree with: "The biggest potential issue I see is the idea that a website can be taken down just because of an accusation of IP infringement. That is a huge, glaring problem and if it is in the bill, it has to be changed. That would be an absolute nightmare."

That is the problem that SOPA enables and the reason I oppose it in favor of free speech. It will happen. I can't recall specific examples, but I've read of cases where large stakeholders have issued takedown requests on the basis of the DMCA, the current copyright legislation in the USA. The difference with SOPA is that takedown requests (apparently) must be obeyed. Ignoring a SOPA takedown request incurs far greater risk than DMCA takedown requests which can (and have been) ignored.

Anyway, not that it matters much what I think up here in frozen Canada.

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