The Power of the People

In case you were in bed with a cold last week, SOPA and PIPA were House bills designed to fight online piracy. As you probably know, many sites protested the legislation and on Friday, Congress decided to table the bills.

And there was much rejoicing…online.

But was this actually a good thing? Isn’t fighting pirates a good thing?

The issue at hand was that the legislation was written too broadly. I don’t think anyone would suggest that people who make their living from intellectual property should live with the expectation of it being stolen. The problem is that, in the case of SOPA, it would only take a few anonymous complaints to take down an entire site. Hypothetically, the US government would have the authority to block YouTube because one contributor used copyrighted material and the owner of the material complained. Given the millions of contributors and material on the site, SOPA methods would be like using a jackhammer when a surgical scalpel was more appropriate.

The most interesting thing about the proposed legislation last week and the media circus surrounding it, was that the protestors won. Eight million people followed the links from the blacked-out Wikipedia site to contact their Congressional representative.

There is no doubt that this debate is far from over. Although we do have laws on the books that protect intellectual property, we don’t have laws that adequately keep pace with the speed and types of use that happen now electronically.  Still, the online community stated loudly that these laws need more refinement and our legislators listened. At least, for now. It will be fascinating to see how this plays out over the next year. As an Internet content provider, I hope that we will find the wisdom and governance this issue deserves. Restored faith in our leaders would be a nice side effect as well.