The internet prides itself as being
as free and open as possible. It is the place where most people feel that they
can express their opinions without having to fear any sort of repercussions.
Everyone can enter a conversation and remain wholly anonymous to all with whom
they are conversing. In that anonymity, they gain boldness, because they will
never actually have to be held accountable for their words. Anonymity is great,
and for the most part safe, but it additionally creates the perfect environment
for loads of crimes to be committed. Handling the vast, potentially negative capacity
of the internet has always been a tricky question, because internet crime
rarely occurs in a set location—it can only occur by utilizing the combined
effort of many other entity's resources. Most commonly, the internet is used to
distribute “pirated” copyrighted media to an extremely large user base that is
amorphous and difficult to track.
In October of 2012, H.R. 3261, or the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), was introduced to the House
of Representatives as an attempt to curb the masses of internet piracy of
copyrighted materials. The bill caused the blogosphere to erupt into a fury of
posts that proclaimed that “We
Need to Stop SOPA.” In his article “What is SOPA?” Brian Barrett, decried
SOPA as an obviously “very bad thing”
that sought to effectively destroy what we love about the internet. His
addition to the echolalia is rather representative of the emotional
and hysterical note that was effused
throughout the internet at the time. Barrett joins in the fray, and presents an
excellent collection of very pertinent points; however he presents his opinions
using some rather inflammatory language that seems to detract from his statements.
Barrett‘s
pronouncement seeks to expose the numerous technical issues that had been
incorporated into SOPA’s design and overarching strategy. He points to the corporate
fat cats and money-makers as the ones who deserve the blame, which reveals
quite a bit about his purpose of writing. The article is meant to
convince the casual and avid internet user alike that offence must be taken by
the attempted encroachments on their liberties present in the bill. The post claims
that “The beating heart of SOPA is the ability of intellectual property owners
(read: movie studios and record labels) to effectively pull the plug on foreign
sites” (Barrett). The verbiage is meant
to incite anger into the heart of the common man at the audacious and unfair
activities of the dastardly “IP owners” (Barrett). The author seems to be
trying to make the reader gravitate toward sympathizing with the underdogs, “entrepreneurs”, and even the
“venture capitalists” rather than the dastardly corporate overlords who for the
most part publicly
denounced SOPA (Barrett). He establishes these creators of tech companies as
the heroes of the internet, because they have led and continue to lead the
charge into the future by creating the companies that we all cherish. While the
methods he uses to draw the line between the user and the pushers of the SOPA
is somewhat questionable, his efforts are well-aimed. In its earliest version,
SOPA would have enabled copyright owners to merely send a letter requesting a
takedown of links or content to content providers like Google, YouTube, and
Facebook who wouldn’t have much of a choice. They would have the option of
either protesting the request in court or merely abiding by
their wishes and removing the content (Barrett). Barrett warns that under the
bill, if a company such as Warner Bros. were to find some of its content on an
offshore torrent site that
“…the studio could demand that Google remove
that site form its search results, that PayPal no longer accept payments to or
from that site, that ad services pull all ads and finances from
it, and –most dangerously—that the site’s ISP prevent people from
ever going there” (Barrett).
What’s worse is the bill included
special provisions for companies that would “proactively shutter sites [that]
it considers to be infringers” (Barrett). Barrett insightfully asserts that in
this system the “Potential for abuse [would be] rampant” if companies were able
to stop linking to their competitors “with a ‘good faith belief’ ” that they
were illegally hosting copyrighted material. Barrett never once discusses what
SOPA was trying to accomplish with such measures, however, but rather takes a
blind stab at its negatives without acknowledging its strengths. SOPA was
trying to create an environment where the internet would effectively police
itself. A new model was being presented that is incredibly divergent from how
things are done now. While the specifics certainly were not kosher, as Barrett
exhaustively illustrates, the idea was an excellent step in the right direction
by legislators—a point that the author entirely neglects to mention in his
article. Policy-makers were certainly trying to handle the problems of piracy and
were attempting something entirely new to solve a prevalent problem. What more
can citizen’s ask of their government? Not much.
In
one of the least salient points of the article, Barrett notes that for all the
grief that SOPA would be bound to cause, that it was entirely
“pointless”. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) currently provides
a method for copyright holders to get content removed from the web, but
only after the request has seen the desk of a DMCA official (Liu). The protocol
certainly involves much more bureaucracy, which slows the process down, but
rightly so. A claim has been made that copyright infringement has been
committed, and due process needs to occur before any serious action is taken. However,
the copyright laws in America are by no means perfect, and the present set of
laws is workable by only the most lenient definition of the word. Barrett
refuses to note in his text that SOPA was in fact a realistic attempt at
reforming copyright laws. His
misinterpretation of the law-makers’ intended purpose only increases his clout
with his carefully selected reader and thus fits perfectly in his piece, but at
the cost of presenting a fair and balanced opinion.
Barrett points to
a “long” list of companies that shelled out hundreds of
thousands of dollars (Barrett) to lobby for the bill as some of the biggest
proponents to SOPA’s popularity in Congress. The corporations merely seemed to be
attempting to protect their financial stakes in digital media, rather than
taking a jab at Lady Liberty as Barrett insinuates. And who can blame them
really for that, really? They are financial entities that are actually keen to
make money and thus will obviously make the decisions that will best ensure the
most longevity of their assets. SOPA would have certainly made it a lot easier
for companies to police that their intellectual property was being accessed
only through legal means, but at a great cost to the freedom of netizens. They
weren’t motivated by the possibility to stunt one’s ability to share content
online, as Barrett suggests several times throughout his piece, but rather to
ensure the security of their investments.
After lambasting
the supporters of SOPA, Barrett takes a moment to note that it has indeed taken
a long time for the opposition of SOPA to reach a “saturation point”, but that
the time for action is nigh and that the savvy reader should join the movement.
It is here that Barrett reveals his true motivation for nursing the uninformed
along: he is campaigning. He gives the reader an overview of the catastrophic
consequences if SOPA were to be passed into law, and then dares the reader to leave
the page without doing anything to stop it. “Keep calling,” he says, “Keep
emailing. Most of all, keep making it known that the internet was built on the
same principles of freedom [as] this country” (Barrett). The parallel he draws between
the great state of America and the internet is another poorly-aimed, but
well-meant attempt at the reader’s heart. But by defining the web as an
institution that seeks to uphold a set of moral and ethical standards, to use
his own words against him, Barrett “willfully
misunderstands the nature of the internet” (Barrett). People don’t use the
internet to celebrate an idealistic construction of what it means to be an
internet user, but rather to express themselves, communicate with one another,
and sometimes to pirate copyrighted materials. Using the internet isn’t a
statement, it’s a functional object used differently by different people.
Barrett’s article
was published at an exciting time; a day before the widespread and dramatic “Internet
Blackout” that brought SOPA to the attention of millions of internet users
and caused twenty-four Senators to come out strongly
against the bill. Barrett uses his key position on the very cusp of a landmark
protest to persuade his readers to involve themselves in the fight. He
seems to take a moment in his writing to allow readers that are new to the game
and are still trying to sort out exactly what SOPA is a moment to catch their
breath and rev up to speed before he pleads for their support. The build-up is
dramatic, but subtle. He insinuates that
progress is being made despite the incredible amount of fiscal motivation for
the opposite and it was, some high profile companies pulled their support from SOPA in the months
leading up to the internet protest. The movement to end SOPA was an interesting
portrait of internet culture in that they are certainly prepared to jump aboard
a cause that they believe in. It also showed rather clearly that the internet
is unwilling to accept legislation that infringes upon its current method of
operations, and so we continue to wait for a suitable update to the copyright
laws in the US.
Brian Barrett's original article.
Bibliography
Barrett,
Brian. "What Is SOPA?" Gizmodo. Gawker Media, 17 Jan. 2012. Web. 16
Sept. 2013. <http://gizmodo.com/5877000/what-is-sopa>.
Liu,
Ken. "The DMCA Takedown Notice Demystified | SFWA." SFWA.
SFWA, 06 May 2013. Web. 24 Sept. 2013.
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