SOPA opens dialogue but wrong solution
The Internet may be a darker place today, as many popular websites look to protest legislation currently on Capitol Hill. The legislation looks to curb piracy that has run rampant on the Internet as online videos and music have gained popularity.
Unfortunately, these pieces of legislation are poorly written and are sad attempts to help mitigate what has been one of the largest acts of mass stealing in the history of mankind.
The key players are throwing their weight behind the movement against the legislation. Popular sites such as Google, Reddit and Wikipedia are all making their theoretical voices heard by either shutting down the sites or noting the protest on their home pages today. So, if you need to look at a Wiki page today, you’re out of luck, thanks to poor legislative reasoning on the Hill.
The two pieces of legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, also known as SOPA and PIPA, look to address key issues that have resulted in the loss of billions in the music and movie industry. Mainly, these bills were intended to go after popular sites that post links to unsanctioned downloads of newly released movies, TV shows and music albums.
Known as torrents, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America claim that these sites and illegal downloads are unjust duplications of their material, arguing for the complete shutdown of said websites.
While both the RIAA and MPAA have been painted as greedy and harsh in their attempts to curb online piracy, the fact of the matter is that they have the right, and near obligation, to protect the intellectual property of their artists.
Protecting the value of art maintains the viability of the medium. And while SOPA and PIPA are drastically misaligned and should be tossed, at the very least the bills have brought the spotlight to the issue.
Whether it be a new piece of legislation or some other solution, piracy will slow technological advancements and further delay dragging the RIAA and MPAA into the online world.
Technology will certainly move the video and music industries online, and to an extent it already has. Services like Netflix, Hulu Plus and Spotify have made media available for nominal monthly fees, but have had issues getting started, as movie and music studios have balked at additional online exposure. The reason: piracy.
Until content owners are able to comfortably dive headfirst into the online era, we’ll continue having fragmented, half-baked solutions to getting our media fix online.
Unfortunately, the catch-22 of the situation is that deficiencies in the current online offerings are largely what push people around the world to piracy. When something isn’t legally available online, people go to illegal options to find it.
So while SOPA and PIPA need to fall by the wayside, the controversy surrounding these bills must spark the debate we need to push the media content we love into the digital age.
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