Op mum
Wednesday, Jan 25, 2012
newsed&clackam as. edu
The Clackamas
Internet controversy sparks viral debate
.com
WWW.
Opinion
By James Duncan
Design Editor
Since their introduction to the U.S.
House o f Representatives on Oct, 26
by Republican representative o f Texas,
Lamar Smith and Sen. Patrick Leahy,
Democratic senator of Vermont, the
“Stop Online Piracy Act” and its sister
legislation, the “Protect IP Act” have
sparked controversy and a national debate
concerning freedom on the Internet.
The two bills, which are being finan
cially backed and pushed by the entertain
m ent industry and politicians who receive
most of their funds from donations from
major media corporations, seeks to give
the government power over “rogue web
sites” that are beyond U.S. jurisdiction by
adding them to an “Internet Blacklist.”
The proposed blacklist would use the
Dom ain Name Systein which translates
website names like “www.Google.com”
into the IP addresses that computers use
to communicate. T he legislation would
also allow copyright holders to force pay
m ent processors like PayPal, credit card
companies and advertisers to sever their
ties with a website simply by sending out
a notice, which they would have five days
to comply with before action would be
taken. T he bill would also expand exist
ing criminal laws to include streaming o f
copyright material, imposing a maximum
penalty o f five years in prison.
T he goal is obvious; the entertain
m ent industry wants more power to deter
pirates from sharing their intellectual
property and causing them financial loss
es. T he legislation in its current form is so
broad that nearly anyone and everyone
who uses the Internet would be at risk of
being shut down or sued.
Laws to allow copyright owners to
issue take downs o f material from websites
already exist in the form o f the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act, and in 2007,
Universal Music G roup abused that
wer when they went after Stephanie
nz for her 29 second YouTube video
o f her baby dancing around her kitchen
as Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” played on
the radio. W ith the help o f the non
profit digital rights advocacy group, the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Lenz
was successful in fighting back against
Universal in a countersuit, claiming fair
use. If SOPA arid PIPA were made law,
court cases like Lenzs would have very
B
different outcomes and fair use might
become a thing o f the past.
T h e m ost troubling thing about
SOPA and PIPA is that copyright hold
ers can completely bypass due process, so
they don’t even need to have a court trial
at all. All they have to do get a site taken
down is make an allegation o f infringe
m ent, and m any common Internet activi
ties would fall under their definition o f
infringement.
For instance, the popular Internet
series “The Nostalgia Critic,” in which
the eponymous reviewer, D oug Walker,
reviews movies and television series in a
comedic m anner would cease to exist,
and could land the creator in jail and
the website which hosted the content
would be blacklisted if it failed to com
ply with a takedown notice within the
allowed time. Another popular Internet
series, in which James Rolfe, known as
the “Angry Video Game Nerd,” reviews
poorly designed games from aging 8-bit
and 16-bit consoles such as the Nintendo
Entertainment System, the Super NFS',
and Sega Genesis, could be prosecuted
and have his videos taken down.
Performing a cover of a popular song
and uploading that recording to YouTube
would become a crime, as would shar
ing die lyrics to songs on websites like
Songmeanings, LeosLyrics or Sing365.
Copying and pasting or quoting lines
from movies, television shows or copy
righted books would also be criminalized.
T he online art community, DeviantArt,
is an outlet for many users creative expres
sions, its also host to numerous fan-made
artworks which involve copyrighted char
acters from movies, T V shows, cartoons
and video games, which under SOPA
and PIPA, would put the user-base and
site at risk o f being fined or taken down.
Services like Googles “Google Images”
search engine, which indexes nearly 10
billion images from websites around the
world, could also be subject to the power
o f copyright holders who would ulti
mately view the website as a haven o f
infringement.
SOPA and PIPA were barely m en
tioned on T V riews, but in the wake o f
rolling Internet black outs, more people
are becoming aware and taking a stand.
O u r generation stands at the edge o f deci
sions that could lead to the death o f the
Internet as we know it today. N o more
arrows to the knee or auto-tuned news
and no more Rick Roll! T he beautiful
art o f parody and satire that die Internet
has let flourish could be lost to us almost
overnight. But, worst o f all ... we might
have to pay for cable to watch network
television and be watching it at the time
it airs! So get out there and call your state
senator, write a letter, or just talk about
it with your friends. Act now before the
Internet belongs to SOPA.
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