Today, I shall be serious. I will not use my standard hyperbole and strawman idiocy (well maybe a little). Today marks the 18th of January 2012. The day that a large portion of the US based Internet decided to go dark.

The websites that went dark today went dark for the purposes of getting the word out to the average American regarding two insidious laws that are going through congress right now. One of them, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act or Protect IP or PIPA, is set to be voted on at least initially on the 24th of January in the US Senate. Its sister bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA, is going through the US House of Representatives, but has hit a bit of a brick wall thanks to recent efforts to place the bill in front of the American People before ramming the one-sided law through.

There are a few items regarding these two laws that I must stand against. Originally, they were designed with a nuclear option to "blacklist" websites that were found to infringe upon intellectual property (IP) owned by US entities. Whether it be infringing trademark or design like fake Gucci/Coach/Louis Vuitton handbags, or illegal prescription drugs, or seemingly the most important movies made in Hollywood and music from LA, NY, Detroit, or Nashville, to name a few "important" items covered. This is a noble cause. Protecting your IP is a good idea. If you create something you should have a say over how it is used and/or distributed. Even if what you create is garbage you should retain the rights you choose over your "baby". Unfortunately, the people who actually create these things are rarely the parties that push for these laws - as I will cover in a bit. The "blacklist" would use a technological barrier - similar to the Great Firewall of China - to prevent US Internet users from accessing foreign websites that deal in illegal copies of trademarked, patented, and copyrighted materials from US entities (notice I keep saying entities? that's because it is corporations pushing for this stuff more than actual authors, musicians, and movie makers). Unfortunately, the "blacklist" would screw with the Internet's "phonebook" DNS, which is evolving a more mature and secure "phonebook" called DNSSEC, which would be completely screwed up by this "blacklisting" regime. Thankfully, the MPAA and RIAA have been kind enough to remove that clause from the law - how generous of them - for now, at least.

The main problem with both of these fantastic laws is that they effectively remove due process from the mix, something that is guaranteed by the 6th and 14th Amendments to Our Constitution. The set up a system where IP holders can simply say that a particular website (say this horrible site) is either deliberately violating their IP, or facilitating, or not doing enough to stop users from doing all the same; and have said website cut off from advertisers/payment processors. This would not require any court intervention and would create immunity for the advertisers/payment processors for cutting sites off. Even if the site in question is doing everything they can to clean up user posts and following all of the provisions granted to a "safe harbor" under the DMCA. Safe harbor, which allows website operators to have reduced liability if they participate in programs to reduce infringing material on their websites - I'm sure we've all seen the notice on Youtube when clicking on a link, only to find that it has been pulled down due to copyright infringement, that's the DMCA at work. That is gone with this new system. Sure websites can battle it in court, but by that point, their business has been damaged. What are essentially court-free injunctions are not a good idea.

It is also a violation of the 1st Amendment. It will have a severe chilling effect on the Internet in the US. Website operators will be very careful about what they publish, what they say, and what they link to, for fear that an IP holder will come crawling out of the woodwork to take away their revenue source. There is a prevailing opinion among the Hollywood and Motown types that "fair use" is a fiction. They are wrong. But, with this system, they don't have to be right. Knocking a website down with the law will eliminate a lot of websites simply due to the fact that small website operators cannot afford a drawn out legal battle with the Studios. If people fear speaking out for fear that a private entity can shut them up (or public for that matter) then they will not speak out on the Internet anymore. There is a clause that penalizes big copyright holders from misusing the system, but it won't stop them - they already misuse the DMCA, as I pointed out in my previous SOPA rant.

The copyright groups are trying to pit this as a black and white issue. Which is is at a very high level. But the reality on the ground, as it were, is that there are numerous shades of gray involved. "Fair use" allows me or anybody else to use protected materials in an editorial, commentary, satire, parody, time shift, or any number of personal and educational uses. The Big Content types hate that. They hate it with the fury of a thousand suns. Too fucking bad, We the People have rights every bit as much as they do. Which leads me to the next problem.

The biggest overall problem with this crappy legislation is: it was openly written by lobbyists. They make no effort to hide it, they even come out and throw us a bone by throwing out the most controversial (because it is technologically ridiculous - and very much in the style of China or Iran) part of the law - DNS blacklisting - and they announce that it is off the table. As though they have the power, no... right to remove things from the law while it is being written. If a banker had come out and so boldly claimed that they were removing a troubling part of a finance law Occupy Wall Street would have been on every bloody news channel for 8 straight days talking about the corruption. But, since it is an issue that affects the Internet - lawmakers kept it hush hush for as long as they could, while the Big Content companies that operate the news outlets kept it quiet to protect the law they had written for the unwashed masses. Our government is run by the corporations for the corporations. Decisions like the Citizens United decision (which was correct, if morally disgusting) only make it harder for the American People to get the power back - but a Constitutional Amendment defining the legal status of corporations would go far to fix that - define that while they pay taxes they are not citizens, only natural persons should be allowed to be considered citizens. A corporation with 50,000 employees certainly cannot speak for every single one of those people, and they don't they only speak for their interests (or rather those at the top's) even when it runs contrary to the interests of their employees and customers. Lobbying serves a purpose, but I would recommend a change to how it works as well, that lobbyists cannot work directly for corporations with more than 10,000 employees, but can in trade organizations - but only on the condition that they allow equal voice to all members (big and small, I know that trade organizations would pop-up with only big corporations but it would be clear who was pulling the strings). Corporations are created for the purpose of additional protections for their shareholders, those additional protections should come at some cost, especially since it is all benefit and no risk to the shareholders the way it is now being able to openly purchase influence in Our Government.

Finally, the us versus them mentality of Big Content is ridiculous. I certainly want creators to be paid for their work, especially if it is good. I also understand the desire to fight online piracy, but not at the expense of the Internet as a whole. Movie makers and music labels have a long history of fucking their customers. Have you purchased a DVD or Bluray recently? You are forced to watch ads on a movie you just purchased - it's disgusting. No wonder some people pirate. The vast majority of casual pirating is done incidental, not a pattern of refusal to pay for content and placing these ridiculous measures out there removing rights of citizens is not the answer. The people actively pirating will continue, unabated by these laws. Your mom who found a new site that lets her watch new movies online will lose access when sites shut down as the revenue stream is cut off, but the hardcore downloader will barely notice the new law at all. The laws specifically state that .com domains will not be targets because it is considered a "domestic" top-level-domain. That's very reassuring, except that not all sites end in .com, any that end in .es (Espaņa) can be shut down even if hosted in the US of A and operated by US citizens, it is a terrible system that needs to at the very minimum take into account the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA and allows for due process before anything is taken from the website owners.

One last note - the Big Content assholes have imagined a number and it is taken as gospel. They claim that each year up to $775,000,000,000 is lost to piracy. That figure is bullshit. That's more than the industry makes in a year. It's also equivalent to every man woman and child on earth downloading 3 blurays. Are they really selling 22,142,857,143 fewer blurays (at $35 a pop) each year. Absolutely not. The problem is that they set their prices at whatever they want (MSRP is ridiculous) and then claim each download is a lost sale at full price. But even then that $775BILLION figure is seriously inflated.

Go look up your Senator and Congressperson to let them know that IP protection is fine, but not at the expense of YOUR rights.

Post Script: The companies that are pushing for this legislation are not creators. The are more akin to venture capitalists, they pay the expenses for the creators. Then they reap the benefits of the creators' work. Corporations own the copyrights to movies and music, and have pushed to have copyrights extended to 90 years after the creator's death - perfect for a corporation, but not really for the creators or their families. People who do not create and have no incentive other than pure cash profits should not be in charge of writing the laws for all Americans to protect IP, the people who create are essentially cut out from the decisions and corporate greed monkeys are running with the ball to continue their profiting off of the work of others.


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