Productivity in North America must be through the roof: The Internet is boring on Wednesday.
You can still go to NBC’s website to watch advertisements before a few clips from Saturday Night Live. Facebook is still working. The Globe and Mail is still pumping out insightful political commentary.
But the things that make the Internet amazing – Reddit, Wikipedia, Cheezburger, Dailywh.at – are all going to be unavailable for the day.
The reason is to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, legislation before the United States Congress that would allow copyright holders to seek court orders against websites accused of facilitating copyright infringement.
Actions envisioned in the legislation include ending payment to those sites through online advertising, banning search engines from reporting those sites, and ordering ISPs to block access. It would make downloading copyright material a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.
Uploading copyright material could similarly face criminal or civil proceedings. Taken to its extreme, the bill effectively criminalizes uploading to YouTube a children’s birthday party including the copyrighted song Happy Birthday.
At first blush, this is an extension of the classic battle between producerism and consumerism.
Consumerism is the well-known, American-invented philosophy of defining oneself by brands of consumption. I wear Nike, therefore I am an athlete. I drive a Suburban, therefore I am outdoorsy. I drink Starbucks, therefore I am cultured.
Producerism is the less-well-known French alternative philosophy of defining oneself by their output of production. I paint, therefore I am an artist. I draft legal arguments, therefore I am a lawyer. I throw cobblestones, therefore I am a protester.
Adam Gopnik defines the difference delightfully: “For [Americans], an elevator operator is only a tourist’s way of getting to the top of the Eiffel Tower. For the French, a tourist is only an elevator operator’s opportunity to practice his métier in a suitably impressive setting.”
Intellectual property is the most visible and graphic battlefield for this long-running clash, primarily because intellectual property is so liquid.
When you take physical property, you remove the property from another person’s possession. Theft is a clear action with few complications. I steal a loaf of bread from you. I have the loaf. You do not. Cleary, I have harmed you.
When you take intellectual property, typically you leave the property in the other person’s possession and make a copy. The issue is not theft, per se. It is failure to pay fair compensation. Harm is hard to prove, and still harder for the “criminal” to accept.
There are valid arguments both for and against the wide distribution of intellectual property.
On the one hand, copyright holders deserve compensation for their efforts. Intellectual property is a major employer in the United States (and Canada). Those who work to create something should not have to see their work sold illegally by someone else for profit, with no compensation or attribution. As a producer of art or music or a book of fart jokes, I deserve to receive every penny my work generates as compensation for my genius and sweat.
On the other hand, people around the world take original work and add to it with their own creativity, creating new art, music and ideas. From mashups to memes, the Internet democratizes creativity and allows any one of us to do something amazing. As a consumer of art or music or a book of fart jokes, I should have access to material at as close to zero cost as possible and with maximum ability to reframe the result as I see fit.
Intellectual property “theft” can produce benefits. For instance, this guy on Reddit who created one of the best Zombie-rated works of the last ten years. It’s nothing but intellectual property violations, but undeniably creative in its own right.
In another example, American consumers have long ordered prescription drugs from Canada over the Internet, avoiding higher costs due to more stringent drug patents in the United States. SOPA would criminalize the websites – operated by pharmacists and requiring doctor’s prescriptions – that offer these lower cost drugs to hundreds of thousands of Americans. Patent-holders argue they spend billions to develop drugs and need to maximize their profits to create the next Lipitor, but tell that to a pensioner who needs an expensive drug to live.
