The issue is even more complex when the user of the intellectual property is not doing it for profit even in avoidance of profit. Wikipedia is a good example, where thousands of editors create entries in an on-line encyclopedia. Certainly, they are competing with Britannica and traditional encyclopedias, but their purpose is not to replace the original work but to catalogue its existence.
But property is property, and Wikipedia strives to limit the use of copyright material in their entries. The result is sometimes unintentionally hilarious, as Hollywood stars, with images carefully guarded by Hollywood publicists, enjoy photographs from random amatures taken at red carpet events. Red eye and bad lighting in one of their highest profile web entries is the price for copyright on better photos.
The best way to understand the opposition to the bill is to look at one of its key provisions.
In 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act allowed for “safe harbors.” The argument was that owners of copyright material could contact hosts of material and request that their images or works be removed. The onus was on the copyright holder to police the Internet.
SOPA moves the onus from the copyright holder to the website. With loosely written provisions, even a single copyright image could result in the shutdown of an entire website. At its most extreme, Facebook could close because you uploaded an Anne Geddes picture of a baby in a flower.
Champions of the bill say it is aimed at foreign websites that specialize in offering copyrighted material for download, including entire films and albums. Having eliminated Napster and other domestic file-sharing services, Congress is now going after off-shore equivalents. The problem is that policing these sites is almost impossible, regardless of the law in the United States. When a pirate site is found and scoured from Google, it will only reappear hours later with a new name and address.
Short of recreating the Great Firewall of China around American consumers, and scouring with deep-packet inspection every bit transmitted, malicious copyright infringement will continue.
Like many bill, SOPA likely started with the best of intentions. The creative industries are major employers in the United States, and there is rampant, industrial-scale copyright violation going on in international markets.
However, the United States Congress only has powers over Americans, and the resulting law punishes domestic sites unduly, squelching innovation and creativity, while failing to materially impact the very target of the bill. Global property pirates will still be selling bootleg movies in Mumbai after this bill passes, but the Internet will be significantly less innovative.
The creativity and innovation of the Internet would continue, but pushed underground, chased and reviled by authority. The result is an Internet I wouldn’t want to be see: where anonymity is the first condition of free speech and creativity.
Where the free exchange of ideas is divorced from our day to day lives, building ever greater walls between the digital “us” that is free from accountability and the flesh and blood “us” that must implement our ideas in a real world. The result is an Internet of greater polarization and coarseness, rampant with tribalism and atomization of the individual from society.
Tighter provisions might focus this legislation to target global profiteers while leaving harmless domestic audiences free to openly engage in their Constitutionally-protected speech. But the real forum for this battle is diplomacy aimed at getting countries like China to recognize their own need to police domestic piracy rings, rather than targeting the innocent.
