History repeats itself despite our frequent attempts to ignore this fact. The old entrenched establishment if not cognizant and nimble, can quickly be replaced by more adroit and adept newcomers. We see this in the Middle East and in numerous countries around the world. On a smaller scale, we also see it in business and the government in this country.
According to separate House (PIPA ”“ Protect IP Act) and Senate (SOPA ”“ Stop Online Piracy Act) bills, access to many websites can legally be denied and the website forced to shut down. Both bills are a response to much of the rampant piracy, almost all of it offshore, that exists on the Internet. Needless to say, the motion picture and recording industries enthusiastically support these bills since billions of dollars of revenue are lost annually because of these offending sites. For this reason, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has strongly endorsed these bills. Furthermore, since these rogue sites are offshore with many being in the Far East, they are outside of U.S. legal jurisdiction.
Many free-speech advocates and Internet websites are appalled by these bills. Reportedly, Yahoo has resigned from the Chamber of Commerce because of its position. On Jan. 18, many of the major Internet websites including Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, Zynga, Facebook, Yahoo, eBay and others protested these bills in numerous ways, most commonly by blacking out at least part of their screens. Their fear is real. This type of legislation can stifle new development and technology.
Considering that these rogue sites do not add to the development of new technology, merely the misuse of intellectual property to illegally generate revenue, stifling legislation should not be a concern. And yet it is.
According to a CNET article, Laurence Tribe, a high-profile Harvard law professor and author of a treatise titled ”˜American Constitutional Law,”™ has argued that SOPA is unconstitutional because, if enacted, “an entire website containing tens of thousands of pages could be targeted if only a single page were accused of infringement.” For example, this could knock out Facebook because of the content of a single page. It would almost certainly knock out a site such as wikileaks.
What is particularly interesting in this battle is that it is pitting the old established order against the new and ”“ no longer quite nascent ”“ rapidly expanding digital community. This established order of the entertainment and recording industries, print publishers and the networks reached out to their respective congressional representatives to create a bill for their protection and instead ignited a firestorm. Although the House and Senate created somewhat different bills, neither body anticipated the ensuing opposition they would shortly face. Under intense attack from a distributed and highly vocal opposition, Congress quickly retreated. Although both bills were nonpartisan, neither party was willing to stand up to the onslaught, despite the cause. As a result, little progress on this matter is expected, particularly since it is a presidential election year.
Internet providers and websites are not opposed to the removal of websites that contain appropriated intellectual property. What they do object to is the way the laws were written and their content. They propose working in conjunction with Congress and the entertainment industry to produce a set of regulations that all parties could accept.
We now live in a digital age where in essence, the world is flat and information travels almost instantaneously. It”™s a world where Facebook, a 10-year-old company with a few thousand employees, can have an IPO this spring estimated to be upwards of $100 billion and in which most of the major digital companies are under 20 years old. When Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, eBay and many other “upstarts” began to protest, people listened ”“ and so did the government.
The old established order of having Congress do its bidding was upended. Over 10 million voters, spurred on by this protest made their displeasure known to Congress. Key websites (like Wikipedia) went blank for a day while others (like Google and Tumblr) appeared with black lines on them. More than 115,000 websites participated in this protest and on Jan. 18 the number of tweets mentioning SOPA increased to almost 3.9 million. These numbers alone are indeed daunting.
“The way citizens communicate with their government is never going to be the same,” declared U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat. That statement was further emphasized by several members of Congress who publicly admitted they did not understand this bill and that they “needed to find a geek.” While frightening in its simplicity and naivety, such revealing statements indicate the growing reliance on technology and the need to better understand it, particularly when major legislation is involved. More importantly, it also reveals the growing power of the Internet, its users and the major companies behind it. The communicative ability of people to organize protests and generate opinions online was on full display.
Ultimately, I believe a compromise will be reached since almost everyone agrees that additional protections and actions are required to protect intellectual property and support copyright law. Yet, this protest though short-lived, did demonstrate the rapid and growing power that our digital world and the powerful companies that help lead it can exert on our existence. It is not difficult to imagine similar ”“ and possibly even more powerful ”“ outbreaks of protest and support in the near future.
Bruce Newman is the vice president at The Productivity Institute L.L.C. in Carmel. He is also a social media strategist and the designer of a new service, wwWebevents.com. Follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the Productivity Institute blog. Bruce can be reached at bnewman@prodinst.com.
