While I believe that every copyright holder should have legal protection from Pirates, Thieves, and Plagiarizers, I also believe in due process of law. Therefore, I have very serious objections to the Stop Online Piracy Act.
Innocent Until Proven Guilty is the foundation of criminal law in the United States and many other countries as well. In other words, when someone accuses you of something, they actually need to provide proof before you can be arrested for it. Most people agree that this is a Good Thing.
Right now. if a media company like Electronic Arts thinks a user on a website is distributing their product without permission they have to follow a procedure. I've simplified the steps that need to be taken for you.
Step One: contact the individual and ask them to remove the content/item.
If they comply, no further action is needed. Some will ignore the nice approach, which is why there are other ways to get the content off of the website. If the content is blatantly illegal, or on a user-driven mass media site this step is usually skipped.
Step Two: Contact the Site Owner and ask them to remove it.
Mass media websites like Youtube and Vimeo will usually take the initiative and do this for the larger companies. It's a good business practice for them, especially when the company is buying advertising slots and helping pay for the site's upkeep.
Step Three: Speak to a Judge to get a Cease-and-Desist Order.
This step is only needed for websites that are ignoring all reasonable requests. Because to get a Judge to give you one of those, you need to prove that they knowingly distribute content in violation of Copyright Law.
Step Four: Talk to The Service Provider and have them shut the site down.
If the situation has gotten to this point, one of two things has happened. Either the site owner has ignored/gotten around Cease-and-Desist Orders more than once, or a serious crime is being committed.
The Stop Online Piracy Act -as it currently stands- lets any major copyright holder petition the Service Provider to shut down a site for Copyright Infringement WITHOUT PROOF.
In other words, they can shut down any US based website that might potentially have copyrighted material on it. Making web developers and site owners Guilty Until Proven Innocent under the law.
This is not a bill about stopping websites from illegally distributing pirated software. It never was. As I explained above, blatant disregard for copyright can be taken care of under current international law. The catch is that media companies have to actually prove you are violating the law in the first place, which can take a fair bit of time and money.
So instead of going through all of that, they want to make the Fair Use Act and First Amendment obsolete. This would affect a lot more than simple "rogue" websites like Pirate Bay, or peddlers of stolen goods. This could affect the global economy in a very negative way.
The internet -and especially social media sites- have revolutionized the world. Small businesses can compete on the same global playing field as major corporations through digital grassroots campaigns. Consumers are better informed than ever, and individuals can decide for themselves what news is relevant to them. Aspiring journalists and writers can get their work out to the public without needing a publisher. And any person with the technical know-how, tools of the trade, and a computer can make films or games to entertain the masses.
In simpler terms, the Monopolies of old are in severe jeopardy. I'll give you three guesses as to who's not happy about it. I mean, who would want honest competition after years of getting away with abusing their customers?
Before you start accusing me of being a paranoid liberal treehugger, think about this. Why would Comcast support a bill like this? They don't provide any service that can be pirated. What would a major pharmaceutical company like GlaxoSmithCline have to gain by supporting a bill supposedly about stopping pirated software? Am I the only one who thinks this is suspicious?
Companies like Universal Media, Disney, and Autodesk at least make sense. They lose a lot of money to illegally downloaded versions of their copyrighted material. So it's pretty obvious why they want it passed.
/end political spiel
No comments:
Post a Comment