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SOPA, PIPA AND OTHER BAD IDEAS
Dec. 23rd, 2011 10:59 amAs long as I’m catching up on my Outrageous Legislation rants – and because I know you love nothing more than reading half-assed amateur political rants during the holidays – I might as well get SOPA/PIPA out of the way.
SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act, currently being hammered out in the House. PIPA is the Protect IP Act, which is the Senate version of SOPA. Both amount to the same thing – which, according to the web hype, is that they won’t stop piracy but they will destroy the Internet.
Allegedly. As with the NDAA, I needed a little time to examine the claims and make some sense out of them. Having done that, I can safely say that the hype is justified.
Not that SOPA/PIPA will literally destroy the Internet. But it does aim to muck around with DNS rendering (which anyone who understands how the Internet actually works will tell you is a really, really bad idea), and it is worded so vaguely that it could just as easily apply to YouTube, Soundcloud and Dropbox as it could to the overseas “rogue” piracy sites the bill supposedly targets.
I seriously doubt that’s a happy accident, if only because every anti-piracy bill or treaty the RIAA, MPAA and IFPI have ever backed tends to be written in the same vague language that makes it dead easy to legally shut down any site they accuse of infringement with no judicial oversight or even actual proof – which is an especially bad idea given their tendency to abuse the hell out of the powers they already have. (Indeed, Universal Music is doing it right now.) And, like every other anti-piracy bill, Congress is being urged to fast-track it and pass it with as little debate as possible NOW.
Business as usual, really.
Interestingly, however, sci-fi writer Charles Stross has come up with a theory about why Congresscritters are keen to get SOPA passed – when viewed in the context of (1) the Occupy Wall Street movement, (2) the sociopolitical divide it represents (i.e. the 1% vs the 99%) and (3) the role of mobile phones and social networks in coordinating protests (which we’ve seen in the Middle East as well as the US).
In a nut:
It’s an interesting thought exercise. And there’s little doubt SOPA could probably be used for that purpose, which is just one more reason of many why it shouldn’t be passed.
I don't really believe it’s what SOPA’s Congressional sponsors have in mind, though. They’re more likely in thrall to the RIAA/MPAA lobbyists than creating a tool for shutting down Twitter if #OWS gets out of hand.
Also, Stross’ idea rests on the assumption that the US oligarchy sees #OWS as a “pre-revolutionary” situation, and thus requires the necessary tools to cut off Internet communications. The main ingredient missing from that assumption is critical mass – as I’ve said elsewhere, the 99% is actually the 33%, and less than 5% of that number is actually in Occupation mode. So the “pre-revolutionary” situation Stross describes isn’t really primed as a threat big enough to require an Internet shutdown option.
On the other hand, why wait until it is? David Cameron certainly doesn’t want to.
If nothing else, SOPA/PIPA is just the latest episode in the US govt’s never-ending quest to get the Internet under some kind of control, because they’ve always been nervous about the Internet giving people the ability to say anything they want (especially when it’s about sex) that they can’t say in easily policeable media like TV, radio, music, films and books.
And for my money, any Internet regulation bill whose main selling point is that it’s modeled after web censorship mandates in China, Iran, the UAE, Armenia, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Burma, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam is probably not a good idea.
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This is dF
SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act, currently being hammered out in the House. PIPA is the Protect IP Act, which is the Senate version of SOPA. Both amount to the same thing – which, according to the web hype, is that they won’t stop piracy but they will destroy the Internet.
Allegedly. As with the NDAA, I needed a little time to examine the claims and make some sense out of them. Having done that, I can safely say that the hype is justified.
Not that SOPA/PIPA will literally destroy the Internet. But it does aim to muck around with DNS rendering (which anyone who understands how the Internet actually works will tell you is a really, really bad idea), and it is worded so vaguely that it could just as easily apply to YouTube, Soundcloud and Dropbox as it could to the overseas “rogue” piracy sites the bill supposedly targets.
I seriously doubt that’s a happy accident, if only because every anti-piracy bill or treaty the RIAA, MPAA and IFPI have ever backed tends to be written in the same vague language that makes it dead easy to legally shut down any site they accuse of infringement with no judicial oversight or even actual proof – which is an especially bad idea given their tendency to abuse the hell out of the powers they already have. (Indeed, Universal Music is doing it right now.) And, like every other anti-piracy bill, Congress is being urged to fast-track it and pass it with as little debate as possible NOW.
Business as usual, really.
Interestingly, however, sci-fi writer Charles Stross has come up with a theory about why Congresscritters are keen to get SOPA passed – when viewed in the context of (1) the Occupy Wall Street movement, (2) the sociopolitical divide it represents (i.e. the 1% vs the 99%) and (3) the role of mobile phones and social networks in coordinating protests (which we’ve seen in the Middle East as well as the US).
In a nut:
… I infer that the purpose of SOPA is to close the loop, and allow the oligarchy to shut down hostile coordinating sites as and when the anticipated revolution kicks off. Piracy/copyright is a distraction -- those folks pointing to similarities to Iranian/Chinese net censorship regimes are correct, but they're not focussing on the real implication (which is a ham-fisted desire to be able to shut down large chunks of the internet at will, if and when it becomes expedient to do so).
It’s an interesting thought exercise. And there’s little doubt SOPA could probably be used for that purpose, which is just one more reason of many why it shouldn’t be passed.
I don't really believe it’s what SOPA’s Congressional sponsors have in mind, though. They’re more likely in thrall to the RIAA/MPAA lobbyists than creating a tool for shutting down Twitter if #OWS gets out of hand.
Also, Stross’ idea rests on the assumption that the US oligarchy sees #OWS as a “pre-revolutionary” situation, and thus requires the necessary tools to cut off Internet communications. The main ingredient missing from that assumption is critical mass – as I’ve said elsewhere, the 99% is actually the 33%, and less than 5% of that number is actually in Occupation mode. So the “pre-revolutionary” situation Stross describes isn’t really primed as a threat big enough to require an Internet shutdown option.
On the other hand, why wait until it is? David Cameron certainly doesn’t want to.
If nothing else, SOPA/PIPA is just the latest episode in the US govt’s never-ending quest to get the Internet under some kind of control, because they’ve always been nervous about the Internet giving people the ability to say anything they want (especially when it’s about sex) that they can’t say in easily policeable media like TV, radio, music, films and books.
And for my money, any Internet regulation bill whose main selling point is that it’s modeled after web censorship mandates in China, Iran, the UAE, Armenia, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Burma, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam is probably not a good idea.
Page not found,
This is dF
