Internet Blackout Looming
Summary: Will Google, Amazon, and Facebook Black Out the Net?
In the growing battle for the future of the Web, some of the biggest sites online – Google, Facebook, and other tech stalwarts — are considering a coordinated blackout of their sites, some of the web’s most popular destinations. Sites such as Google, Amazon and Facebook could temporarily replace their usual homepage with a black screen and a message asking users to contact politicians and urge them to oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act. The move could come as early as January 24, when the bill is due to be debated in the House of Representatives.
No Google searches. No Facebook updates. No Tweets. No Amazon.com shopping. Nothing.
The action would be a dramatic response to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill backed by the motion picture and recording industries that is intended to eliminate theft online once and for all. HR 3261 would require ISPs to block access to sites that infringe on copyrights — but how exactly it does that has many up in arms. The creators of some of the web’s biggest sites argue it could instead dramatically restrict law-abiding U.S. companies — and reshape the web as we know it.
“Mozilla had a blackout day and Wikipedia has talked about something similar,” Erickson mentioned, calling this kind of operation unprecedented. ”A number of companies have had discussions about that,” he said.
With the Senate debating the SOPA legislation at the end of January, it looks as if the tech industry’s top dogs are finally adding bite to their bark, something called “the nuclear option.”
“When the home pages of Google.com, Amazon.com, Facebook.com, and their Internet allies simultaneously turn black with anti-censorship warnings that ask users to contact politicians about a vote in the U.S. Congress the next day on SOPA,” Declan McCullagh wrote, “you’ll know they’re finally serious.”
“This type of thing doesn’t happen because companies typically don’t want to put their users in that position,” Erickson explained. “The difference is that these bills so fundamentally change the way the Internet works. People need to understand the effect this special-interest legislation will have on those who use the Internet.”
The polarizing movement has many critics but also equally strong and diverse support, including most major media companies as well as businesses like 3M, Adidas, Burberry, CVS and more.
“SOPA targets foreign websites that sell counterfeit drugs and stolen copies of Hollywood movies – not such American Web sites as YouTube or your favorite blog,” wrote Richard Bennett, senior research fellow at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, in an editorial in the New York Post.
The law is necessary to deal with those sites, he said.
“Internet criminals selling bogus drugs or pirated movies simply set up shop in China or a distant island republic, knowing that they won’t be harassed by law enforcement regardless of how many U.S. lives or jobs they endanger.”
But opposition to the legislation has grown substantially louder in recent weeks as the vote looms.
On November 15, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, eBay, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, and LinkedIn wrote a letter to Washington warning of SOPA’s dangers. “We are concerned that these measures pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation, as well as to our Nation’s cybersecurity,” the letter argued. You can see a letter signed by Google, Ebay, Facebook, etc here:
Others have taken a more proactive approach, voting with their dollars against those who support the bill. GoDaddy.com, one of the largest domain registrars on the Internet, stands to potentially lose thousands of customers on Thursday, Dec. 29, or “Dump GoDaddy Day,” the culmination of an ongoing boycott of the company.
Microblogging site Tumblr generated 87,834 calls to Congress with its own anti-SOPA campaign — a total of 1,293 total hours spent talking to representatives.
Hollywood and the recording industry have maintained the bill’s necessity in the name of piracy. “Rogue Web sites that steal America’s innovative and creative products attract more than 53 billion visits a year and threaten more than 19 million American jobs,” the U.S. Chambers of Commerce wrote in a letter to the editor of The New York Times.
But Erickson believes this is “just the tip of the iceberg in terms of response.” “People take the Internet very personally,” Erickson mentions, “It’s a very important part of their lives.”
How will it effect us?
If accepted, in just a few words is – it will give unseen power abilities to the Copyright Owners to deal with websites that display or distribute their content. So, you might wonder – what’s the big deal? Piracy is not a good thing and we should fight against it. As much as this is true, at the same time there are a few very concerning key points of the Act, which I would like to list right below.
- Your whole website can get suspended just because you have 1 small copyrighted Item even if it is not actually yours, e.g. you own a forum and somebody else uploads copyrighted pictures.
- Not only that, but you can get your DNS records changed, your Payment processing suspended and your web advertising cut off.
- So simply put – SOPA provides too much power within the Copyright Owners’ hands. That’s never been a good thing.
THE BACKGROUND BEHIND SOPA
The Stop Online Piracy Act has pit internet giants, consumer groups and freedom of speech advocates against film studios and record labels. The House bill would allow a private party to go straight to a website’s advertising and payment providers and request they sever ties. ‘Anyone with an axe to grind could send a notice without first involving law enforcement [or] judicial process,’ Google’s Katherine Oyama fumed. But advocates of the legislation say current law leaves few options for copyright holders whose products end up on foreign websites. The U.S. Justice Department could also request court orders to compel search engines and other sites to block domain names or search results.
I do not condone Copyright Infringement, but what SOPA wants to enforce is simply too much. It is a censorship with no limits. And it changes everything we loved the Internet for.
So, if you likewise are against this, you can go and add your name to it, so our voices be heard:
http://americancensorship.org/
