How does SOPA affect you?

Given that over 400 million people visit the site each day, you would be one of the few that didn’t hear about the strike of Wikipedia on Wednesday in protest of new rules proposed by SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). Wednesday the 18th of January saw the largest protest in the history of the internet, sites large and small “went dark” (The Guardian Online) in protest of the latest developments to the internet. Sites joined Wikipedia in support of the strike that is set to clamp down on online piracy for good including Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. (Students may have been the most effected by this, actually having to go to the library and look at books!).

The idea behind SOPA is seemingly sound, and as you would imagine brought forward by the entertainment companies and music big wigs, stopping online piracy and the illegal downloading of film and music. But when you look further into what the act dictates, the consequences could be far-reaching and potentially damaging to more businesses than merely artists and record labels.

Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Guardian Newspaper that:
“These bills propose new powers for the government and for private actors to create, effectively, blacklists of sites … then force service providers to block access to those sites. That’s why we call these the censorship bills.”

What could this mean to you at home, or in your business?

With this in mind however, straight away a problem that crops up when you consider how far removed those affected by online piracy can be. How easily you can be closed down, whether you have done anything wrong or not. Your blog or website could be commented on by a user who has an infringing link on their site and then due to your connection with this link, your site could be shut down, despite the fact that you have done nothing wrong. As you can imagine, this is a MASSIVE problem for site such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube who could see their whole sites being closed down through the actions of one individual user.

Another problem is that once you have been blocked, it is your domain name that will not be able to be found, your IP address is still out there. This means that those committing the piracy acts will still be able to act, but you will be hindered massively when your not-so-tech-savvy customers won’t be able to find you.

Individual users can be punished for things that really aren’t that bad. An example of this would be that technically a record label could put you in prison for linking to a YouTube video that shows you singing along to a song. When you don’t have the rights to do this, you will pay the price. In the past the entertainment industry has even targeted individuals who have been in a similar situation, locking up those who have done one thing (which was probably funny), as opposed to those constantly uploading pirate material.

Not only are small businesses and individual users in for difficult times if this act passes, but also large corporations will be really restricted when it comes to the development of new technologies which are more than likely going to include elements of social sharing and online activity. This broad law banning all activities of this kind will make it very difficult to go forward in the technology industry, in a time when progression is something that we should encourage and not hinder at every turn.

It needs to be considered whom we need to back in situations such as these. It is obvious that the film and music industries bring millions into our economy, but this money only scratches the surface of the affect that the profits brought in by the technology industry and unfortunately this new ruling will limit their every move.

We’re not condoning the pirates in any way, copy write theft is a crime and should remain that way. We just need to consider the guidlines of this ruling, ensuring they are tighter and don’t inhibit our nations recovery, and ensure that the people who are breaking the law, are the ones who are punished.

This is the page that appeared when you visited Wikipedia on the day of the strike.