SOPA and the new era of Censorship.

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth’s final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

                                                    -Commissioner Pravin Lal (Alpha Centauri)

If you read many tech sites, gaming news sites or the like; you are likely already aware that the Stop Online Piracy Act (Heretofore referred to as SOPA) and it’s equally twisted sibling PIPA are winding their way through the legislative fast track. Oddly in a political climate so polarized that the two sides can’t agree on waffles for breakfast; Somehow SOPA is overwhelmingly bipartisan.

What the hell is SOPA? 

Although written by congressional staffers (Corrupt ones at that), SOPA is the latest in a long line of tyrannical measures brought forth by the RIAA (and it’s sister company MPAA) to curb the rise of content piracy online. The measure would allow the RIAA/MPAA/ETC to request a blacklist for websites that shows, refers to or links copyrighted material. They can also turn off your income by making it illegal for Paypal and other companies to process transactions to blacklisted sites. The perfectly innocent images of my hunter from World of Warcraft posted on this blog would qualify me under this law to have my site taken down and Paypal accounts frozen.

Not just bloggers; other gaming sites like GameFAQs, OcRemixes, SpeedRuns, and all kinds of content-derived sites could be shut down immediately and permanently. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and DeviantArt would be forced to take down fanart, cosplay and other copyright protected works or risk being blacklisted/punished. That doesn’t seem too bad right? Well it gets worse.

How bad can it get?

I can safely say without being accused of hyperbole that SOPA will break the internet. If you don’t believe me take a look at how it works. I am going to say it one more time for emphasis, SOPA will break the internet.

Of course the internet wouldn’t stay broken. The world is too invested in the internet to just let it stay broken, so eventually the powers that be would cobble together a bastardized version with all the censorship and blacklist intact. Then everything would be perfect right? We could live in a world free of piracy, where content creators get paid equitably for their work and the RIAA doesn’t sue 80 year old grandmothers for downloading Hip Hop Albums.

Well no.

You see the United States is a very conservative country when you look at the makeup of the whole world, and the majority of the people in the world think that SOPA (And 90% of our post 9/11 laws) are Orwellian in nature. Currently the united states is considered a fair arbiter and administrator of the World Wide Web. A position that generates substantial income for us, but already other countries and organizations are taking steps to counteract the influence of the United States, and rightly so. They fear what will happen when the US Government finally enacts wide spread censorship, and the tyranny that will inevitably follow it. Tell me RIAA, how many jobs will the United States lose when Switzerland becomes the new backbone of the world information infrastructure? The pirates and the world would both circumvent us, and we would become irrelevant. Piracy will still exist and we will be royally screwed.

Demographics and new business models.

The American Assembly and the University of Columbia are currently working on statistical data that shows what the average American thinks about Piracy. The early results can be found here, and they are staggering.

Only a slim majority of Americans (52%) support penalties for downloading copyrighted music and movies-and limit this support to warnings and fines. Other penalties, such as bandwidth throttling and disconnection receive much lower levels of support. (Excerpt from the American Assembly report)

48% of the people think you shouldn’t face penalties for illegally downloading material. That is not an insignificant number, and the efforts of the RIAA and MPAA are adding to those numbers every day. Huge majorities of the population believe you should be able to share copyrighted material with friends and family, huge majorities of people oppose massive disproportionate fees to people who break copyright law.

But interestingly people are significantly less likely to pirate when provided with acceptable alternatives. Alternatives like Netflix and Hulu have had noticeable impacts on the amount of movies and shows pirated in the USA, it is fact that people are willing to pay reasonable rates for good content, and they don’t like being gouged and they certainly do not want to be flooded with ads while they are trying to relax and enjoy some shows they just paid for. Steam has enjoyed record breaking growth this year on the same premise, you get a virtual smorgasbord of content for reasonable prices.

Hell, the Freemium model could work here with some variation. League of Legends is free to play, but I’ve easily spent 50$ on LoL stuff in the last 6 months. I personally know musicians who give away free copies of their CD’s and ask only that you buy some Merch. In my own field of writing many writers release free or steeply discounted versions of their books to drum up readership, one of my favorite writers Paulo Coelho not only advocates the sharing of books, but personally loaded his own books onto torrenting sites. Piracy dramatically increased his sales revenue and he has the documentation to prove it, and his is hardly the only successful example.

So why is the MPAA and RIAA doing this?

I’m going to be blunt here, I’m not a journalist and I’m not bound to be neutral or objective: The RIAA is deeply stupid.

Steve Blank wrote an excellent piece here, about how the industry has lost the ability to innovate and how it reached that point. The RIAA has a history of fighting against losing battles against innovation that stretches back into its conception. They even fought the VCR tooth and nail: Jack Valenti himself once famously said to congress “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” Really Jack? Home media is now something like 80% of the industries profit and you wanted to ban it? How could somehow so shortsighted be left in charge of a billion-dollar industry?

Jack Valenti was hardly the worst; the RIAA and it’s sister companies are run by executives and lawyers who have no respect for the creative process of their “clients” or the technological innovation that is shifting how media works. If you think this isn’t about censorship then consider this story. The RIAA had a video removed from you-tube that was posted by 50 Cent himself to protest SOPA, talk about playing dirty. Of course in that same vein we also have the story of the famous blogger who was asked by various companies to post and discuss music on his blog. ICE (at the behest of the RIAA) seized his domain for 1 year, violating his right to due process and costing him a substantial part of his income, as well as his creative voice. The list goes on and on.

The RIAA is quite simply too stupid to live. Each time they trample a civil liberty or wrongly accuse someone they highlight their own stupidity and hypocrisy that much more. They are trapped in an antiquated business model and would rather lock the United States (And the world) into an ineffectual, tyrannical and outdated system. Instead of embracing new technology and new markets, they spend millions buying off politicians and stamping out new and creative systems. Look at History; If the RIAA had it’s way the VCR, CD-Burner, Radio and Cassette deck would all be banned, think about that for a second.

So what the hell happens next?

Despite the financial and political power the RIAA possess they don’t have a mortal lock just yet. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and others have publicly discussed a nuclear option to show their solidarity should the push to pass SOPA proceed. Imagine getting online to discover no Google for the day, no checking Facebook, No celeb Tweets and no ordering the latest books off Amazon. If SOPA or PIPA passes these companies would lose millions, as they would incur massive upkeep costs in the removal of trivial copyright violations. Not to mention a hobbled internet isn’t a very good platform to run a company with. Many experts think the losses could mount into the tens of billions; How do you think that will affect the global economy you feckless thugs?

Now back to what really scares the shit out of me in this situation: Censorship. If you don’t hate the MPAA and RIAA as much as I do after reading this post then I have one more thing for you to see. The head of the MPAA Chris Dodd thinks that China is the model we should use. Really? You could have left China out of the argument and still made some valid points, but you invalidate yourself when you bring a country that censors EVERY aspect of it’s citizens lives into the debate. Dodd is nothing more then another paid thug who can’t wrap his head around the fact that the world is changing, another VCR-banning fossil that should leave thinking to younger more flexible minds.

Look at China, look at the censorship paradise the RIAA and it’s ilk want to create and tell me honestly that seeing the rest of the world follow a similar track doesn’t make you ill. The internet is lining up against the censors: Fringe hacker organization Anonymous is gearing up for the biggest attack in it’s history. Organizations dear to my heart like the EFF, and fellow writers of all political stripes are setting aside their differences and uniting to stand up against excessive and invasive censorship SOPA represents. Hundreds of tech companies and organizations have taken sides for or against, even the ESA I once supported is one of the principle supporters of the bill.

Regardless of your views on piracy please share these links to your friends and family. Despite what the RIAA, MPAA and ESA tells you, this isn’t about Piracy; it is about control and censorship.

I also want to thank all the incredible writers and researchers I linked to, and give credit to them for their incredible efforts to fight this constitutional abomination.

Wesley James Rands