When members of the hot topic curating site Reddit proposed 'the day that the internet went on strike', they could have had no concept of how widely the idea would be embraced.
On January 18th 2012, thousands of websites will become unavailable to the general public. The majority will be entirely blacked out, with their content pages blocked. Others will display a fake homepage. At first glance, it will appear that these sites have been closed down by the US government, though a closer scrutiny reveals the activist nature of the ploy.
The action is to protest legislation currently being presented to the US Congress. Amongst the big names publicly prepared to close their sites are Wikipedia, Craigslist, BoingBoing, Wordpress and Reddit. Google has also announced that each of its search pages will carry a link explaining why the company opposes SOPA and PIPA.
What Are SOPA and PIPA?
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) are two separate bills with very similar goals and wording. It is widely perceived that SOPA is the more extreme of the pair, in the radical changes that it wishes to instigate.
Each was initially drafted in response to pressure from lobbyists working on behalf of the movie and music industries. Campaigners were angry about widespread copyright infringement on the internet. Films and albums could often be downloaded for free, while their real world products were still in cinemas or being released in stores. This blatant theft occurred without profits trickling back to those who had actually created the entertainment.
These Acts would provide far-reaching legal redress for those with a complaint against online piracy. But opponents of the bills fear that these powers would stretch too far.
The Devil is in the Detail - How US Legislation Could Change the Internet
The websites providing copyrighted content are often hosted on servers located outside of the USA. This has proven problematic for American lawyers seeking to close them down. SOPA and PIPA have been drafted with this difficulty in mind.
In order to target foreign sites, clauses have been proposed which would allow judges to order a blanket block against them. Their domain name systems (dns) could be prohibited in certain areas, for example in the entirety of America. This is the way that totalitarian governments, such as China, Iran and Syria, already control how the internet is used in their countries.
Moreover, it wouldn't just be a single page that is taken away, but the whole website. It wouldn't have to be the site owners breaking the law. Simply having a rogue link anywhere on a site could result in the prohibition. For example, if a reader to this article should leave a comment with a link to copyrighted material, then the entirety of Suite101 would be subject to censure.
Major Internet Sites Set to Disappear Under SOPA or PIPA
The reason that so many online giants have waded into the issue is that they are all vulnerable under the current wording of these proposed Acts.
Google has only to include a banned site in its linked results and the entire search engine would be taken off-line. This would be similarly true of Bing, Yahoo, MSM and all other platforms based on questions and answers. Wikipedia would just have to include one disputed photograph or copyrighted song lyric and all of the site might be subject to a court order removing it from the internet.
YouTube is an obvious target, as many pirated films and illegally produced soundtracks appear on it every day. The administrators could never be fast enough to remove each one. The same is true of their gaming counterparts, which is why Minecraft/Mojang, Major League Gaming and Jagex are amongst those speaking against the two Acts.
Curator sites, such as Craigslist and Reddit, are wide, open targets, as all of their content comes from user contributed links.
Indirectly many more sites would be affected. Any which allows the general public to comment or participate in a forum run the risk of closure. It is the prospect of losing this avenue of freedom of speech, which has incensed many ordinary internet users into action against the legislation.
The White House Responds to Concerns About the Legislation
On January 14th 2012, members of President Obama's administration posted an official notice. It expressed dissatisfaction with the wording of all current draft proposals, which sought to target online piracy. These included both SOPA and PIPA, as well as addressing a third bill entitled Online Protection and Digital Enforcement Act (OPEN).
The White House made it clear that the 'underlying architecture of the internet' could not be threatened by US law-making, nor should on-line businesses be put at risk.
Many believed that this meant SOPA and PIPA had been indefinitely shelved, but such a result was proven to be premature. While SOPA requires some rewriting before it can be introduced before Congress, PIPA will be heard on January 24th 2012.
In the meantime, representatives will be bracing themselves for a wave of outrage, as the blackouts of the 18th raise mass awareness of the ensuing debate.
Jo Harrington - Jo has a BA (Hons) in History and Philosophy and a MA in History. She has a book published on the history of Wicca.
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