In Defense of SOPA

Look, I get it. I understand why people are scared.

They've got a good thing going now -- the internet is completely open, and it's this great place to exchange ideas, shop, connect with people, and find information about practically anything that has ever existed.

It's good. I agree...and I use it constantly. The last thing we want is to have the government come in, screw it up, fill it with shitty advertisements, block content, and make it into some tame, corporate, soulless hellscape.

So, I get it. No one wants to see the internet ruined.

Many people believe that SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) will break the internet. Consequently, no one likes SOPA.

Like, no one.

I Googled the term "SOPA defense," and I got almost an entire page full of anti-SOPA articles, with one actual defense of the bill (written for the National Review by the guy who wrote SOPA, Republican Texas Congressman Lamar Smith) titled "Defending SOPA." This is the same guy who supported the totally retarded Abortion Pain Bill (where women seeking abortions were required to be "fully informed regarding the pain experienced by their unborn child"). He's basically a boring poster boy for every irritating Republican position out there.

Naturally, he does a shitty job defending SOPA, being out of touch with the realities of online piracy and completely missing the point of his own stupid bill (which he probably had quite of bit of help writing). techdirt.com jumped all over it, with an equally misinformed attack of the defense.

Lamar, if you're reading this, just shut up. You're not helping, and I don't like you.

The question is, who's going to stand up and defend this massively unpopular bill? Who has two thumbs, and the balls to say, "Hey, you know what? This isn't such a bad idea."

This guy:


Sweet Christ I'm handsome.

Full disclosure: I work in anti-piracy enforcement. My employer has never voiced an opinion, positive or negative, on this bill. No one in my office has spoken about it, and in fact, when I mentioned it to a coworker, he'd never heard of it before.

These words are my own.

Even fuller disclosure: I'm an actor, writer, and producer. I've also participated in illegal downloading -- my Napster and Kazaa download lists were quite impressive at one time.

So I get it. I understand why people download stuff online. And if you choose to watch movies on pirate websites, or download torrents...it's fine. I don't blame you, and I'm not silently judging you. I mean, I'd encourage you to pay for entertainment in some way (if you don't already), but I promise that your actions (illegal or otherwise) are of no interest to me.

But here's what I think: internet piracy is screwing us. It's hampering creativity, holding back innovation, and making it damn hard for a person to make a living as a creative professional.

Because, and here's the point I have not been seeing out there, internet piracy is an industry. It's not a 17 year old in his basement uploading videos out of the kindness of his own heart. It's professionals earning money by sharing files...and most have been getting away with it for years. Yep, these shitheads, risking next-to-nothing, are making a fairly comfortable living (you can easily make about $3,000 a month, more if you're an actual site operator) without investing a single creative brain cell in the process.

Having said that, we need to establish some ground rules here. Things that I think we need to agree on:

1. Internet piracy sucks, it's harmful, and it's wrong
2. Nearly everyone does it, but most people feel bad about it when they do
   
3. If we do nothing, it's only going to get worse
4. Current enforcement efforts are ineffective, and have been stymied by the out-of-date DMCA
5. The only people who should be making money off of a creative endeavor should be the people responsible for that creative endeavor
6. No one has "the right" to view any entertainment content. If you cannot afford cable TV or DVDs, then you are not somehow endowed with the inalienable right to consume that content without going through the process of obtaining a legal copy to watch
   

Can we agree on those things? I mean, I know people who are against SOPA aren't necessarily pro-piracy...they're just anti-censorship...and I think most of us can agree to the above.

Now, I can concede that the SOPA has some vague language that has the potential to be misconstrued. Not to the extent that the fearmongerers will have you believe, but yes...certain sections are problematic. The ACLU agrees, calling it a "Good Idea - Poor Follow-Through."

But this is why bills go through an amendment process. What you've read is not the finished product. If bills were automatically passed into law after being introduced, then we'd all have a public option for health care right now. In fact, the most egregious issues have already been fixed in the latest version of the bill.

The chatter around the interwebs is that this bill will give anyone the ability to contact an ISP, tell that ISP that a site has "infringing content," and that ISP will be forced (by law) to flick a switch and immediately block access to the site in question, with little to no oversight.

The ACLU article above describes this nightmare scenario: "Katy Perry could decide that the awesome video you just posted on YouTube rocking out and lip-synching to her latest hit was, in fact, copyright infringement. All Ms. Perry would have to do is notify YouTube’s ISP of the supposed copyright infringement, and YouTube’s entire site could effectively disappear from the Web, perhaps even before YouTube was notified and despite the fact all other content on the site was non-infringing."

Forgive my language, but that's fucking retarded. And wrong. And it ignores something which the SOPA can never change -- that silly thing called "due process." It's in that constitution somewhere...not sure exactly where, but I'm pretty sure it's in there.

Either way, there could be no switch. Anything like that would require a court order. How do you get one of those? You have to go to a federal judge for approval. What is required for approval of a court order? Oh. Right. "Evidence."

For the judiciary, the presumption of innocence still exists, and any action taken on this law would still have to hold up to judicial scrutiny. This bill is not a constitutional amendment...so all of those awesome "bill of rights" guarantees from the constitution would still apply.

If Katy Perry's copyright owner could prove the video in question was not fair use, and that YouTube was "primarily designed or operated for...violations of the Copyright Act", and that they've taken "deliberate actions to avoid" enforcement, then yeah...they could potentially be shut down. But that'd be nearly impossible to prove in court, and if it can't be proved in court, then law enforcement still has to abide by federal rules of evidence.

SOPA is not a constitutional amendment. It is a bill, with the potential to become a law. Let's be clear about that. The constitution still wins.

So don't be afraid. Legitimate internet usage will still be protected, and cannot be infringed upon. This includes fair use -- a code that everyone creating content should familiarize themselves with. In addition, most copyright holders need (and actively work with) sites like YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, and Google. Those sites are not the problem.

The problem is jurisdiction. This is the reason that The Pirate Bay can respond to legitimate copyright infringement take-down requests with a hearty "Go fuck yourself" (as well as an entire page dedicated to being assholes about the whole thing). This is the reason that a Russian-based music sharing website can decide to set their own licensing costs without the copyright owners consent.

You can access any site in the world via the internet. It's great, but what happens when one of your country's most important exports is being distributed for free via the internet? That country has an obligation to plug that leak. Do you think Saudi Arabia would just sit idly by as people took their oil and gave it away for free online? Or would Columbia just allow people to come in, grab any many coffee beans as they could carry, then turn around and sell those beans for a fraction of what they cost to produce?

Of course not. America must look after its own financial interests. If that includes blocking access to illegal websites, and stoppering advertising dollars flowing into that site, then so be it.

And it's only going to get worse. More and more people are "cord cutting;" essentially canceling cable television, and digesting all of their entertainment content online. However, watching habits have not changed. The current roll of legitimate streaming sites (Hulu, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon) have restrictions on what's available and when. Consequently, when these cord cutters find out that practically every show and movie ever filmed is available for free somewhere, they'll either drift away from legitimate services altogether, or supplement their pay services with pirate services.

Either way, with free pirated content in the mix, any legitimate service is unsustainable until that problem can be dealt with. SOPA would do a good job in addressing that issue. It won't make it go away (and I don't think anyone involved with the bill thinks it will fix online piracy for good), but it will make accessing online content much more difficult...which is how it should be, dammit. People used to build shacks in the woods, with complicated distribution rings to bootleg whiskey during prohibition. All people need to distribute illegal online content is a computer, an internet connection, and a comfy chair.

So anyway, if you're truly frightened of this legislation, I would ask: "When was the last time a federal law ruined an entire industry?" Prohibition doesn't count; that was a constitutional amendment (a difference we've covered already). But has a law ever been passed that ruined an entire sector of business? I'd be curious to know...because I can't think of one.

These things have a way of evening out over time. If the law truly overreaches, it will be struck down by the courts. If it somehow breaks the internet, industry pressure will force concessions, and court cases will iron out the details. The sky is not falling, chicken little. It's a good bill, addressing a serious, growing problem. If it's passed, the only people who should be truly afraid are the guys making money from internet piracy, and the piracy customers. You good, law-abiding folk have absolutely nothing to fear.