Written by Matthew J. De Reno Thursday, 19 January 2012 19:03

Killing SOPA

U.S. lawmakers are kowtowing to the so-called "Internet community" and the website blackout protest that was organized regarding SOPA. Though this is widely viewed as a victory for the Internet community,  I wonder if that sentiment is truly well-founded. 

SOPA is the controversial legislation which would ostensibly give big companies a lot of power over smaller website owners, who might otherwise not have the resources to fight allegations of content pirating and copyright infringement.  The Stop Online Piracy Act (a House bill commonly called SOPA) and the Protect IP Act in the Senate (called PIPA) permits the U.S. attorneys general and content copyright owners to lower the boom on websites that display or link to their copyrighted intellectual property or offer up fake imitations thereof.

In theory, SOPA is not a bad thing.  Who can argue that we should not protect the creators of content disseminated on the Internet? Nonetheless, SOPA means that a small website might be shut down by some big company based merely on allegations that it has stolen content.  Most would agree that one powerful apsect of the Internet is the ability to freely share content so impinging upon that freedom in any way can't be viewed as a good thing.

The eventual killing of SOPA legislation as a result of website blackouts is merely confirming the obvious: Big Internet, as well as Big Brick and Mortar (both equal subsets of Big Business), wield a massive club of influence over U.S. lawmakers.  Does it matter if the company is Disney or Google?  Both entities are driven by profit.  Did the little web site owner make an impact?

Let us make no mistake that it was not the small sites that blacked out yesterday which created this victory. It was sites like Wikipedia and other Internet gods such as Google that played the biggest part. Did average Joe web surfer, who wants freedom to do what he wants on the Internet, make a real impact in killing SOPA? 

Wikipedia being shut down for a day was surely an inconvenience to millions. Wikipedia brings us an incredible amount of information at the click of a mouse or touch of a pad?   It may not be the end all for authoritative information but I am convinced it is a great starting point. So Wikipedia arguably becomes this incredibly powerful, perhaps indispensable resource, built upon millions of people contributing knowledge freely. One company owns all of that content and can turn off the spigot of information at their sole discretion? That is power. That power is noticed by U.S. lawmakers. Interesting how then the blackout was a victory for the Internet community.   

That killing of SOPA by a different set of companies, which wield more power and influence over older brick and mortar enterprises, is really no cause for celebration.  Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, and countless other Big Internet companies make an enormous fortune from the everyday Internet surfer. It seems to me SOPA was not so much a threat to the everyday Internet surfer but rather to Big Internet. The web blackout of SOPA was Big Business cleverly wielding its influence by masquerading as a champion of the individual web surfer and the freedom to do what you want on the web.  Nice try.  I am glad that SOPA may die, but not exactly thrilled about who pulled the plug.