Yesterday saw the largest ever coordinated internet protest when websites including Wikipedia, Reddit and WordPress “blacked out” in protest at proposed anti-piracy laws SOPA (stop online piracy act) and PIPA (Protect intellectual property act). Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is quoted as saying, “Proponents of SOPA have characterised the opposition as being people who want to enable piracy or defend piracy”.
“But that’s not really the point. The point is the bill is so over broad and so badly written that it’s going to impact all kinds of things that, you know, don’t have anything to do with stopping piracy.”
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg also weighed in on the debate, “Facebook opposes SOPA and PIPA, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the internet.”
The cyber protest has been seen by many as a partial success with several high profile senators including Marco Rubio and Roy Blunt dropping their support of SOPA.
Today though rights holders and the MAFIAA (Music And Film Industry Association of America) fought back and had “cyberlocker” site MegaUpload knocked offline. The popular file sharing site has long been a thorn in the side of the entertainment industry and their desire to have it taken offline has been well documented. In October 2011 the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) submitted a list of rogue websites to the Office of the US Trade Representative. MegaUpload found itself included on the list.
The websites founder Kim Schmitz (aka Kim Dotcom) along with three colleagues were arrested in New Zealand at the request of US authorities. Six other individuals behind the website have also been charged with offences including “conspiracy to commit racketeering” and “conspiracy to commit copyright infringement”.
This latest turn of events is extremely worrying. Even without SOPA or PIPA it is still far too easy for the entertainment industry to cry foul play and have a whole website knocked off the internet. MegaUpload is a legal website and acts within the legal obligations set out by the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). So which website will be next RapidShare? MediaFire? 4Shared? FileSonic? All these sites operate is largely the same way as MegaUpload.
If SOPA did ever did become law other mainstream sites like YouTube, WordPress and Twitter would be gone before you can even say “conspiracy to facilitate the infringement of copyright”. The internet police are already here and it looks like they plan on sticking around for a while.
Tags: Censorship, DMCA, Entertainment Industry, MAFIAA, MegaUpload, MPAA, PIPA, Police State, RIAA, SOPA
