Wikipedia (that wonderful, community generated, repository of information) is going on a blackout tomorrow. In several hours, Wikipedia is turning the lights out on its English site to bring attention to two (2) United States of America bills that are currently being debated in the U.S. Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECTIP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate*.
*(Of course, these are not the real names of the bills, both of which answer to the less colorful and way more tedious identifiers of ‘House Bill 3261’ and ‘S. 968.’ But, to be honest, who on earth would want to join a cause as inauspiciously named as H.R. 3261? SOPA, I cannot help to add, means ‘soup’ in my native language and PIPA may mean, depending on who you ask, ‘pips or seed,’ ‘smoking pipe,’ or ‘unripe coconut,’ among several others. Somehow, for purposes of this law, Pip sounds appropriate (although I’m sure that there is witty comment buried somewhere in the smoking pipe and the unripe coconut).)
The main criticism Wikipedia is facing in its internet forums is that it does not explain properly what are the problems with SOPA and PIPA to justify this stand. On Wikipedia’s defense, it is my understanding that these bills are drafted in a heady mix of tech language and legalese that will stump experts (let’s not talk about lay men), but the gist of the protest is this: the bills give overreaching powers to some while trampling into the fundamental constitutional rights of others, like due process, freedom of expression and wrongful deprivation of property.
The interesting point here is that, by blacking out its English website, Wikipedia will not be limiting its protest to U.S. users; it will be making it worldwide. And this is precisely the force behind Wikipedia’s action: spreading the message that the overreaching aspects of these bills will not only impact U.S. users, it will impact what it is, for the first time in the history of humanity, a real free-flow of worldwide communication.
Let’s start clarifying that I am a technology attorney (and one who, to boot, made her living as a software cop for years), so professionally I represent those who have a vested interest in protecting intellectual property. But I also grew up under a Latin American military dictatorship, and remember freedoms of the press and expression as luxuries not always affordable in 1980’s Panama.
So I’m weighing on this debate from the same schizophrenic point of view we all seem to have regarding the internet: we all treasure the idea that social forces (embodied in social media) fueled the recent revolution in Egypt with the same passion that we fear those social forces behind the riots of London. We like our information and entertainment at our tips, but we fail to understand the role we play in the intricacies of internet commerce.
So here is my criticism to the Pip Soup Congress is brewing in its kitchen, and the reason why I support Wikipedia’s protest: the recipe for these bills and the ingredients in this SOPA (PIPs and all) reflect interests that have been granted under antiquated intellectual property laws, conceived in the 19th century when communications were controllable. SOPA and PIPA try to stop piracy and content-sharing by stopping the flow of communication and placing penalties on the medium, not on those infringing (which is akin at making gun manufacturers responsible for every crime committed with a gun), because the sheer volume of those at the end is staggering, so the idea is to end the middle man.
Independently of the fact that this is myopic, as it works against the flow of communication instead of embracing it, I loath to think of the worldwide consequences of the message these bills send and the precedent they set (and that some countries and some dictators would love to hear): that in the Land of the Free, a minority can control who access what on the internet based on their own agenda. Today is about intellectual property, tomorrow may be about religion or politics.
Maybe the solution to the problem is akin as to what Steve Jobs did with music: make content available cheap enough to make sense for end users to spend 99 cents on the content they want instead of obtaining it illegally. Because the key here is to use that same flow of information, which cannot be controlled, to drive volume. And volume is driven by low cost. This approach may seem simplistic (and hard on industries that spend huge amounts of money generating their content, like the movie industry), but an inventive system of cross licenses and advertisement placement may be most effective in fighting piracy (generating revenue where the prior takings were zero) than giving extraordinary rights to some at the expense of the fundamental rights of others.
Intellectual property piracy, like all crimes, will never be completely eradicated, but as someone who does not take for granted having a voice and who makes a living protecting the intellectual property rights of others, I cannot stop but feel that our efforts to minimize it should not cost us so much.
