Just how long will the Internet remain free and open? Not for much longer, it seems, if American and European politicians get their way. But they'll have a fight on their hands.
This, for example, was a Tweet from Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia: "Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!"
And it wasn't just Wikipedia protesting that bad law on January 18th this year: other big web names showing their disapproval included Google, WordPress, Boing Boing, Tucows, Wired and Reddit, while an estimated 7,000 other, smaller websites joined the day of protest and blacked out either fully or partially in support. These included FAIL Blog, icanhazcheezburger.com and The Daily What.
And the bad law in question? Actually, there are two to consider: SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), introduced in the US House of Representatives and its sister act PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act), in the US Senate.
In theory, simply put they're to do with preventing web piracy in the form of copyright infringement. Not just in the US, but anywhere in the world.
In practice, though, it would appear the American government is slamming the stable door tight shut long after the proverbial horse has bolted - a British court very recently agreed to the extradition of UK student Richard O'Dwyer, whose TVShack website contained links to illegal copies of movies and TV shows. He now faces a potential prison sentence of ten years on the other side of the Atlantic. But he, at least, will have the opportunity to defend himself in a court of law.
PIPA and SOPA, though, go somewhat further than just looking out for copyright matters, because according to free speech organisations, they're paving the way for American authorities to shut down websites both in and outside the USA that have merely been accused of online piracy.
Guilty, in fact, until proven innocent - by which time any proof of innocence will be far too late: the damage will have been done, and it will take years for any website shut down in this way to recover. If at all. And it won't just be the websites that have been damaged - the whole technical architecture of the Internet itself could suffer.
It's not like sponsors of those Acts haven't been warned about either of those possibilities or even that if there's a hidden agenda to SOPA and PIPA, it's not as hidden as they'd have liked it to be.
An open letter from the founders of Yahoo!, Wikipedia, and other major Internet players like Twitter and Google warned that SOPA and PIPA would give the American government censorship powers "similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran".
Whether the US government would go as far as taking up the official Chinese state line of prohibiting (quote) "the spread of information that contains content subverting state power, undermining national unity [or] infringing upon national honour and interests" remains to be seen, but with SOPA and PIPA in the pipeline, many people think things could be heading that way.
However, there's always a way round everything: a single blog post in China can very quickly go viral, whether via Blogspot and Twitter for those with the right circumvention software, or even on state-approved Chinese Twitter clones. Once online, copies of that original post can stay up long enough for whatever damage censors might think it could cause - if any - to be done.
But it's not just government censors on either side of what's now known as The Great Firewall who'll have the power to shut down websites on a whim: Internet marketers all over the world fear that if SOPA and PIPA do make it onto the statute books any hint of a free online market will go right out the window.
That's because other Internet marketers with more clout, influence, friends in high places and, of course, money will be able, with a nod and a wink, to shut smaller businesses' websites down in the blink of an eye. Free market? What free market?
If SOPA and PIPA go through, we could be looking at the tip of the iceberg in terms of America's attempts to interfere with the Internet: at least these two bills have been debated and discussed with a certain amount of transparency.
But what's lurking under the surface is another matter: on this side of the Atlantic, there's ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which threatens civil liberties and privacy rights with "deep packet" inspection of our Internet communications, according to a leaked document. Unfortunately, we know very little else about the agreement, because it's been negotiated in secret.
Hardly open, then.
And, on the other side of the Atlantic, we have the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, between America and eight other Pacific countries. This, according to analysis of a leaked document that gives the public the first - and only - clue of what the Agreement is really about, includes provisions that would require alterations to US law in terms of trademarks, copyright terms and civil law liability, to name but a few.
Again, this comes under the banner heading of protecting us from web piracy. But we don't know precisely how we're to be protected.
Hardly free, then.
As America gradually starts to follow the lead of China, Malaysia and Iran, not just internally but also internationally, the freedom and openness of the entire world wide web as it used to be is going to vanish, in exactly the same way that independent presses were absorbed or even put out of business by giant publishing corporations.
And perhaps, if we're ever able to look at the legislation closely enough, we might even discover that the freedom and openness of today's Internet is being destroyed for exactly the same reasons.
Posted under Communication
