Two Strips of Latinum: SOPA, PIPA, and OPEN Must All Be Defeated!!

Over the last several months, much has been said and written about three bills before the United States Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the Protect IP Act, and the Online Protection and digital ENforcement Act (OPEN). These bills have been proposed by their authors to stop online piracy. Their targets are, amongst others, internet sites overseas that charge for the downloading of American television shows, movies, etc.

While the alleged purpose of these bills is a good one, the bottom line of the matter is that they represent the absolute worse in human nature, the urge to over react, or as a late relative often told me, to attack an ant hill with a nuclear bomb. These bills, if passed as they were before this weekend, would have given the US Government the authority to block any website that was deemed to contain pirated material.

It also broadened the definition of pirated material so broadly that if a website owner ran a picture of a television show, they could be possibly be blocked and prosecuted. This would have been the greatest weapon for those who advocate the censorship of the Internet, from members of the media to the big brass in the entertainment. In theory, if these bills passed, if you ran a review of a show that the executive didn’t like, and had a picture, you could have been prosecuted and blocked.

Many have been speaking out against these acts, including the owners of Reddit, who will black out their sites January 18^th in protest. Outcries have been loud and long from all over the country and the Internet against these bills, with the leaders of the Congress acting totally deaf and dumb to the outcry of the people, until now.

The White House has spoken out against parts of these bills

In separate statements, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced that they are removing the parts of their bills which would have legalized the blocking of internet domains. Smith went on in his statement to say, “We will continue to look for ways to ensure that foreign Web sites cannot sell and distribute illegal content to U.S. Consumers. Congress must address the widespread problem of online theft of America’s technology and products from foreign thieves.”

In a separate development, opposition to parts of the bills came from the White House. In a statement on the White House’s official site, a spokesperson said, “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” The statement went on to say, “Moving forward, we will continue to work with Congress on a bipartisan basis on legislation that provides new tools needed in the global fight against piracy and counterfeiting, while vigorously defending an open Internet based on the values of free expression, privacy, security, and innovation.”

Two Strips of Latinum returns to the Internet

While these are encouraging steps, this is not enough. These flawed bills, SOPA, PIPA, and OPEN, must be withdrawn from consideration, and carefully and thoughtfully reworked. There are already many laws on the books that could be enforced that would address these issues without doing what some seem to truly want, censoring the Internet.

Think about it.