A Writer’s Views on SOPA and PIPA

I’ve been riding the fence for a while on the SOPA – PIPA debate.

Not because I am for either bill … they are both just really bad ideas … but because the intent is good.

Almost since the inception of the Internet, an idea emerged that everything that can be posted to it should be free. People who, on principle, oppose the concept of intellectual property also support a free Internet. 

Ideas should be available to everyone, they argue.

At their most fundamental level, of course, everything that can be posted to the Internet is an idea.

The Empire State Building may be a physical structure in a fixed location with a finite value, but a photograph of it is merely a digital representation that can be shared with millions of people almost instantaneously. Its value can be reduced to lines of code.

But even in the world of photography – and among writers, artists, musicians and film-makers – there is a strong sense that the content creator should benefit from the production.  These are, after all, professions, employing thousands of people to deliver carefully crafted, high-quality content.

Who gave anybody the right to give this stuff away for free?

If I am a private artist, selling my works only as originals, and I decide one day to allow a viewing of my work at a gallery in New York, am I by extension granting license to anyone who walks in, to photograph my work and propagate it on the Internet? Or, more to the point: am I allowing a professional printer to photograph my work, reproduce and sell it on eBay to his exclusive benefit?

If I am a musician offering my content on iTunes, an author selling my book on Amazon or an Indie producer showing my film at the Sundance Festival, am I by extension allowing the recipient to take that digital copy, reproduce it and distribute it to thousands of other users?

The answer, of course, is no. I’m not giving anyone such right.  In fact many artists copyright their material as a form of protection from just such theft. I have copyrighted articles, screenplays and short stories. I expect to be compensated for their use.

That said, as a journalist and blogger I also fully understand that the communications world is changing.  Millions of bloggers are delivering billions of pages of content every week, often “borrowing” images, videos and other content in the process. Most are aware that they are in violation of somebody’s copyrights, but the convenience factor rates high and the pressure to deliver in Internet time is even higher.

There are of course other solutions.  Wiki Commons provides sites with free photos, video editing software often includes free songs that can be used as background music, and a host of sites allow use of their content with attribution.  To blatantly steal content when such alternatives are available is simply lazy.

But it’s not the bloggers that SOPA and PIPA were meant to address.  At least, not in total.

SOPA and PIPA were created largely through the lobbying of the entertainment industry, to protect the intellectual property rights of big producers and distributors of major productions — films and music videos, for example — that take millions of dollars to produce.

Unfortunately, in their efforts to protect their content, these organizations have created a huge net that, when cast, catches many unintended fish.

SOPA and PIPA literally allow the government to require carriers to shut down entire domains for one or two instances of copyright infringement. While in practice this may be rare, in fact even a single arbitrary shut-down can have disastrous consequences for the owner.  Even worse, take-downs that are predicated on this law, but are in fact intended to shut down sites for other communications (for example, opposition to a government crack-down or an illegal police action) are not out of the realm of possibility.

The legislation is poorly written and should be opposed.

But the right to benefit from an individual’s work must be preserved.

Today, there exists a big vortex in between, and it is called the Internet.

Not that the Internet is at fault. This problem has existed as long as people have tried to protect the distribution of recorded media.  I’m guessing there were cave people who were killed for stealing the sacred stone that had coveted hunting techniques etched to it.

You don’t even have to be a capitalist to comprehend that recorded ideas have intrinsic value, and that the content provider should benefit from their creation.

In fact, there’s ample evidence that many of the entities that have lobbied for SOPA and PIPA – most precisely, the entertainment industry giants – have blatantly stolen content and ideas from writers and artists for decades and are profiting from these thefts even now.

The real problem seems to be that we have no lasting mechanism for ensuring that a chain of ownership extends from the content creators, through the distribuotrs and ultimately, to the consumer.

Personally, I find this hard to accept, since we have the technology to trace a tainted package of beef to a single cow in Brazil or a mislabeled pill bottle to a manufacturer in Germany.

My guess is that the right minds simply haven’t tackled the problem yet.  That there IS a technological solution, or combination of solutions, that can be called into play.

So this is my challenge. If you are reading this blog, and you have such an idea or you know of someone who does, get it patented and put it in play.

Most of us will be glad you did.

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