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A NOTE FROM JOYSTICK DIVISION
Generally the internet as a whole is a wildly diverse, anarchic place. It is a huge, spellbinding field of opinions and facts, truths and falsehoods, pornography and LOLcats. So when something cuts through all the different voices of the web and provokes a clear response from a large section of cyberspace, it is worthy of attention.
This is exactly what has happened as the specifics of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) bills under consideration in Congress have found their way onto the internet. In stark contrast to the usual mixture of "for" and "against" reactions that you'll find on almost any issue debated online, there has been a widespread backlash against these bills. And with good reason.
With the disclaimer that this is not an expert opinion and they are complex bills, here's a brief list of the issues that the community as a whole has raised about the proposed legislation of SOPA and PIPA:
- Provisions that would criminalize linking to sites accused of infringement, burdening websites based on user content with the task of policing their many posters on an impossibly micro level
- Endangering investment in the tech sector as a whole, as investors will be wary of putting money into websites that are known to have the legal obligation to constantly scrub offending links
- Wording that would hold websites blameless for "over-blocking" innocent websites in attempt to comply with new, strict guidelines, essentially encouraging the practice of mass online self-censorship
- The bills frequently refer not only to infringing foreign sites, but also to sites found facilitating infringement, which means that a broad array of things could be potentially criminalized, from open-source software to aggregation websites
- The bills use vague wording that could easily be exploited to twist the intended meaning of the law, and they include references to internet mechanics that are often far too simplistic (especially with regards to classifying "foreign" vs. "domestic" sites)
In summary, it's a mess; what's at stake is nothing less than freedom of speech, the destruction of online innovation, the victimization of innocent service providers and one big step down a very slippery slope toward the systematic repression of ideas.
There's more to these arguments than we've stated here. We suggest one of these great articles if you want to hear a more in-depth case against the legislation:
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation's close look at the possible effects of passing these bills into law
This isn't about ignoring piracy; it's about making sure we address the real problem of copyright infringement in a manner that does not compromise our ideals. Jon Stewart, in a time of national darkness, once said that the difference between America at her best and the enemies of democracy was, in a nutshell, the difference between "open and closed." We at Joystick Division appreciate that we have something very special in our ability to access an uncensored, "open" internet, a thing that perhaps is more fragile than we usually think. And we are willing to stand up and fight for that.
We hope you'll join us: please contact your congressperson if you feel as strongly about this as we do.
Thanks for listening.
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