Censorship causes blindness thinks one protester in San Francisco
By Luke Beardsworth
The worst thing about anything related to laws like this is how convoluted it can be. As an example, I’m sure the racism incident involving Liverpool footballer, Luis Suarez is still fresh in our minds and that resulted in a 100+ word document. This leads to many articles attempting to summarise the data and many of those twisting the contents to their favour, knowing that most people won’t have the knowledge to see through their agenda.
This is the case with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). While they are now shelved indefinitely; the laws have been portrayed in different ways by different people, but both laws are essentially ways of preventing piracy.
SOPA and PIPA both would mean the owners of websites are made liable for their content, including all user-generated content. For example, if a link to illegal media downloads was posted in the comment section on a blog in The Guardian, then the newspaper would be liable. In short, the laws could result in the complete destruction of free-speech on the internet. These are American proposals and they directly contradict the first amendment.
A free and open internet hurts many companies and despite what some will say, all labels suffer negative effects. Mega-label, EMI has resorted to suing Ireland as a result of their difficulties. When calculating losses from piracy, it is assumed that you would’ve bought every album you have downloaded. Figures are exaggerated; especially when viewing downloads from the highly populated third-world nations. The actual figure is always impossible to calculate but you can be sure that it’s significant.
It’s important that everyone takes a little bit of responsibility for this. Most people, including myself, have illegally downloaded and it’s the same as walking into a shop and taking something off of the shelf. It doesn’t help that the offence is describe as ‘file-sharing’. This is misleading because when you share physical items, you are doing so at your own expense. The same amount is being consumed. When you share media with somebody, you each get 100% of the product. Many people claim to be passionate about music and it really stinks of hypocrisy when they then illegally download. If it wasn’t for us, as consumers, there would be no need for such laws.
Protesters flood the streets of New York in outrage
We should get behind laws that destroy piracy but these take it a little bit too far. Websites like Soundcloud, Facebook and You Tube would likely face closure as a result of these harsh measures and this would make it very difficult to ‘discover’ new music like we can today. In an ideal world, this would hopefully encourage people to check out more gigs and invest in local music, but the probable effect is that people would revert into the shallow of pop music, heavily reducing the market for innovation.
It’s also very likely that pirates would find new ways to exchange new files. I have no doubt that holes will be made in whatever obstacles they think they can throw up. So bands would lose the ability to spread themselves via sharing and word-of-mouth and their music would continue to be downloaded for free.
The fact that many musicians are so against these changes speaks volumes; they don’t see themselves benefiting from it. These blanket policies are unrealistic and it’s looking very unlikely that they will ever be passed in their current form, but it remains disturbing that they have even been proposed.
I agree that artists need more protection. They also deserve the right to distribute their music freely online. There is a huge difference between receiving something for free and stealing it. Times are hard, but perhaps people need to start putting their hands in their pockets for the music that they love. Something definitely needs to be done, but these laws would do more harm than good.
