What does SOPA and PIPA mean for Canadians?

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales tweeted on the 16th, “Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!”

Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge. This line from Wikipedia became viral on the social media last night.

As most of you observed on January 18th, many leading web organizations registered their opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (known as PIPA). Some vocalized it by ‘blacking out’ (Wikipedia). Some decided to post messaging and hosted petitions (for example, Google). In fact, Google gathered 4.5 million signatures in one day against SOPA and PIPA. By going dark for the day, and by suspending their services, they demonstrated the effect of these bills, if passsed.

The support from the Silicon Valley has had a positive impact on the Obama Administration as the White House has released a statement that SOPA will be shelved for the time being and openly criticized the bill.

On the other hand, the legislation is widely supported by Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment industry. In fact, News Corp’s chairman Rupert Murdoch, who has recently joined twitter, used social media to support the bill.  Some of Murdoch’s tweets included,

“So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery;” “Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying;”

Google responded by calling Murdoch’s tweets nonsense and biased.

What does it mean for Canadians?

SOPA’s enforcement would certainly include Canada as the law does not care for physicality of the website server, instead it defines a “domestic domain name” as any registered by the registrar in USA. Since every .com, .org, .net is managed by domain registrar in US, the law effectively asserts jurisdiction over millions of domains (and sites) all over the world.

It also means that we Canadians or any don’t have a choice to view site’s content if it is deemed to be offensive of SOPA and/or PIPA. Think about that for a second. It basically comes down to this: within the bill’s almost 80 pages is a blueprint for ruining the Internet. In that sense, SOPA is a remarkable achievement. Rarely does a proposed law manage to be so bad in so many different ways.

Even though it is primarily a piece of anti-piracy legislation, SOPA is broad. The proposed bill gives the U.S. government  the power to pursue court orders against any site believed to be engaging in copyright infringement. (There’s nothing adversarial about the court proceedings that lead to those orders: the defendant doesn’t even have to be present). It follows the “Shoort First, Think Later” philosophy.

If passed, it will be the reason for social media’s death. If you share a picture from another site on this site in the comments, this blog can be shut down immediately. From Search Engines to Wikis. Imagine the social movements which can be shut down on the notion of piracy. The Arab Spring wouldn’t have been possible if a law like SOPA was in place. Occupy Movement, not a chance.

Not to mention that Canadian government typically follows US’s lead and can lead to a Canadian only law which would mimic SOPA and PIPA.

It hinders our future. It hinders the web’s future.

If you would like to understand the SOPA act better, be sure to check out the following video by Khan Academy which explains the act and it’s potential far-reaching implications.

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