On SOPA/PIPA

Despite ordinarily being known for my staunch capitalist rants, I feel compelled to blog about the issue of some notorious proposed anti-piracy legislation which could potentially threaten the entire internet. In case it does not become apparent over the course of the next several minutes, I am in a particularly rebellious mood.

Firstly, I would like to discuss the consequences of either of these bills being passed for the benefit of anybody who happens to have been living under a rock for the last couple of months. The idea of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act are essentially to block websites which have been violating copyright law and posting intellectual property without the owner's permission, thus preventing the spread of copyrighted material illegally. This is fair enough, but the methods utilised in attempting to do this are rather draconian and completely unacceptable, and undermine the very existence of the entire internet.

For example, if the holder of intellectual property suspects that a website is hosting copyrighted material, they can write to the internet provider simply with a statement of a "good faith belief" that the website in question is violating copyright law, and the provider has five days to either block the website or challenge the claim, which can be expensive legally. Basically, the accuser is not made to be accountable and can make as many accusations as they like without being taken responsible if their claim is wrong. This is an example of rather extreme bias and is highly unfair, particularly to small websites which could be wrongly accused which probably would not have the funds to challenge a claim.

Eh, well, I'm sure you've heard the horror stories from elsewhere on tinternet so I shan't bore you with a long list of reasons why SOPA and PIPA are crap ideas. Instead I shall give you a list of ways in which one might rebel against the bills.

Firstly, if you're American (I'm not, so I can't do this), PLEASE take the time to either write to your local politician (over here we have MPs, I don't know what you have. Congressmen or something?) urging them to oppose it, or phone or actually go and see them if you want to make a bigger impact. Seriously, the further out of the way you go to oppose the bills, the bigger the impact will be. If you take the time every day to phone saying you don't like the proposed laws, the message will be stronger than if you sign an internet petition.

For people NOT in the US, we can still help. We can write blog posts stirring up rebellion, instruct others on how to access websites that would be blocked if SOPA/PIPA went through (more on that in a minute), organise protests, further Operation Blackout et cetera.

After the blackout of various websites yesterday, the public's response was so big that politicians' websites were inadvertently DDoS'd, everything was going crazy, and several politicians who were supporting the bills actually switched and are now opposing them. The danger is that in the next couple of days the opposition may wane, thinking the worst is over, but we need to keep up a relentless attack on the forces which seek to take down the internet as we know it if we want to actually achieve anything.

E-mail Lamar Smith (or take a sledgehammer to his front door) asking why saw fit to propose such an utterly rubbish law, overwhelm the answering machines of politicians, if you're not an American write to your own politicians telling them that we do not want a similar scenario in our own countries, we have to do anything we can. As I've said, the more we go out of our way to oppose this, the more effective our protest will be.

We need to remember that the people who support this law either want to censor the internet knowing full well that it will have adverse effects on the United States' economy by severely hindering the growth in such a large sector of the economy, or that they just have absolutely no idea what they're actually doing. Just bear that in mind.

Now, IF SOPA/PIPA end up going through, several websites will be blocked. However, the block itself is only a domain name system server takedown and can easily be bypassed, if you know how. The way to do this is to find out how to get the IP addresses of your favourite website using the command prompt (Google is good for instructions) and use the IP address instead of the website's URL. For example, Facebook is 69.171.224.11 , Tumblr is 174.121.194.34 , Youtube is 74.125.65.91 , Reddit is 72.247.244.88 , et cetera.

My last point is, simply, PLEASE SPREAD THIS. If websites' URLs do end up blocked, if everybody doesn't realise that the websites can still be accessed then they'll leave the websites and they won't be worth visiting any more.

That is how the internet truly dies; when people abandon it. Not when some badly-written piece of prose gives large companies the power to censor whatever the hell they like.

The internet will survive, but only so long as people fight to make it survive.


Now, for all those saying that in writing anything like this I'm essentially taking a stroll in front of the firing squad, and that I could potentially be extradited to America if either/both of the bills go through, I don't really give a dam.

YOU CAN'T ARREST AN IDEA.