SOPA

A while back, I was surfing reddit when I saw a young petition attempting to stop the SOPA bill from being passed. I researched a bit, agreed with the petitioner, and signed. I was signature #83 (or so I recall). In the weeks that followed, reddit all but exploded in its frustration at this bill. In fact, you might say it did explode. Reddit decided to turn itself off for a day to bring awareness to the horrors of SOPA. For the unaware, SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. This is an impossible act. I mean that. Piracy cannot and will not be stopped. In fact, the fear that this act created has ensured that. Many people have started fighting for their right to a free internet. Some of them have gone so far as to create their own, independent, uncontrollable "darknet". So, the Act was an attempt to stop online piracy by giving copyright holders the right to take down any web site that published their content without any form of a trial. The large issue here is that many of your favorite websites (like youtube) are only able to function because they are not held responsible for the content that their users post. SOPA would have changed that and altered our internet. That is why so many large websites (like google and reddit and wikipedia) censored themselves to to demonstrate what kind of internet SOPA would create. The day following that protest, SOPA had been stopped, and MegaUpload was taken down. This proves that whoever is out there "fighting piracy" needs no more tools than they already have. If anything, they need a lot less. If something must be legislated, that is it. MegaUpload may have been participating in some illegal activities, but they also participated in a LOT of legal ones. The sudden disappearance of their website was a shock. Many people, including copyright holders, LOST their files. I emphasize "lost" because all internet "piracy" that occurs does not involve taking anything away from anyone. It is constantly referred to as theft and piracy, when it is actually called infringement. However, I would argue that what the FBI did to MegaUpload and its users is actually theft. They took everything in the night. It is gone, and unless the thieves have a change of heart, it is not coming back.

So. I signed a petition. It got over 50,000 signatures. Once it got 25,000, it was guaranteed to get  a response from the white house. That response was a typical political response, with one caveat. It said it would invite a few of the signers to a conference call regarding how to move forward. The issue, is that they still believe they must do something... and they want us to tell them what. I ended up being one of the hundred people on that call... it lasted 37 minutes, and about 5 people got to say something to the three officials available. As I stated in my first post on this blog, I judge people based on what they produce, not on how great their title is. And thus, 5 incredibly intelligent civilians articulated the opinions of the people quite well, while 3 idiotic politicians did damage control.

The issue I am getting at, is free speech. Yes, we all have the right to free speech. However, our government has the right to pretend to listen while blatantly ignoring you and doing whatever it wants. I applaud the Obama administration for creating the petition website and actually making that conference call happen. It is the first step in a good direction. However, it only further pointed out the flaw in their system to me. The flaw that, once overcome, will let them take the second step. The flaw is that their is no conversation. On the petition website, 25,000 people come together to get an official response to something they care about. The response they receive is always titled quite differently than the petition, and normally skips all the points made in the petition. This is exactly what we see in the Republican candidacy debates. They do not answer the question. I was hopeful that a conference call may play out differently. Instead, it confirmed the flaw. The first person to speak conveyed how any legislation of the internet is is hurtful to the people they are trying to protect, and innovation has been the driving force for dealing with the issue. (He said it much more eloquently...) The first response to the first civilian to talk on this call began somewhat like this "let me take this time to talk about how certain actions have been able to affect change..." I'm sorry, but what? You invited all of us to a conference call so that you could hear our opinions, and then vehemently defended your own positions by tangentially talking about other topics? How political. Another thing. This terrifies me. They condescendingly used the word "broad" to refer to the views that people were providing. I wish they would have told us what they were looking for, but if they dismiss everything as being too "broad", then how the *Expletive Deleted* do you run a country? We don't have broad views. We have incredibly individualized views. However, as competent civilians trying to make a difference, we intentionally attempt to portray the views of ourselves and our peers. I believe this is a quality that is missing from most politicians, and the fact that it is viewed in such a poor light makes it obvious as to why our country is in shambles.

So, I mentioned this happens on television and on the official petition website... Conversation (as in, two parties exchanging more than a single message) does not not occur on conference calls with our officials. So. If anyone from the government reads this, take step 2. Be open to more than receiving a message and sending a response. Make an avenue for the original sender to respond to that. And please, make your responses pertain to the original message.

When 50,000 people say "STOP SOPA", and you say "COMBATING ONLINE PIRACY WHILE PROTECTING AN OPEN AND INNOVATIVE INTERNET", we get confused when you ask us to tell you how to fight piracy. Because we don't want you to. Especially if you're going to spend my money to do it. In this debate, one party doesn't care about piracy, and one party does. The party that does has no idea how to fight it, and so they ask the party that gave up fighting a long time ago what to do... and they ignore us when we tell them to leave it be.

-K