All the Interwebs are buzzing about de-railing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate counterpart, Protect IP Act (PIPA). Those kidz at Reddit started a campaign against a company (GoDaddy) so dull (it registers Internet domains and sells email) it gets marginal mindshare deploying quasi-strip tease acts for ads designed to be blocked at the Super Bowl. Technology companies flirting with the IP crowd are now backing away.
SOPA is kitchen table talk now. Perhaps everyone wants to at least feel like they’re ‘in’. Like Tina Fey-kinda-in. It’s a simple talking point, too. Why, allowing Hollywood lawyers to tell backbone companies to block websites the lawyers deem carrying pirated material? That would “break the Internet.” Angry Birds would die. Mafia Wars end. And so on.
We won’t rehearse all the original machinations of the Motion Picture Association of America, the Business Software Alliance (MSFT eta al.). You’ve seen it elsewhere. And of course, watching MSFT and others at BSA cave to pressure and retreat is not un-fun. But it’s the same old story of IP holders’ greed and fear from the DMCA days. Turned up a notch. Except now there’s social media – like Reddit. And it bit them in the backside but fierce.
Still, it’s a bread and circuses thing. We’re just puzzled why Amerikhuns care more about access to online porn, Pirate Bay wannabees and LOLCats than, say, oh, their personal freedom. Nobody lifted a finger to slow PATRIOT down then. Except Dick Armey and a few who demanded and got sunset provisions. OK, it was right after 9/11. Feelings were raw.
Feelings weren’t that raw when Democrats and Republicans voted to blow past the original sunsets. How raw could feelings be with the Boy King in office? To get *expansions* to the PATRIOT Act, notwithstanding its classified offshoots. Chirp. Chirp. You’d think this would be something custom made for social media, ala Cairo, etc. But alas, people can’t conceive of losing something that’s not tangible, like a shiny new iPad suddenly no longer showing a favorite website.
So if you go to one of those usual suspect aggregators news sites proclaiming this ‘dramatic’ SOPA victory to ‘preserve the Internet’, just remember, sure, Amerikhuns may get LOLCats unimpeded. And the torrents running free in Sweden.
High fives all around. Because, like, saving the “integrity of the Internet” is so much more important than a constitutional republic. You know we’re right.