Congress put the Protect Intellectual Property Act and Stop Online Piracy Act, which would have placed restrictions and guidelines on content sharing over the Internet, on hold indefinitely on Jan. 20, but the issue of internet piracy still lacks a popular solution.
The issue of internet piracy remains relevant due to the reality that the business concerns of those affected by internet piracy have not yet been addressed. While SOPA and PIPA, unpopular with many websites as well as Internet giants Google, Wikipedia and Facebook, lay dormant, internet piracy is no less feasible today than it ever was.
Opponents of SOPA have also done their part to keep the issue in the news by protesting in defense of a free internet. In particular, hacker group Anonymous is planning a demonstration that, if successful, would far eclipse the protests like Wikipedia blacking out its own website.
According to computerworld.com, Anonymous aims to fight against “a continuing threat by Congress to censor the Internet.” Anonymous publicly announced plans for “Operation Global Blackout,” which was set to occur on Saturday March 31, and would have disabled the Domain Name Service, essential to the upkeep of the Internet itself, through a series of cyber attacks.
Sophomore astronomy and physics major Tony Gaetani disagreed with approaches like this. “I don’t see how [SOPA] could be extended to extreme censorship, but clearly some people think that, he said.
According to the bill text, SOPA would make illegal the resale for profit of others’ products, such as movies, music and games, exceeding $1000.
While Gaetani said that he trusted the U.S. Government to be free of corruption to enforce such a law appropriately, Dan Collins, a Towson University sophomore history major, said that SOPA is doomed to fail because it leaves the government in control rather than an independent agency.
“The government has to provide the upfront costs for getting some sort of agency off the ground. After that if the agency was created properly it can become autonomous and become an executive force that is there to enforce legislation,” he said. “The funding for this agency should theoretically come from the entertainment industries.”
Collins continued: “Without the international community stepping up and creating laws that ban this piracy, there is no way for the government to legally enforce a SOPA-like bill. Unless the government bans the use of foreign sites, which is unimaginable in this country, then the piracy will continue.”