Fighting for the Future of the Internet

The online world has been all aflutter in recent weeks over the introduction of two pieces of legislation in Congress: the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives. As PROTECT IP already passed in the Senate, last week the focus shifted to the hearings on SOPA and the fate that such legislation could have on the internet.

Both bills attempt to thwart online piracy and protect copyrighted intellectual property. However the way that Congress is trying to do this is by giving law enforcement and individual property owners the right to go after websites that might infringe on copyrighted materials and shutdown the website, prohibit other businesses from serving the sites, barring search results to the websites, and requiring service providers to block the websites. This may seem reasonable at the outset, but the results are far more complicated. The implications of such enforcement, and especially the individual right of action that SOPA allows, may mean that attempting to regulate the internet in this way threatens freedom of speech and information issues, places too high a burden on internet companies to comply, and fundamentally changes the way the internet will function within the United States and make it more on par with such beacons of freedom as China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia. It is these consequences that are leading many opponents to claim that SOPA will actually break the internet.

Last Thursday the House Judiciary Committee held a session to mark-up the proposed bill. The main focus was the 55 amendments proposed to the original bill, most of which try to soften the impact of the bill and find an acceptable middle ground between proponents of the bill, including the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, and the incredibly long list of internet-based companies and activists who are adamantly against the bill.

Throughout the hours of debating the amendments (all of which failed), netizens tracked and discussed the developments online. It is estimated that over 150,000 people from 150 different countries watched a portion of the hearings on Thursday through the KeepTheWebOpen.org webstream.  As the bill may determine how the internet functions in the US in the future, what better way of looking at the battle against the bill than seeing how it is being fought online?

The hearings are scheduled to resume on Wednesday, December 21. Follow the developments at KeepTheWebOpen.org.