Why 2012 is starting to look like 1984

Between SOPA, NDAA, telecommunications surveillance, and people's willingness to share endlessly via social networking, will 2012 mark the year consumers irreversibly surrender their privacy and freedoms?

Mantra of the Internet age

A mantra of the Internet age, articulated in 1984 by Then founder Stewart Brand, is that “information wants to be free.” Back at the time - the days of 360K floppies and 1200 baud modems - Brand was referring to digital research making information ever easier to distribute, copy, and remix than their old-school analog counterparts. The oft-forgotten corollary Brand offered together was “Information as well wants to be expensive,” because particular items, while maybe of no interest to one person, can be “immeasurably valuable” to someone else.

The Stop Online Piracy Act and its companion piece, the PROTECT IP Act are bills currently being crafted by U.S. Congress aiming to expand the capabilities of U.S. law enforcement agencies to combat copyright and intellectual property infringement — piracy. The proposed legislation is aimed at both the piracy of digital goods, however also the use of the Internet and online marketplaces to traffic in physical counterfeit goods. That means pirated DVDs, Blu-rays, and CDs, yet also fake drugs, fashion and accessories, electronics, antiques, collectibles, and many more items.

Worst-case scenario

In a worst-case scenario, Internet users who share a link to a cool video with their friends might find their social networking accounts suspended for “facilitating” alleged copyright infringement. Similarly, journalists writing about piracy could find their sites or publications suspended. And if a legitimate site or account were to get hijacked, transferred, or sold anyone who linked to or did business with once-legitimate content or sites might right away find themselves in violation of the law.

Under SOPA, a court could require ISPs to take down sites accused of infringement, order search engines to drop the sites from their listings, or bar online advertising and payment services from doing business with the site. The goal of those measures is ostensibly to shut down online marketplaces for pirated and counterfeit goods: Get them offline, and shut off access to their sources of online revenue. Though the bill provides for penalties against copyright holders who knowingly make false accusations of infringement, the bill as well grants immunity to ISPs who proactively take down accused sites. That is, there’s no penalty to ISPs who take down sites because they’re accused of infringement, even if those claims are false. That’s a significant weakening of “safe harbor” provisions created by 1998′s for all that-controversial Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Similarly, the process of requesting or obtaining a court order over alleged infringement would largely take place outside the public eye, likely with the owners of the accused site unaware action was being taken against it. If the order were granted, one morning a site or service operator could wake up and find their site gone. Site owners can file a counter-claim if they’re barred from ad or payment services, however the counter-claim would have no force.

Opponents of SOPA argue these provisions would fundamentally break the Internet and stifle technology, and could lead to many sites and services migrating their infrastructure out of the U.S. to escape potential liability. Furthermore, it seems unlikely SOPA’s provisions would do much to combat online piracy and trafficking in counterfeit goods, since site operators are already adept at moving to new hosting services in the space of a few hours: Even SOPA’s proposed streamlining of takedowns would for all that move at glacial speeds compared to the Internet world.

The legislation argue SOPA’s provisions

Proponents of the legislation argue SOPA’s provisions would protect earnings of content creators that would if not be lost and, hence, preserve jobs - an important buzzword in today’s political and economic climate. Supporters as well note SOPA is not intended to go afterwards single instances of links on blogs, social networking feeds, or other sites; or rather, the bill is meant to offer law enforcement and rights holders tools to go afterwards bigger fish, like substantial piracy and counterfeiting operations. Nevertheless, the language of the bill as it stands today contains no such limits, implicitly relying on barriers to entry to curb potential abuses.

SOPA are not law. Both bills are proposed legislation that has but to make it out of committee for votes earlier the House and Senate, let alone be signed by the president. Nevertheless, the proposed legislation has drawn a wealth of criticism, with domain registrar GoDaddy bearing the brunt of anti-SOPA sentiment by first endorsing the bill, at that time retracting its support. A handful of gaming companies have also to all appearances withdrawn their explicit support, even though it’s not clear whether that’s a genuine reassessment of their stance or merely a PR move in the wake of the GoDaddy frackas. Many other top-line Internet companies-Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, eBay, Wikimedia Foundation - oppose SOPA, as do the EFF, Human Rights Watch, and the ACLU.

The bottom line is that if legislation like SOPA

The bottom line is that if legislation like SOPA and PIPA become law, the way the Internet works for most Americans could change substantially. Much of the information we understand to be “free” today, even to the level of tweets and status updates, could immediately come with enormous consequences. The weight of those consequences will tend to suppress Internet users’ willingness to speak, communicate, link, and share - and that’s why opponents say SOPA will “break” the Internet.

SOPA is not but law, however the most recent National Defense Authorization Act is. The NDAA is an annual bill passed by the U.S. Congress authorizing the budget of the U.S. Defense Department. It’s always a bit of a political hot potato because few presidents can justify failing authorizing revenue for the Defense Department, particularly when tens of thousands of U.S. troops are overseas serving in extended conflicts. Since the President does not have a line-item veto, lawmakers try to attach all sorts of things to the NDAA, knowing the President will almost truly have to sign them all through into law.