Alright, this is my first of my three required blog posts for the semester! Over the course of the first few weeks of the semester we have been discussing the general ethics involved in the cyber world and how it has been evolving ever since the boom of new age technology.
This weeks most recent discussion was on the ethical questions related to internet copyright laws and the grounds of moral right and wrong. I found this topic to be the important as it is a worldwide issue that is currently the center of attention in most of the technology world. The topic of internet copyright laws have been most recently discussed in relations to major bills such as SOPA and PIPA, both of which due to large opposition were shelved for future review. Those two bills which in their perspective chambers were supported by many legislators and their backers at the start of the their existence but when more thought and exploration into just what they were designed to do, they lost momentum and further more lost a lot of support.
Before I go on to say what was both good and bad about these bills, I want to explain what they said and what they would do. In general the two bills were essentially the same thing so as to save space and not to bore I will do a general overage of them combined. SOPA(Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA(Protect Intellectual Property Act) were designed to create stricter laws on stealing and misuse of private properties on the internet. Now for the how; both acts essentially operate upon the same basis and that is to essentially remove offending websites from the DNS(Domain Name System). For those unfamiliar the DNS is essentially a giant structure which houses all the visible web address names, such as "Google.com" and "Facebook.com" and in this structure it attaches these visible names to their respective IP address. So by removing these websites from the DNS the websites named address would disappear but the IP address and the website it self would still exist. This process would be done by submitting a complaint with any federal court in which the person or people submitting the complaint only have to show that a website is violating a known copyright and the court would order the address be removed from the DNS.
So now that we know what the two bills do lets discuss why they are bad. I already hinted at the first reason why the two laws are bad and its very simple, its because they wont work. The two bills do not shut down and do not remove any infringing materials they simply hide them. By removing the websites named address from the DNS you remove the ease of access as you would no longer be able to just type in google.com for example, you would have to type in the sites IP address which is not much harder just not that easy to remember. So the two acts do nothing but hide the offending websites from those who are too lazy to find the IP but for the most part would have no effect on the majority and the copyright infringement would continue.
The second reason why these two acts are bad is because it would cause a great deal of new work and costs to companies who run websites. The reason being is that in order to ensure your website was not removed from the DNS you would be required to filter everything on your website and for websites like youtube and facebook the required work and cost to the companies to try and do this would be extreme to near impossible. These two bills combined would shut down almost all of the major corporations who run websites and depend on them for income in the United States, such companies employ millions and in this economy adding extra unemployed citizens would not be the smartest move to make. Those two key points are the main reasons as to why both bills were widely rejected.
Now for the good, You must be wondering how can there be any good from something like this. Well I personally view the introduction of these two acts to be a greater good for the simple reason that if it had not been for these two acts the majority of citizens in the United States would have never know what the media industries were trying to do. We would never had people like Clay Shirky talking to people about how we need to protect our freedoms on the internet and also we would have not seen how warped some of our legislators views on personal freedoms are.
As a closing thought, I don't want to portray a feeling that I'm against protecting people's intellectual property I just feel like it needs to be done in the correct manner and that it needs to be done delicately. The first step to ensuring everyone's needs including the American people, is to get everyone one involved in the discussion. I feel like the past few weeks have been an eye opener to a lot of people but there is still a lot of people who just don't know, so it's up to those of us that are informed to let everyone we know about it.
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