SOPA, PIPA put on back-burner; ACTA alive and well

After widespread protests from big-name Web-sites such as Wikipedia, the United States government has chosen to postpone their decision on SOPA indefinitely.    

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a bill that was proposed in Oct. 2011, with the intention of preventing the theft of intellectual property online. However, shortly after the bill's introduction, many people began to speak out against it, expressing concerns that it would cause more issues than benefits by harming legitimate sites along with pirates.

 Some of the major concerns addressed by protestors were the fact that SOPA's extreme nature verged on censorship, and put many Web sites at risk. Political Science Professor Juris Dreifelds from Brock University explained how the bill could harm these Web sites through over-regulation of links.

"If you're going to ask too much, for example, culpability for linkages, what is going to happen is the United States is going to blackball illegal sites," Dreifelds said. "If Wikipedia provides a link, and the link is blackballed by the government, Wikipedia would face issues […] so every link would have to be checked."

Dreifelds said that this kind of monitoring would be incredibly expensive for Web sites, and therefore of concern to smaller Web sites, especially ones that do not make a profit. If the Web sites failed to properly monitor their links, then they would be punished, despite never intentionally having any relationship to piracy.

"You want to achieve protection of intellectual property without creating this tremendous bureaucratic apparatus to check every Web site and linkage, which would be expensive," Dreifelds said.

However, with SOPA's rejection a new bill — the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) — was proposed to governments around the World. ACTA would aim to create international standards upon which counterfeiting and piracy could be combatted. Many countries including Canada, the US and 22 of the countries in the European Union signed on.

Internationally, ACTA would aim to prevent trade barriers due to differences in counterfeiting and intellectual property regulations. The act would create a baseline for all participating countries, while allowing for "more extensive enforcement of intellectual property rights than is required by this Agreement" according to a press release from the Canadian Government.

Furthermore, Canada is itself considering Bill C-11 which would create Federal policies on the policing of intellectual property protection and counterfeiting.

Kelly Carroll, artist and co-publisher of the Zelda-based webcomic Fate of the Blessed also expressed concerns about how the policing of piracy would affect fan-based Web sites and creations. Despite their original story lines, and the fact that they do not receive profit for their works, these Web sites still make unauthorized use of copyrighted material. This means that an increase in online piracy policing would put their publications at risk, despite the non-commercial interests of the creators.

"It's full of credit to Nintendo […] we don't and never will make any profit off of it and we never intended to," Carroll said. "I would really miss the comic if SOPA passed. I'd still write it, but my friends would be the only ones seeing it. I want to share it."

When asked if the protestors likely had any influence in the government's decision to postpone the bill, Professor Dreifelds said that they very likely did, and will continue to play a prominent role in the development of anti-piracy legislation.

"What happened is the Web sites were able to scare the congressmen by mobilizing their particular clienteles," Dreifelds said. "Congress got scared because of this stampede […] even the people who initiated the bill all of a sudden changed their minds. Congressmen, put up their finger to see where the wind is blowing, and that was a hell of a storm."

Despite the postponing of SOPA, Internet users are still expressing concern over other initiatives and potential issues, such as ACTA, as being just as concerning as SOPA. When asked about the future of anti-piracy legislation, and if users need to be concerned, Dreifelds said that he predicted that the two sides will eventually converge towards a compromise.

"Eventually there is going to be some form of accepted compromise on both sides," he said. "I'm glad there are two sides fighting, and I'm glad they're almost equal strength. If it's one-sided, you don't get this kind of discussion."