Enough Already with This SOPA

It’s Hollywood versus Silicon Valley. The outcome could change the way the world connects with the Internet. That’s not an exaggeration: The SOPA and PIPA bills have extraterritorial effects. It could be applied to Mexican citizens, living in Mexico, if U.S. legislation gives the green light to this new way of defining and combating piracy.

It makes the sharing of content suspected of copyright infringement a criminal offense. PIPA and SOPA would allow anyone in the United States to accuse anyone, no matter where they are in the world, of attempting to “steal U.S. property.”

The initiative would give the complainant American judicial authority to order the blocking of the site. It could also ban advertising companies that are paying sites accused of copyright infringement. It is leading to a black-and-white world, where there is no place for nuance or shades of gray. Paradoxically, there would not be public trials like those shown in Hollywood movies; instead there would be judicial proceedings more similar to those of the Soviet regime.

One aspect of SOPA that has attracted the attention of the opposition is the use of the term “any sort of public web content.” This includes sites like Cuevana, but it also refers to the most important content sharers in the world: people like you and your friends.

The law requires companies like Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia to take steps to guarantee that their users are not using their sites to share pirated content. To comply with the law, the sites are required to spy on their users, whether it be you or your friends. The great revolution that is the Internet is what makes anyone a potentially huge distributor of content.

SOPA and PIPA are not against you individually, but they could affect all our lives (in our capacity as Internet users) in their eagerness to protect the rights of music, film, book or magazine companies. It limits our ability to exchange content with our friends.

To be against SOPA and PIPA is not to be in favor of piracy. 2012 cannot be solved with measures reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984. Where laser surgery is needed, a doctor appears who wants to use a cut-throat razor from the eighteenth century.

The protest on Wednesday 18 Jan. seems that it will have the effect of stopping the proposal with its terms as they are currently.

The best that can be said about SOPA is that it has generated a wave of interest (and condemnation) against a crude attempt to control the Internet and its users from the United States. The black cloud has followed because those promoting the initiative want restrictive legislation to pass in other countries.

Senator Luis Alberto Villareal has proposed that the Cofetel, PGR and Foreign Relations carry out a report on the repercussions that an initiative like SOPA will have for Mexico.

They are very right to do so. Taking advantage of the trip, it would be prudent to closely evaluate the initiative along the lines highlighted by Senator Federico Döring in this legislature. It would not do for the United States to stop this nonsense, while Mexico continues to advance its first cousin.