In a time when the government is so avid about stopping piracy, counterfeiting, and copyrighting that it has even created bills such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), U.S. citizens are left wondering if things are really as bad as they seem, or if this all just a ploy to make money hungry corporations even bigger and richer?
SOPA and PIPA have been already been struck down, but that hasn’t stopped the government’s war on counterfeiting.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a new intellectual property enforcement treaty, which not only affects us here in the United States, but has reached a global level in trying to have over eleven countries sign it. And this isn’t the only bill that has popped up since SOPA and PIPA; there is also C-30, which allows free-ranging police online surveillance of Canadians.
Following in Canada’s footsteps, the U.S is proposing the H.R 1981 bill, said to help stop child pornography, but containing heavy surveillance provisions.
Instead of focusing on trying to stop what goes on within the internet, the government should focus on more pressing issues such as unemployment, the economic state we are in, or the battle over women’s reproductive rights.
A recent study has proved, contrary to popular belief, that Bit Torrent file sharing does not affect the U.S box office. The study was done by researchers at Wellesley College and the University of Minnesota and it states “consumers in the US who would choose between the box office and piracy choose the box office… If piracy displaced box office sales in the US, we would have expected the slope of the returns profile to shift more significantly as Bit Torrent became more widely adopted.”
Delayed international releases are the actual cause of bit torrents increasing. Foreign consumers download recently released movies because they have no other way of viewing it legally.
If movie studios made it so that international releases could be made sooner, or at the same time they are released in the U.S, piracy wouldn’t be such a problem.
Yes, these bills are in the interest of saving the music and movie industries, but in doing so they are sabotaging the growth of revolutionary online media.
These bills stop attention-worthy people from being noticed. Not only that, but they trump our country’s capitalist efforts. Entrepreneurs, video bloggers, and online stores could all be sued for using a simple picture or a song.
The web sites you have grown to love, or have otherwise been addicted to, would no longer be as awesome or maybe even exist if ACTA, or other bills like it get passed. Many people wouldn’t even be famous if these bills would have been in existence.
These internet counterfeiting bills aren’t like some those laws that would affect only a certain demographic of people; it would affect countries all over the world.
The United States prides itself on its first amendment, but if more bills like these continue to be created, our immense progress as a country will quickly go on a backwards spiral.
If we just sit here silently, the freedoms we enjoy, and very often take for granted, will be stripped away in the blink of an eye. If we don’t put a stop to this, it is only the beginning.
Rebecca Ruiz is a senior journalism major and a contributing writer for the Daily 49er.
I’ve seriously considered talking to my university’s head of scholarly communication about ACTA and how it could potentially injure the university’s mission. With that I could at least be informed as to the university’s stance on the measure, and whether there is something I as a student could do to to prevent it.