SOPA harms online security, freedom

Picture an Internet without Lolcatz. Imagine a world without Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook or YouTube. Pretty scary, right? Well, it’s not a nightmare. It’s a situation that could occur if H.R. 3261, known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, is passed.

Wendy Fu | Daily Trojan

SOPA is a House bill designed to enforce copyright law and to cut down piracy. Under SOPA, the Justice Department and copyright holders can take action to shut down any copyright infringement.

This doesn’t sound exceptionally bad, but the bill uses vague language to define copyright infringement.

If SOPA passes, a CNN piece containing a video clip from a recent movie could be in violation. A T-shirt on Etsy with the image of a copyrighted character? Also in violation. Social media is at risk. So that blog you have to write for your Writing 340 class, or any video you put on YouTube of a football game? Those might be dead in the water.

The truly scary part of SOPA is instead of just taking down the item in violation, it could potentially shut down the entire hosting site. In many cases, there would be no chance to challenge that shutdown immediately. By the time the domain owners get to court to challenge the matter, months could have passed.

It wouldn’t be as bad as the Internet shutdown seen in Egypt last year or the upcoming “halal Internet” being developed by Iran, but it would be close. SOPA puts the Internet in the hands of businesses, not people. It would no longer be a place of free speech and sharing.

So much for net neutrality.

On top of that, SOPA is actually going to compromise Internet security. The Internet is a global matter, and the Domain Name System that keeps track of all Internet IP addresses could be fragmented by US action and put cracks around the flow of websites, leaving them open to virus attacks.

And here’s another problem: SOPA won’t even stop piracy in the first place. People are going to find a way around it. Proxy servers proved effective in Egypt when all servers were cut, and those who are heavy pirates possess enough hacking skills to get around anyone looking for them.

Piracy is bad — there is no doubt about that. Everyone from monopolistic companies to independent struggling artists suffer when their content is pirated. But piracy is a service problem, and it needs to be dealt with on a service level. One must exercise precision to deal with specific, malicious pirates; SOPA goes to town on the Internet with a machete.

Congress is trying to regulate the Internet when it doesn’t understand how the Internet works. This isn’t to say all Congressmen are completely ignorant, but most members of Congress lack detailed knowledge of servers, DNS and net neutrality. What Congressmen do have is lobbyists telling them what seems bad on the Internet and pushing money into their pockets. This is why it has been so easy for SOPA to gain support in the House. No one is questioning its effectiveness and true meaning.

So what can we do to stop it? Speak out against it. Newspapers and television networks are barely covering SOPA, and Congress is flying by without input from anyone except lobbyists.

There are already petitions for President Barack Obama to veto the bill and the stronger they are, the more likely they are to succeed.

Call your representatives. It can actually work. Email them, call them, text them and crash their servers with an overwhelming message: Say no to SOPA.

SOPA isn’t some distant bill without student ramifications. It’s an attack on free speech and one of the biggest dangers facing the Internet. It targets the sites we use to connect and interact, and even the websites and platforms we use in class.

We’re the ones using the Internet, and the people who don’t are the ones who put together this bill. It’s time to stop SOPA from becoming law.

We need to speak out and hold Congress accountable. Let’s save the Internet. There’s more to it than just pictures of animals.

Nicholas Slayton is a junior majoring in print and digital journalism.