Will new legislation cripple the World Wide Web?

_Are SOPA and PIPA effective legislative tactics against internet piracy?_

**Nasreen:** I personally think SOPA and PIPA are too extensive and are actually only going to benefit a few people, whilst being detrimental to many, including people in the film/music business. Furthermore, I think we should be wary on principle about how much we extend the protection of Intellectual Property.

**Charlie: **The current legislation has been unable to stop internet piracy running wild, so we have a whole something-for-nothing culture who believe it’s their right to download whatever they want for free whilst the industry loses out. This must stop. This is why SOPA is important.

**N: **Firstly, I think SOPA can be detrimental to the film/music business. The availability of streaming has increased the mass of people who can now follow a show. For example, I wouldn’t be eagerly anticipating every new episode of How I Met Your Mother without streaming; being able to stream all the back-story when it suited me made me more eager to watch the present season . Fans can try out a show for free, whereas before they had to pay for DVDs for a show they might not even have liked, so they’d never try it. Now artists can use it for free publicity.

**C:** Sure, the number of people watching shows has increased, but the networks are not getting any revenue at all. The media industry is all about profits. If they can’t earn money from what they produce then all these great shows will stop being made.

**N:** Networks already make money in other ways, like adverts and license payers’ fees. I’ve already said why artists might do better without it. I think SOPA only makes money for the people who would get higher profits from loyalties than from the advertising that accompanies streaming, and its not like these people are short of money. Advertising still makes a lot. Further, if you can watch 4OD for ages or megavideo for 72 minutes, people will watch 4OD, so networks can make up for losses from other streaming sites the minute they make their own alternate streaming site anyway!

**C:** But 4OD is actually owned by the people who deserve the profits. Advertising alone makes networks a pittance but pirate sites have lower overheads and get away with disregarding the law. When the money dries up, networks won’t bother producing anything more. It’s the same story for the intellectual property theft PIPA addresses. If you want innovation then we have to pay a price, otherwise people just won’t bother. It’s sad that it’s got to a stage where we have to resort to such measures as SOPA and PIPA, but it’s necessary.

**N: **There is already a lot of harmful legislation out there for the protection of Intellectual Property (IP). It’s used worldwide to terrible effect to prevent people making cheaper versions of drugs so companies profit. There are two principle points. The first is that its inherently unfair, because in a real meritocratic system, if your product is good enough it should sell, regardless. What IP does is actively try to stop competition, and thats totally against meritocracy. The second principle point is this: if my first point is true, IP stops people developing better versions of things. New technology stagnates whilst the rich keep making money off of somewhat inadequate technology.

**C:** Intellectual property is the ugly side of capitalism, but it’s essential. If drug companies did not know they could make profitable returns to cover the horrific expenses of research, they would not bother with production at all. You can’t argue they need some protection?

**N: **I also think PIPA is too harsh. A whole domain can be shut down if it contravenes copyright in any way. Previously, legislation used to get those who copied, but SOPA/PIPA target hosts for facilitating information or file sharing. Hosts process internet traffic, they don’t upload copied stuff or pirate themselves, and there is too much traffic for them to check personally. It’s really easy to take down the host if someone suspects they are facilitating file sharing, whilst being really hard for the host to prove their innocence. No wonder Wikipedia protested; one suspicion could suspend the website for millions!

**C:** Remember that sites can’t be taken down at a whim, they would have to go through a court procedure. It is essential that there is some procedure for copyright infringing pages to be taken down. The current system is far too slow, I mean, look how long it took to take down MegaUpload.

**N:** Why shouldn’t information be available if we need it anyway? If I want to know what goes into my medicine for example, and Wikipedia can teach me about basic biology or so on, why is that a bad thing? The drug companies profit is not necessarily more important than me gaining some knowledge, especially if their secrecy is to my detriment. Or, if I want to develop better drugs, I can do it based on the knowledge of researchers before me, giving them due credit but still improving it. If we did not all have the option of having access to some pre-discovered information to build on and had to learn everything from scratch, heuristically, technology and efficiency would deteriorate massively.