By Brad Tipper

@bradtipper

Yesterday, an estimated 7,000 web sites instituted blackouts to protest provisions within two anti-piracy bills in Congress: the Senate’s Protect IP Act and the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act. For many of us, this simply meant that we couldn’t use Wikipedia for the day and actually had to do research. Unfortunately, the implications in passing these laws are far more severe than that.

The goal of both bills is to remedy the problem of pirated content, coming mostly from foreign-based sites operating outside the United State’s legal system. The need to stop distribution of pirated content is an idea that the web industry agrees with, but their concerns lie within the bills’ promotion of censorship and the infringement of rights by American businesses and consumers.

The Internet has become an outlet for our generation to further demonstrate the liberties and freedoms that we as people, and especially as American citizens. A new arena for innovation also came with it, leading to the creation of improved business tools, social media technologies and improved means for everyone to access a vast amount of information any time, any place.

Along with these improvements, people worldwide were given tools to enjoy and experience products of the entertainment industry in new ways, including the downloading of music and films. It also meant the same technologies furthered the industry of pirating these and other products for mass distribution. It is obvious that such actions are dishonest and do not allow for those involved in the creation of the art to receive the full benefits of their work. In response to illegal technologies promoting piracy, such as Napster and Limewire, came innovative sites like Netflix and YouTube, that instead provide people the legal ability to access entertainment while following copyright laws and giving full credit to the artists.

On the other side of it, the entertainment industry, who is most affected by online piracy, fully supports the passage of these bills. This support is completely understood, as they have lost billions of dollars due to drops in sales and lost jobs. It is in their best interest for piracy to be stopped altogether, no matter the cost to other parties.

The entertainment industry, being the most adversely affected by piracy, had a large hand in the creation of both the PIPA and SOPA bills. This shows in the bills’ no-nonsense policies when it comes to interactions with potential pirating sites. But the tech industry – the creators of both the illegal pirating sites and the legal alternatives – were given no say in the direction the bill should take and the regulations that should be made. Both pieces of legislation favor the entertainment industry’s demands for an end to piracy, while also forcing Internet companies’ production and our usage to be regulated and censored.

The idea of creating a bill of this nature without using advice from the tech industry does not make sense. If leaders in the tech industry were used as a resource to create this legislation, these bills could have had the opportunity to establish a hard line against Internet piracy while also allowing for the rights of Internet companies and users to remain intact. Instead, these bills were created by lawmakers who received large campaign contributions from the entertainment industry instead of the tech industry, have no knowledge about the makeup of the Internet and admittedly are not competent users.

Both of these laws, if put into place, would cross the lines of our government’s right to censor and regulate producers and consumers, opening the door to future legislation of this nature. Thankfully, it seems like the actions of Internet companies, consumers and even the White House to show such a large disapproval of these bills has likely ensured that neither PIPA or SOPA will be made into laws. I also hope it means that Congress will think twice next time before considering regulations that promote censorship and take away freedom from their citizens.

Brad Tipper is a sophomore majoring in political science and economics. His column runs bi-weekly on Thursdays.