{"id":35293,"date":"2012-01-18T11:20:04","date_gmt":"2012-01-18T18:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=35293"},"modified":"2012-01-19T06:31:57","modified_gmt":"2012-01-19T13:31:57","slug":"not-a-blackout-but-still-a-protest-of-sopa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2012\/01\/not-a-blackout-but-still-a-protest-of-sopa\/","title":{"rendered":"Not a blackout, but still a protest of SOPA"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Heath<\/a>

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

Congress is considering legislation that could be used to place hurdles in front of people\u2019s First Amendment rights. While protecting intellectual property rights is a worthy goal, this legislation is not the way to do it.<\/h4>\n

I\u2019m a big fan of protecting intellectual property rights. Unlike some sites<\/a>, I work hard to respect others\u2019 copyrights and only use images with permission. When I\u2019m quoting others\u2019 articles, I link back to them and don\u2019t post too much of their text on my site.<\/p>\n

A desire to respect others\u2019 intellectual property rights is one reason I moderate comments on this site. On a weekly basis I reject comments in which people have posted entire articles from other news organizations without permission.<\/p>\n

I understand how widespread copyright infringement is on the Internet. More than once I\u2019ve billed a candidate or political committee for using my images of politicians in TV ads and mailers without my permission.<\/p>\n

All that said, I oppose the current attempt in Congress to deal with the widespread disregard for intellectual property rights on the Internet. In the House it\u2019s called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and you can read the bill here<\/a>. In the Senate it\u2019s the Protect IP Act.<\/p>\n

Today I\u2019m joining many sites, including Wikipedia<\/a>, Google<\/a> and Reddit<\/a>, in protesting the legislation and asking you to help defeat it<\/a>. Wikipedia has gone black. You can\u2019t use it right now. For other sites, like Google and NMPolitics.net, going black isn\u2019t practical (especially during the legislative session, I can\u2019t take this site offline), but we\u2019re still protesting.<\/p>\n

Though the bill might be intended to protect property rights, it could be used to place hurdles in front of people who use the Internet to organize or for other valid reasons. It\u2019s the newest step Washington is considering taking in a slow but steady pushback against people\u2019s rights. It\u2019s time to make a stand.<\/p>\n

The concerns<\/h3>\n

CNN sums up the concerns about the legislation like this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth sides say they agree that protecting content is a worthy goal. But opponents say that the way SOPA is written effectively promotes censorship and is rife with the potential for unintended consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 (The legislation) potentially puts site operators \u2013 even those based in the U.S. \u2013 on the hook for content that their users upload.\u00a0The proposed bill’s text\u00a0says that a site could be deemed a SOPA scofflaw if it \u2018facilitates\u2019 copyright infringement.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, as Mashable.com explained<\/a>, that could lead to the government shutting a site down.<\/p>\n

21st Century town squares<\/h3>\n

This isn\u2019t about NMPolitics.net. As I said earlier, I work hard to respect people\u2019s property rights and I\u2019m not really worried that such a law would impact this site. But websites like YouTube and Facebook would be dead if this legislation became law. People post things all the time on those sites that they don\u2019t own.<\/p>\n

Some people say such sites should police what people post and sort out the copyright violators from the rest, or be shut down. While I agree that they should make serious efforts to support intellectual property rights, they shouldn\u2019t be shut down when they fail. It isn\u2019t as though we go after the towns in which people or groups post fliers on public walls or billboards that include images they don\u2019t have permission to use. If we go after anyone, it\u2019s the people or groups that illegally use the images.<\/p>\n

Sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are our 21st Century town squares. As I wrote recently<\/a>, they\u2019re the tools that bring a new level of democracy to the world. People use such sites to organize, motivate action, shine light on important problems, discuss issues, and bypass the machine that is the mainstream media.<\/p>\n

Even if they\u2019re trying to ensure that people don\u2019t post video, music and other intellectual property they don\u2019t own, such sites will fail from time to time.<\/p>\n

But this legislation doesn\u2019t account for that. Its wording is imprecise enough that it can be interpreted broadly, which inevitably means someday someone with the authority to enforce it would do just that.<\/p>\n

A hurdle in front of peoples\u2019 rights<\/h3>\n

If this legislation becomes law, it could be placed as a hurdle in front of peoples\u2019 First Amendment rights. Maybe someone in authority, who wants to shut down a site like Facebook because people are using it to organize for a cause he opposes, would find an unrelated copyright infringement on Facebook and then use the law to attempt to shut the site down.<\/p>\n

I recently expressed concern<\/a> about another law the president has since signed that could be interpreted to allow the indefinite detention of Americans deemed terror suspects. In that column, I questioned the reasons people end up on the terrorist watch list:<\/p>\n

\u201cWill I someday end up on the list for writing something critical about a government official? Will this commentary land me on that list?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then more recently, we learned that the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring journalists\u2019 use of social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now Congress is considering legislation that would allow the shutting down of websites that people across the world are using to organize and challenge the powers-that-be. The pattern is frightening.<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t allow this. Democracy is too important to sacrifice in exchange for the music and film industries having an easier time protecting their copyrights. I\u2019m fine with members of Congress seeking ways to better protect intellectual property rights, but they need to go back to the drawing board.<\/p>\n

Haussamen bio<\/a>\u00a0\u2502\u00a0Commentary page<\/a>\u00a0\u2502\u00a0Feed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congress is considering legislation that could be used to place hurdles in front of people\u2019s First Amendment rights. While protecting intellectual property rights is a worthy goal, this legislation is not the way to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[134,250,116],"class_list":["post-35293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-media","tag-social-media","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}