SOPA/PIPA/ACTA - The New Copyright Alphabet

Piracy is a huge concern for big music companies, film studios, and related groups, such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). The RIAA says that, due to global music piracy, music industries have “$12.5 billion of economic losses every year, 71,060 U.S. jobs lost, a loss of $2.7 billion in workers' earnings” and have lost “$422 million in tax revenues, $291 million in personal income tax and $131 million in lost corporate income and production taxes.” Given these statistics, it is no surprise that these studios and organizations are greatly supportive of legislation to make copyright rules stricter and severely limit piracy.

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act, the Senate version) and PIPA (Protect IP Act, the House version) are two recent measures by the United States Government to better enforce copyright and bring an end to piracy. This legislation would have granted the U.S. Justice Department power to shut down/block websites that seemed to violate copyright. This was a significant concern for many people and organizations; would their websites be censored for simply mentioning a television show or containing a link to a video of copyrighted content? Worrisome still, once the Government had the power to do this, would they stop at copyrighted materials, or would they use that as an excuse to block unfavorable information? In addition, the legislation wouldn’t even completely fix the piracy problem it was trying to fix; to prevent access to a website the Government would shut down the DNS address, but pirates could still get around this by simply entering the ISP number and accessing the website that way. Because of this, and concerns about limited speech and stifled creativity, many people protested the SOPA/PIPA legislation. For now, due in part to these protests, this legislation has been tabled, but it (likely after revision) could come back at any time.

Even if SOPA and PIPA never reappear, there will be other measures to try and have better control of Internet copyright and piracy: ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is one such example. In the U.S., ACTA was largely discussed behind closed doors; this seemingly secretive nature put many Americans on the alert. Unlike the SOPA/PIPA attempts by the U.S. government, ACTA is an agreement between many different countries. It has been signed by countries such as Australia, Canada, and Japan; the U.S. signed the agreement in October 2011. Some believe that the more global nature of the agreement is what is needed for something like this to actually succeed; Wired quotes Mariam Sapiro, deputy U.S. trade representative, says that “No government can single-handedly eliminate the problem of global counterfeiting and piracy. Signing this agreement is therefore an act of shared leadership and determination in the international fight against intellectual property theft.”

Whether it is SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, or something similar, certain companies and governments will fight for more aggressive pro-copyright/anti-piracy policies, while others, who feel this inhibits their creativity and free speech, will continue to fight against such measures.