The Internet Freedom Battle

Feb 05, 2015 Editorial

Most Guyanese that use the internet learnt of the battle to control its freedom through the action of Wikipedia, which blacked out its service three years ago. Several other internet giants, such as Google, supported Wikipedia’s stance by less dramatic gestures.
What are the issues being contested? Wikipedia’s mission statement gives us a clue: “to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content … and to disseminate it effectively and globally.”
In front of the US Congress and Senate are two bills: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) that purport to address online piracy. But Wikipedia and its allies assert they will actually censor the internet. SOPA, for instance, would bar “advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with allegedly infringing websites, barring search engines from linking to the sites and requiring Internet service providers (ISP) to block access to the sites. The bill would criminalize the streaming of such content, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
“User-content websites such as YouTube would be greatly affected, and concern has been expressed that they may be shut down if the Bill becomes law. Opponents state the legislation would enable law enforcement to remove an entire internet domain due to something posted on a single blog, arguing that an entire online community could be punished for the actions of a tiny minority.”
Even though as a newspaper, we have a vested interest in protecting the intellectual property rights of our output, it is our position that the initiative of the US legislators is akin to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
To begin with, SOPA and PIPA have been placed on the Congressional agenda through the efforts of lobbyists acting on behalf of primarily the entertainment industry. This industry has made the most absurd inflated claims of “economic harm” the US is suffering because of copyright infringement.
In conjuring up their calculations, intellectual property owners tend to assume that every unauthorized download represents a lost sale. This is patently untrue. Most persons copy a file illegally precisely because they’re unwilling to pay the market price. Were unauthorized copying not an option, they would simply not watch the movie or listen to the album.
The actual money “lost” due to “opportunity cost” is therefore inordinately smaller and is made up many times over by the publicity and wider acceptance of the artistes in question. The value of this free publicity is never factored into the equation. Another argument against the draconian legislation is that much of the entertainment industry’s angst is directed against downloading of reruns of TV shows in which their costs have already been recovered and profits banked. The situation is akin to akin to demanding that libraries not lending books or used bookstores not reselling books.
The question of the greater good to the society versus that of the corporation must be factored in.
On the whole there is no evidence that the dollar quantum the US suffers from online piracy outweighs its socially beneficial effects. And this has always been the test by governments when they intervene to regulate businesses. For instance, businesses are allowed to declare bankruptcy, throwing many individuals and businesses into the lurch but allowed to re-enter the marketplace because it is felt to be socially beneficially overall to encourage the existence of businesses.
Initiatives that may be used to stifle the growth of the internet must be given careful scrutiny with the litmus test being “the greater good of society”.
There have been attempts by companies such as Apple, when Seven Jobs was alive, to craft a compromise but he was rebuffed.
Jobs’ solution was simple. Let the industry reduce the prices for the electronic data (which the ‘goods’ essentially are) and there will be little incentive for piracy. The increased market will make up for the “loss”. The entertainment though wants to hog all the profits.

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