A Reality Check for SOPA Opponents

by Roland Hulme

Today, sites like Wikipedia will be blacked out in protest of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA.) 

I copied and pasted this picture without attribution.

This poorly written bill will give copyright holders the opportunity to sue websites that post copyrighted material - even if it's uploaded by users, and not the website owners themselves.

In addition, it can force search engines like Google to block links to sites that host copyrighted material overseas.

At its worst, the bill could even see kids who upload videos to YouTube of them singing cover versions of copyrighted songs face prosecution.

Nobody is going to argue that SOPA is a badly worded, draconian act - but let's just stop before we all jump on the "Bill Bad!" bandwagon.

SOPA may be a bad bill, but it exists for a legitimate reason. The Internet has made it ridiculously easy to steal, share, disseminate and distribute copyrighted material and the it's killing those of us who attempt to make a living by creating things.

I found this out first hand when I started to discover articles, blogs and columns I'd written appear in other places - copied and pasted and passed off as other people's work.

At a magazine I helped start, my colleagues found this out when pictures from their magazine (which was only available in printed format) started appearing on people's Tumblr feeds without prior approval.

Right now, thousands of people illegally download songs, music and video games through bittorrent and other peer-to-peer sharing services without giving thought to the fact that they are basically stealing them.

"Tube" sites give users the opportunity to upload entire episodes of TV shows, or complete films, that people can then watch without paying for a cable bill, DVD rental or download. Yes, it's forbidden - and the hosting site will eventually remove it when they discover it - but it goes on with such frequency that it's essentially impossible to police.

And the problem is, this all slowly erodes the ability for creative people to make a living through what they create. Artists expend time, money and effort to create something that others want to enjoy - and some of those people enjoy it so much that they pass it onto their friends for free; robbing the artists of the revenue they need to keep making what they make.

Even worse, the nature of the Internet has made piracy so ubiquitous that most people don't even think they're doing anything wrong. That's the real issue I have with opponents of SOPA. Too many of them don't seem to get the fact that you can't just take other people's stuff and do with it what you will.

And the Internet's to blame in other ways, as well. Just take Tumblr, for example. I have a particular issue with that website because it's essentially streamlined the theft and dissemination of copyrighted material.

People see pictures, videos or words that they like and can distribute them to thousands of people with just the click of a mouse button; often without attribution and almost always without payment.

And, even worse, they then pat themselves on the back for their creativity in doing so.

There are people who think that by creating a Tumblr page and copying and pasting other people's stuff onto it they're somehow "creating" something of their own. They're not. They're just parasites feeding off the creativity and originality of others.

Don't get me wrong - I've been as bad as the rest of them. I used to run a wildly successful blog called Renaissance Babes, which received hundreds or occasionally thousands of hits a day. All I did  was copy and paste other people's photos of girls in renaissance faire outfits.

I thought I was incredibly clever and important doing this; until other people started doing the same thing with photos from the magazine I wrote for - and I realized that what I was doing was essentially just stealing other people's stuff.

So I get it. People don't like SOPA. But if you really want to end the need for a Stop Online Piracy Act, it will take more than blacking out Google and Facebook for a day. You need to start here:

• Don't illegally download music
• Don't illegally download movies
• Don't illegally download software
• Don't copy your software DVDs and give them to your friends
• Don't copy and paste photos from other people's websites and post them on your own
• Don't copy and paste newspaper articles or blogs and post them without attribution

Essentially, it all boils down to this: If you don't want the movie studios, the record companies and the software execs to force restrictive legislation down your throats - don't steal their stuff.

We are as much to blame for the existence of SOPA and other anti-piracy bills as they are. It's about time we took ownership of that and adjusted our behavior in response.