tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/sopa-1943/articlesSOPA – The Conversation2014-06-05T12:30:19Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/276162014-06-05T12:30:19Z2014-06-05T12:30:19ZA year after Snowden, tech firms must get their houses in order to Reset the Net<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50384/original/7mcqq9cq-1401965592.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tech companies want us all to reset the net.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reset the Net</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When you go online today, you are likely to encounter the <a href="https://www.resetthenet.org/">Reset the Net</a> campaign. Exactly one year after the first revelations from Edward Snowden about NSA spying, the campaign is designed to mobilise organisations and individuals to resist government mass surveillance.</p>
<p>The organisations involved, including the <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/join-us-june-5th-reset-net">Electronic Frontier Foundation</a>, Google and Reddit, want us all to take part in a “Thunderclap” – a boom intended to resonate through social media platforms, promoting an anti-surveillance message.</p>
<p>We’re also being offered <a href="http://resetthenet.tumblr.com/post/84331967485/the-privacy-pack">The Privacy Pack</a> – a selection of software and tips tailored to common computers, phones and tablets that, thankfully, “literally anyone can use”.</p>
<p>Websites and the developers of mobile apps are urged to integrate encryption software into their services to better protect user data.</p>
<h2>Older and wiser</h2>
<p>The past year has thrown up some real questions about our expectations about privacy online and the extent to which we accept government surveillance. A certain antipathy and scepticism about going through conventional political channels to bring about change in this context has emerged, which arguably signals a failure of those elected to represent us. </p>
<p>Unlike February’s <a href="http://resetthenet.tumblr.com/post/84331967485/the-privacy-pack">The Day We Fight Back</a>, which focused on putting pressure on Congress to make changes, Reset the Net is, in Edward Snowden’s words, an opportunity to turn “<a href="http://resetthenet.tumblr.com/post/87793640365/edward-snowdens-statement-in-support-of-reset-the-net">political expression into practical action</a>”. He argues that this is an initiative “to protect our universal human rights with the laws of nature rather than the laws of nations”.</p>
<h2>Look who’s talking</h2>
<p>It is perhaps questionable whether this campaign offers a real solution, despite the big names involved. There are more than 2 billion people online and an awful lot of them will have to install encryption and privacy tools for this campaign to have any meaningful impact on mass surveillance programmes such as Prism. It may well be that Reset the Net will be the very thing it doesn’t want to be – a public pressure movement rather than a practical solution.</p>
<p>It’s also interesting to see the campaign neglecting to address the role of the private sector in hoovering up our data in the first place. The relationship between internet giants like Google and the US intelligence community remains <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/nsa-google_n_5273437.html">ambiguous</a> so their advice about locking out spies might be a little hard to swallow. Prism couldn’t exist without the sea of personal data that these corporations collect and redistribute hourly as part of their commercial activity. </p>
<p>The biggest irony, of course, is that we’re being urged to spread the word about Reset the Net and privacy abuse on Facebook – one of the most prolific providers of personal data to the NSA. This is particularly significant in light of the announcement last month that Facebook’s new mobile phone app will allow the corporation to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27517817">listen to our phone calls</a> in order to “improve user experience”. Looking critically at the private sector is as important as oversight of the NSA but it has been overlooked by this campaign.</p>
<h2>Beyond software updates</h2>
<p>With Reset the Net, we are once again being offered a technological solution to what is at heart a political problem – how we balance the often conflicting demands of personal privacy and national security.</p>
<p>It’s exhilarating to witness and participate in online social movements that can bring about real change. The successful campaign against <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16596577">SOPA and PIPA</a> shows how well it can work. These two bills, proposed in the US, sought to introduce prison sentences for accessing pirated content. Websites linking to others that hosted copyright-infringing content were also threatened with action, so Reddit and Wired got on board. The petition associated with the campaign attracted ten million signatures and the bills were eventually dropped by lawmakers.</p>
<p>The action taking place today is certainly evidence that governments will need to be much more responsive to public attitudes to surveillance, a year after we first started to worry about it. But the private sector plays a role too. At least some of the companies involved should probably acknowledge that if they want us on board.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27616/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Madeline Carr does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When you go online today, you are likely to encounter the Reset the Net campaign. Exactly one year after the first revelations from Edward Snowden about NSA spying, the campaign is designed to mobilise…Madeline Carr, Lecturer in International Politics and the Cyber Dimension , Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/69352012-05-10T00:43:27Z2012-05-10T00:43:27ZCapit.url.ism: hyperlinks are a new front in the battle for internet freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10470/original/vq7phyh2-1336542707.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Short urls serve a purpose for users and their creators alike.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mexicanwave</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With each passing day commercial interests seem to find new ways to harness the tools on which the web was built. </p>
<p>Policy initiatives such as the US’s now-defunct <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more">SOPA</a> and in-progress <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cispa_sopas_evil_twin_infographic.php">CISPA</a> now involve the <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120410/12180518442/cispa-is-really-bad-bill-heres-why.shtml">sharing our online activities</a>, raising the ire of groups from <a href="http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/anonymous-internationalist/">Anonymous</a> to <a href="latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2012/01/wikipedia-sopa-blackout-congressional-representatives.html">Wikipedia</a>. There is, it seems, a never-ending battle <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17753971">to keep the internet free and open</a> – a battle that’s becoming increasingly hard to ignore. </p>
<p>According to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the stakes for the open web <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/15/web-freedom-threat-google-brin">have never been higher</a>. So it may come as no surprise the net’s next great threat is occurring not in the dark but right out in the open – via the appropriation of the <a href="http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/">hyperlink</a>. </p>
<p>Companies have taken the thing we use to share as well as go places online and combined it with the opportunistically-purchased <a href="http://www.isoc.org/inet97/proceedings/B5/B5_1.HTM">top-level domains</a> of whatever countries whose domains happen to spell or sound-out something convenient.</p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anne Helmond</span></span>
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<p>Brands, companies and capitalism have existed on the internet since its inception, but are moving ever-more quickly for control. Apple notoriously protects its content and applications inside a “<a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2018116577_apustecfacebookaolwalledgarden.html">walled garden</a>”. </p>
<p>Facebook does much the same by selectively separating the participation of <a href="http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22">its 800m users</a> from the rest of the web. </p>
<p>While there’s little doubt <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/08/us-financial-investing-internet-idUSTRE7471UZ20110508">capital investment</a> is part of what’s made the internet a global success, there’s a new trick in town.</p>
<p>It’s called <a href="http://mashable.com/2009/04/05/url-shorteners/">url shortening</a>.</p>
<h2>From .me .to .eu</h2>
<p>Largely through the creative implementation of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains#Country_code_top-level_domains">top-level domains of countries</a>, short urls can mimic certain verbs and language signifiers. Whether it’s Tonga’s <a href="http://www.tonic.to/">.to</a>, Columbia’s <a href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/20/co-domains/">.co</a> or Montenegro’s <a href="http://www.domain.me/why-me">.me</a>, short urls – not unlike the Twitter <a href="http://support.twitter.com/entries/49309-what-are-hashtags-symbols">#hashtag</a> – are both a product of the age of text-speak and an adaptation to the constraints of <a href="http://media140.com/">140 characters</a>. </p>
<p>It began in 2002 with services such as <a href="http://tinyurl.com/">tinyurl</a> and <a href="http://bitly.com/">bit.ly</a>, expanding in 2009 to <a href="http://mashable.com/2009/12/14/fb-me/">Facebook’s</a> (fb.me), <a href="http://mashable.com/2009/12/21/youtu-be/">YouTube’s</a> (youtu.be) and <a href="http://mashable.com/2009/12/14/goo-g/">Google’s</a> goo.gl. Now <a href="http://mashable.com/2009/08/04/cokeurl/">branded urls</a> such as cokeurl.com are “<a href="http://adsoftheworld.com/media/online/cocacola_coke_url">just one way [companies] are "making happiness easier to share</a>”.</p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MyTudut</span></span>
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<p>In most cases “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening">short urls</a>” act like a typical hyperlink, save for a few characters, preserving valuable space. Yet these diminutive links represent a significant shift in the monitoring of our online activities. </p>
<p>The increasingly ubiquitous short url goes where no url has gone before, existing in a space that’s “<a href="https://support.twitter.com/entries/109623#">neither public nor private</a>”. And for precisely this reason it represents the next frontier as far as online tracking and privacy are concerned.</p>
<p>Twitter’s now mandatory t.co <a href="https://support.twitter.com/entries/109623#">url wrapper</a> demonstrates the sort of impact forced adoption of a url shortener on a social network can wield.</p>
<h2>A cookie you can’t decline</h2>
<p>On the one hand, t.co allows Twitter to <a href="https://support.twitter.com/articles/109623#">check shared links against known malicious sites</a> and notify users who attempt navigate to them, a service <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/phishing-protection/">already provided by most modern web browsers</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time, it allows Twitter to track the activities between users and the links they share – effectively into perpetuity. In this regard, short urls are the “new cookies”, a monumental development of the hyperlink in the sense they “<a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/09/why-twitters-recent-announceme.html">survive the share</a>”.</p>
<p>But there’s no need to panic just yet. Twitter, for example, is using t.co to <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitters-discover-tab-watching-you_b21996">analyse shared links on its service</a> in aggregate to better understand what’s popular on Twitter for its new “<a href="http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2011/12/08/why-twitters-discover-feature-is-a-game-changer/">Discovery</a>” feature. This is a good thing for Twitter’s users.</p>
<p>Outbound link tracking, as Search Engine Land’s <a href="http://searchengineland.com/author/danny-sullivan">Danny Sullivan</a> notes in a recent conversation, is nothing new. Sullivan concedes that are privacy issues, but these are relatively minor as he believes “most people share publicly” on Twitter.</p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">balleyne</span></span>
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<p>It’s still somewhat problematic, though: how can short urls be <a href="http://w2spconf.com/2011/papers/urlShortening.pdf">neither private nor public</a>? Would it be more appropriate to call them <em>both</em>? And what about short urls which we share in other, semi-public contexts?</p>
<p>When we click on a short url online, <a href="http://searchengineland.com/analysis-which-url-shortening-service-should-you-use-17204">we’re being tracked</a> – whether we like it or not. And unlike a hyperlink, it’s not just when we arrive to a site: with short urls, we’re tracked on our way to that site by a third party.</p>
<p>Companies have always been able to collect data related to what we share online, but <a href="http://www.distilled.net/blog/social-media/twitters-t-co-link-shortening-service-is-game-changing-heres-why/">short urls fill in the missing pieces</a>: whom we share with, who’s paying attention to what we share, and how our connections arrive to what we share.</p>
<h2>Disposable digital geography</h2>
<p>It’s not just privacy that’s a concern here: there’s also the issue of cultural appropriation. Commercial interests, via short urls, now ironically use so-called “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domains_with_commercial_licenses">vanity domains</a>” through arrangements with countries such as Columbia – .co – Montenegro – .me – and Tonga – .to – to push the limits of data collection and analytical tracking.</p>
<p>We could call the actions of large, mostly Western media organisations using the online “identities” of less affluent countries <a href="http://domainincite.com/no-cheap-tlds-for-poor-countries/">at their disposal</a> open-source hijacking or even digital neocolonialism. They are capitalising on their users’ activities by appropriating the hyperlink, a core function of the open web.</p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">the waving cat</span></span>
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<p>There is <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/is-using-an-ly-domain-right-or-wrong/254">even a debate</a> whether the use of domains for countries like Libya – <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ly">.ly</a> – is ethical or not.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.eurid.eu/">European Union</a> seems to be well aware of the implications of this digital identity crisis, protecting its .eu domain as a “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct-Zg9hgKNc">European Identity</a>”. Advocate General <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verica_Trstenjak">Verica Trstenjak</a> recently stated that only organisations “established in the EU can register trademarks … within the .eu domain”. Companies outside of the trading area <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/06/dot_eu_is_only_for_eu_based_companies_says_european_court_of_justice_advisor/">cannot negotiate with agencies</a> based within the union to register .eu domain names on their behalf. </p>
<p>While not entirely exploitative – by selling their top-level domains <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/technology/07dotco.html?_r=1">many countries generate substantial revenue</a> which would otherwise not be possible – perhaps it is what might best be referred to as capit.url.ism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/6935/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Albright does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With each passing day commercial interests seem to find new ways to harness the tools on which the web was built. Policy initiatives such as the US’s now-defunct SOPA and in-progress CISPA now involve…Jonathan Albright, PhD Candidate, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata RauLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/55602012-02-24T03:02:03Z2012-02-24T03:02:03ZWill the internet kill copyright? Here’s hoping …<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/8049/original/23y7mh2c-1330045205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Debates about online copyright protection have been particularly heated of late.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">marfis75</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>IDEAS AND OWNERSHIP: The concept of protecting ideas and innovation by legal means dates back to antiquity. But many of our existing laws are under strain, their suitability and ultimate purpose called into question.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Here, Philip Soos considers the faults that plague existing copyright laws and suggests that, in an increasingly online world, we need to find more realistic options.</strong></p>
<p>In the past few months, there’s been substantial media interest in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/sopa">Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)</a> bill in the US, introduced ostensibly as an attempt to crack down on intellectual property rights (IPR) violations.</p>
<p>If adopted, this bill would give the US government even more power to deal with those found infringing IPRs than currently exists under the existing legislation – the <a href="http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf">Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)</a>. </p>
<p>SOPA has spawned a great deal of debate over the merits and demerits of further expanding protection for IPRs. Some claim SOPA would help protect jobs and profit – hence innovation; while many argue SOPA would impinge upon citizens’ right to privacy. </p>
<p>Opposition to SOPA prompted many websites, including Wikipedia, to <a href="https://theconversation.com/major-turn-off-leading-lights-stage-an-internet-blackout-to-fight-sopa-4964">close down temporarily</a> in protest.</p>
<p>But this debate leaves much to be desired. It consists of arguing IPR protection should be strengthened, weakened or left alone. Few, if any, are critical of the reigning assumption that IPR is a necessary intervention in the economy. </p>
<p>The question that needs to be asked is: why is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law#Early_privileges_and_monopolies">16th century medieval government monopoly</a> being used to spur innovation and creative art in the technologically-advanced 21st century?</p>
<p>The usual story trotted out is that markets will produce a less than optimal level of research and development and creative works without some form of government intervention. <a href="http://www.copyright.com.au/assets/documents/benefits%20&%20costs%20of%20copyright.pdf">We are told</a> that without such intervention, many of the technologies and modes of entertainment we enjoy today would simply not exist. </p>
<p>Thus the need for copyrights to provide the stimulus for firms to invest to meet consumer wants and needs.</p>
<p>The state-driven tech revolution of the late 1990s has seen an explosion of IPR-protected content being shared over the internet. Evolving technology (such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-bittorrent-lawsuit-why-sly-stallone-is-out-to-get-you-1231">peer-to-peer networking</a>) has made it easy for almost anyone with a decent internet connection to continuously download and upload files, whether that’s video games, music, books, magazines, comics, TV episodes, films, documentaries, or programs.</p>
<p>Anything that can be converted into electronic data and stored on a computer can be shared. It <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-and-netflix-dominate-americas-internet-traffic-111027/">has been estimated</a> that the sharing of content through the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_(protocol)">BitTorrent file-sharing protocol</a> accounts for one-third of internet traffic today.</p>
<p>Given authorities across the world have often had to catch up to the evolving uses of the internet via legislation, it is difficult for individuals and firms to simultaneously enforce their state-granted rights in many countries, all with differing laws in regards to IPRs.</p>
<p>(That said, the <a href="http://www.wto.org/">World Trade Organization</a> has attempted to standardise international and national law through its Agreement on <a href="http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/trips_e.htm">Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)</a>.)</p>
<p>Industry and governments have certainly tried hard in this respect. Every iteration of copyright protection law appears to be more draconian than the last. It is unsurprising that the US is in the lead of protecting IPR, as its industries are the largest and often most profitable (as in the case of pharmaceuticals and biotech).</p>
<p>The TRIPS and DMCA legislation have clearly done little to prevent file sharing, which appears to be ever-increasing in magnitude. Draconian laws have done little to deter users from violating copyrights and other forms of IPRs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/8040/original/5k3cjzr2-1330041860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/8040/original/5k3cjzr2-1330041860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8040/original/5k3cjzr2-1330041860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8040/original/5k3cjzr2-1330041860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8040/original/5k3cjzr2-1330041860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8040/original/5k3cjzr2-1330041860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8040/original/5k3cjzr2-1330041860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gideon Burton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Online content is really no different to drugs that are currently illegal: people who want them will always get them, with entrepreneurs and cartels operating within the black market to meet demand. The sane course of action is to carefully legalise and regulate the supply of drugs/ content, not impose wildly invasive, expensive and equally ineffective government intervention against producers and consumers.</p>
<p>Ever more draconian legislation has not and will not prevent people from file-sharing and violating IPRs. Industry will claim IPRs, as private property, must be respected. But to claim IPR, as information, should be covered by private property rights is as nonsensical as if the government were to assign a property right to an autoworker’s job, allowing the employee the right to hold it or sell to another.</p>
<p>Ownership under copyright is twisted to the point where consumers do not own the software they purchase; rather, they are merely extended a license to use the software that the company owns.</p>
<p>The problems with copyright (and other forms of IPRs) are extensive. The most obvious flaw is the monopolistic pricing inherent to this form of intervention. Any introductory economic textbook tells us the efficiency is met when outputs are produced and sold at marginal cost – what it costs to produce the next good or service.</p>
<p>In the information age, electronic data or informational goods can be copied for free. Accordingly, this is what goods should be priced at: zero, instead of monopoly pricing. </p>
<p>Ironically, pirates are acting as conventional economists claim people should – that is, they are rational agents seeking to maximise their utility (happiness) by obtaining copies of informational goods at marginal cost.</p>
<p>Other costs include those associated with the court system and <a href="http://members.pcug.org.au/%7Earhen/">patents offices</a>, which have effectively become a joke. People and firms are <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/patent-wars">endlessly suing each other</a> over potential and real copyright infringements, with these legal expenses essentially acting as a tax on innovation that is passed on to consumers.</p>
<p>Bureaucrats at the patent office are under a difficult burden to ensure that software patents are truly innovative and do not violate previously-granted patents.</p>
<p>Under SOPA, citizens’ online activities would be <a href="http://www.itworld.com/security/251584/sopa-replacement-uses-child-porn-excuse-spy-997-percent-americans">watched and recorded</a> in ever-greater detail, in a futile attempt to crack down on piracy. What industry is calling for is an ever-stronger police state to ensure legislative compliance, despite what the evidence may say about the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/music-piracy-not-that-bad-industry-says-090118/">loss of sales</a> pertaining to piracy.</p>
<p>It should be obvious by now that a new form of funding research, development and creative works needs to be implemented. The cornerstone of any new system should ensure goods are sold at the cost of production: either free on the internet or a few dollars for the physical product. <a href="http://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons</a> and free software licenses should become the new mode.</p>
<p>The extremes of wealth also need to be avoided: there is no natural law that says Bill Gates should become a billionaire via government monopoly while many creative artists just scrape by.</p>
<p>It is imperative that the wastes and inefficiencies of the IPR system be eliminated and not reproduced under alternative systems.</p>
<p>It is time for some creative thinking on the part of the public (industry isn’t going to help) to design alternate models of financing. Otherwise, the nanny state that operates on behalf of the rich is going to become ever more authoritarian.</p>
<p><strong>This is part five of Ideas and Ownership. To read the other instalments, click on the links below:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Part One: <a href="https://theconversation.com/ip-patents-copyright-you-5421">IP, patents, copyright, you</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Part Two: <a href="https://theconversation.com/do-patents-promote-innovation-5443">Do patents promote innovation?</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Part Three: <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-art-of-war-know-your-enemys-patents-and-your-own-5489">The art of war: know your enemy’s patents, and your own</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Part Four: <a href="https://theconversation.com/evergreening-patents-playing-monopoly-with-solar-fuels-and-medicine-innovations-5165">Evergreening patents: playing monopoly with solar fuels and medicine innovations</a></strong></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/5560/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Soos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>IDEAS AND OWNERSHIP: The concept of protecting ideas and innovation by legal means dates back to antiquity. But many of our existing laws are under strain, their suitability and ultimate purpose called…Philip Soos, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/49902012-01-20T05:20:13Z2012-01-20T05:20:13ZMegaupload in mega trouble (so back-up your online content)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7065/original/cbcz7nrq-1327035653.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">US authorities have seized the file-sharing website.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">johntrainor</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The big copyright news overnight was not the <a href="https://theconversation.com/major-turn-off-leading-lights-stage-an-internet-blackout-to-fight-sopa-4964">continuing protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA)</a>, but the shutdown and seizure of Megaupload.com, a popular “cyberlocker”, and 17 related sites.</p>
<p>The Mega empire was hosted on servers in the United States, the Netherlands, and elsewhere around the world. Acting on a <a href="http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/01/20/heres-the-full-72-page-megaupload-doj-indictment/?awesm=tnw.to_1CsWd&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus&utm_source=Twitter&utm_content=Here's%20the%20full%2072%20page%20Megaupload%20DOJ%20indictment">grand jury indictment</a> obtained from a US district court, US authorities coordinated with their counterparts in New Zealand, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Canada and the Philippines to:</p>
<ul>
<li>seize 18 domain names and take the related sites offline</li>
<li>seize a reported US$50 million of assets, and</li>
<li>arrest four of the seven individuals charged in the indictment.</li>
</ul>
<p>At the time of writing, the three remaining individuals are yet to be apprehended.</p>
<p>Cyberlockers are websites that provide private data storage facilities by allowing individuals to upload content for later retrieval or sharing with others. Many of us probably already use cyberlockers such as <a href="http://www.dropbox.com/">Dropbox</a>, Microsoft’s <a href="https://skydrive.live.com/">SkyDrive</a> or Amazon’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore">Cloud Drive</a> in our work.</p>
<p>Such services have plenty of obvious non-infringing uses – if you want to share a 700MB video you took of your recent trip with family and friends, uploading it to a service such as Megaupload and giving your friends the download link is one of the cheapest and most efficient ways to do so.</p>
<p>Anybody could upload files to Megaupload, but files that failed to be downloaded for a short period (21 days for material uploaded by unregistered users, 90 days for registered “free” users, no limit for registered “paid” users) were deleted. In practice, this ensured Megaupload was used largely for the storage of popular content which, not surprisingly, often turned out to be infringing.</p>
<p>That material was made somewhat difficult to find because Megaupload (probably for strategic legal reasons) had no search tool on its website. Instead, users had to find the URLs for content from an external source – directly from a friend, from another website or via a search engine.</p>
<p>The business made money from selling premium use subscriptions, and from advertising on the site. All in all, the indictment alleges Megaupload made some US$175 million in income since opening shop in 2005, from a claimed 1 billion+ visitors.</p>
<p>(Incidentally, the breakdown is US$150 million from user subscriptions, and just US$25 million from advertising. If this is correct, it’s more evidence that many users are willing to pay to access “free” content. If this single site can make US$150 million from user subscriptions when offering a hodge-podge of files of dubious quality and without the ability to effectively search among them, imagine how much content owners could make if they made their content more reasonably available.)</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7066/original/wf6d8bdw-1327035833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7066/original/wf6d8bdw-1327035833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7066/original/wf6d8bdw-1327035833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7066/original/wf6d8bdw-1327035833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7066/original/wf6d8bdw-1327035833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7066/original/wf6d8bdw-1327035833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7066/original/wf6d8bdw-1327035833.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Megaupload</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While there’s no doubt that many of Megaupload’s visitors were intent on downloading infringing content, it’s less clear whether the site’s providers can be held liable for those infringements. In <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/from-rogue-to-vogue-megaupload-and-kim-dotcom-111218/">an interview given to TorrentFreak</a> just a month ago, founder “Kim Dotcom” (aka Kim Schmitz) claimed that:</p>
<p>“Mega has nothing to fear. Our business is legitimate and protected by the DMCA [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act">Digital Millennium Copyright Act</a>] and similar laws around the world. We work with the best lawyers and play by the rules. We take our legal obligations seriously. Mega’s war chest is full and we have strong supporters backing us. We have been online for 7 years and we are here to stay, so no need to worry about us.”</p>
<p>The legal protection that Dotcom was referring to is the safe harbour provided to online service providers (including cyberlockers) as long as they satisfy certain criteria.</p>
<p>The indictment alleges that Mega does not qualify for a number of reasons, including because they themselves had actual knowledge that the materials on the sites were infringing (or knew “facts or circumstances that would make infringing material apparent”), and because they were receiving a financial benefit directly attributable to copyright-infringing activity within its control. </p>
<p>The indictment discloses plenty of evidence of potentially illegal conduct. Megaupload paid money to users who supplied its most popular files via the “Uploader Rewards” program, and it seems that key employees sometimes paid out that money with full awareness it had accrued courtesy of infringing files.</p>
<p>Other executives uploaded infringing content themselves, and on various occasions distributed Megaupload links to infringing content. Plenty of emails demonstrate their intention to engage in wholesale copyright infringement of YouTube’s content (that’s right – they tried to copy ALL of it).</p>
<p>But as <a href="http://james.grimmelmann.net/">Professor James Grimmelman</a> of New York Law School <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/why-the-feds-smashed-megaupload.ars">told online technology publication Ars Technica</a>, “much of what the indictment details are legitimate business strategies many websites use to increase their traffic and revenues: offering premium subscriptions, running ads, rewarding active users.”</p>
<p>This case opens the door to vigorous pursuit of other online hosting providers. As this case demonstrates, the US government already has considerable powers to shut down such sites. If the SOPA legislation (discussed on The Conversation <a href="https://theconversation.com/major-turn-off-leading-lights-stage-an-internet-blackout-to-fight-sopa-4964">on Wednesday</a>) is eventually passed in the US, it will give the US government additional powers over foreign sites that have no connection to the US.</p>
<p>Even more problematically, the legislation (as currently drafted) will give private entities unprecedented abilities to interfere with revenue and advertising of sites, including foreign sites, by alleging that they are “dedicated to theft of US property”. </p>
<p>It’s vital that any future attempts to target file hosting sites make principled, transparent distinctions between those providing useful, legitimate services with substantial non-infringing uses, and bad actors engaging in unlawful conduct.</p>
<p>That holds good whether they’re in the form of official government action to enforce the criminal law, or private action by rightholders such as that envisaged by SOPA. If SOPA is enacted in its current form, no such distinction seems likely to be made.</p>
<p>Those of us who currently use cyberlockers for lawful purposes should enjoy them while we can – but create offline backups just in case.</p>
<p><em><strong>Rebecca Giblin can be found on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/rgibli">@rgibli</a>.</strong></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/4990/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Giblin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The big copyright news overnight was not the continuing protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), but the shutdown and seizure of Megaupload.com, a popular “cyberlocker…Rebecca Giblin, Academic, Faculty of Law, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/49642012-01-18T03:09:50Z2012-01-18T03:09:50ZMajor turn-off: leading lights stage an internet blackout to fight SOPA<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7006/original/5fhkqcf9-1326849609.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C142%2C1024%2C678&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wikipedia, reddit and Google are among those protesting against proposed changes.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Clara Zamith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The fight against potential internet censorship will reach a milestone this evening (AEST) when some of the most popular destinations on the web – including the English language version of Wikipedia – will “go dark” to protest against the <a href="http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/112%20HR%203261.pdf">Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)</a> and <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s112-968">PROTECT IP Act (PIPA)</a>.</p>
<p>Social news website <a href="http://www.reddit.com/">reddit</a> will also join the blackout. Many other sites – including Google, blogging platform <a href="http://wordpress.com/">WordPress</a> and Firefox developers, <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla</a> – have also joined the so-called <a href="http://sopastrike.com/">“SOPA Strike”</a>.</p>
<p>SOPA and PIPA were being considered by the US Congress as a means of combating copyright infringement of movies, music and books. As argued in <a href="https://theconversation.com/sopa-bill-could-wreck-the-internet-4434">a previous article on The Conversation</a>, those bills have the potential to damage the technical foundations of the internet and damage free-speech online.</p>
<p>At the time that article was published, SOPA and PIPA had support from both sides of US politics and it was thought their passage was all but assured. But more recently a rag-tag coalition of internet companies, free speech advocates and ordinary users has continued a fierce campaign (online and offline) to prevent the bills from getting passed:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>On November 15, representatives from nine of the biggest internet companies – including Google, Facebook, eBay and AOL – sent <a href="http://www.protectinnovation.com/downloads/letter.pdf">a joint letter</a> to the US Congress outlining their opposition to SOPA and PIPA.</p></li>
<li><p>On November 16, several sites, including blogging platform Tumblr, Mozilla, group blog <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/">BoingBoing</a> and reddit designated the day as <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-16/-american-censorship-day-makes-an-online-statement-the-ticker.html">“American Censorship Day”</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>In the US, reddit users <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2398186,00.asp">organised several initiatives</a> to reach out to representatives in the Congress and convey their concerns about the bills.</p></li>
<li><p>Several venture capitalists sent <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111029/08535816561/open-letter-to-chris-dodd-silicon-valley-cant-help-hollywood-if-you-first-cripple-it-with-bad-regulation.shtml">a joint letter</a> outlining how SOPA and PIPA would lead them to stop investing in the booming tech sector.</p></li>
<li><p>Two Canadian students released <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/12/boycott-sopa-app-informed-consumer-citizen">a smartphone app</a> called “Boycott SOPA” that, upon reading a product’s barcode, informed the customer whether the product was made by a company that supported SOPA. </p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7005/original/grhqyynj-1326849438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C23%2C861%2C623&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7005/original/grhqyynj-1326849438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C23%2C861%2C623&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/7005/original/grhqyynj-1326849438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=712&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7005/original/grhqyynj-1326849438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=712&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7005/original/grhqyynj-1326849438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=712&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7005/original/grhqyynj-1326849438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7005/original/grhqyynj-1326849438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/7005/original/grhqyynj-1326849438.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Krystian_o</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The protests mentioned above bore fruit.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Several legislators <a href="http://www.quora.com/Stop-Online-Piracy-Act-SOPA-1/What-legislators-are-opposing-SOPA">announced their opposition</a> to SOPA in the US House of Representatives and moved several amendments to blunt some of its provisions (though all of these motions were defeated).</p></li>
<li><p>A group of legislators proposed an alternate bill called the <a href="http://keepthewebopen.com/">Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act</a> that aimed to be more selective while targeting copyright infringement.</p></li>
<li><p>Under pressure, the sponsors of both SOPA and PIPA <a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/164827/2012/01/sopa_author_to_remove_isp_blocking_provision.html">dropped a key measure</a> that required the blacklisting of sites found to promote infringement. (Such sites would be blacklisted by blocking their entries from the internet’s <a href="http://adminschoice.com/domain-name-service">Domain Name Service</a>.)</p></li>
<li><p>The White House <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/01/16/white-house-sopa-petition/">responded to an online petition</a> with a statement that seemed to indicate its opposition to measures proposed in these bills.</p></li>
<li><p>And then, just yesterday <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/16/sopa-shelved-obama-piracy-legislation">SOPA itself was “shelved”</a> until a consensus could be found on the measures proposed in the bill. However, confusion remains as its lead sponsor has indicated that <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/248305/sponsor_sopa_markup_hearing_to_resume_in_february.html">the bill will be taken up for debate in February</a> </p></li>
</ul>
<p>But while the battle over SOPA been in progress for several months now, the imminent “blackouts” are sure to be a defining moment.</p>
<p>It’s hoped these blackouts will highlight the egregious nature of the measures proposed in the bill, and the potential for them to be used in censoring legitimate content online. </p>
<p>But despite the successful protests, the government backdowns and the proposed blackouts, the fight against SOPA and PIPA is not yet over. SOPA is still being considered in the Committee and the US Senate Majority Leader has scheduled a vote on PIPA on January 24.</p>
<p>Ultimately, if the bills are stopped, it will be a victory for grassroots democracy. At present, the result is still far from certain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/4964/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Srikumar Venugopal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The fight against potential internet censorship will reach a milestone this evening (AEST) when some of the most popular destinations on the web – including the English language version of Wikipedia…Srikumar Venugopal, PhD; Lecturer in Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/44342011-11-24T19:17:25Z2011-11-24T19:17:25ZSOPA bill could wreck the internet<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/5830/original/3507450176_5584dd611e_o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The "scorched-earth" tactics espoused by SOPA are raising serious concerns.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Abode of Chaos</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A pair of bills currently making their way through US legislature has set off alarm bells among internet technologists and users worldwide. The aim of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_IP_Act">PROTECT-IP</a>, in the Senate, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act">SOPA</a> (Stop Online Piracy Act), in the US House of Representatives, is to prevent the infringment of copyrights on US intellectual property such as movies, music and books by websites located outside US jurisdiction. </p>
<p>It was <a href="http://theconversation.com/stop-online-piracy-act-draws-battle-lines-for-control-of-the-internet-4366">argued recently</a> on The Conversation that SOPA would pave the way for greater regulation of the internet, and that this was inevitable.</p>
<p>But the broad aims and language of these bills have caused concerns that their passage will cause severe damage to the technical foundation of the internet and destroy it as a medium for the free flow of information. To understand why this may happen, it’s essential to know how websites are located on the internet.</p>
<p>All websites are described by a series of numbers called an <a href="http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/question549.htm">IP address</a>. Unlike Dustin Hoffman’s <a href="http://www.moviecatcher.net/images/rainman-and-et-copy-copy.jpg">character</a> in Rainman, most humans are more comfortable with names than numbers. Each website is described by a human-readable name, such as http://www.google.com, called its <a href="http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internet-infrastructure7.htm">URL</a> (Uniform Resource Locator). </p>
<p>When a user asks a web browser, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, to fetch a particular website, the first step involves finding out the IP address for the URL of the website. The browser does this by asking a <a href="http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dns.htm">DNS</a> (Domain Name Service) server, similar to how someone would call up the directory service to enquire the phone number of another person or an organisation. By default, this DNS server is provided by the user’s ISP (Internet Service Provider). </p>
<h2>SOPA</h2>
<p>SOPA – if passed – would give U.S. government lawyers the power to obtain a court injunction to block internet users in America from accessing a website shown to be dealing in intellectual property theft. </p>
<p>The ISPs will have to remove the domain name from DNS server and redirect it to a web page that explains why the website is being blocked. This will be akin to replacing the phone number in the directory service with a recorded message explaining why the business can’t be reached. </p>
<p>In response to such measures, it’s obvious users seeking pirated content will look for alternate DNS servers of dubious provenance. But the same DNS server that resolves the IP address of the infringing website would also be responsible for locating the IP address of the user’s bank, thus compromising security of internet banking sessions. </p>
<p>Indeed, the provisions of SOPA interfere with the <a href="http://www.dnssec.net/">DNSSEC</a> (DNS Security Extensions) mechanisms that aim to make the DNS system <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/1115_cybersecurity_friedman.aspx">more secure</a> for users. DNSSEC is being slowly rolled out across the internet and is championed by a number of organisations, including the US government. </p>
<p>Also, the main DNS servers for website URLs ending in .com, .net and .edu, among others, are located in the U.S. Any change made in these servers will quickly flow on to the rest of the globe as well. This could lead to a break in the loose trust model that underpins much of the internet and has <a href="http://domainincite.com/%0Adocs/PROTECT-IP-Technical-Whitepaper-Final.pdf">caused fears that</a> SOPA could lead to the internet being balkanised into regional networks. </p>
<p>The court injunction would also force other intermediaries to stop dealing with the website. This means search engines would have to stop the website from appearing in their results, ad companies would have to stop paying the website for displaying their ads, and payment processors such as Mastercard, Visa and Paypal would have to stop dealing with the website. The last technique was used to <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43614907/ns/business-world_business/t/wikileaks-says-its-suing-visa-mastercard/">devastating effect</a> to choke the life out of WikiLeaks.</p>
<p>SOPA also allows intellectual property holders to launch legal actions against ad networks and search engines to force them to cut off access to a particular website that they deemed to be infringing. This means that any site dealing with user-generated content, such as YouTube, may be proactively blocked by intermediaries so as to head off potential liabilities. </p>
<h2>Worldwide issue</h2>
<p>These mechanisms will affect the internet substantially as the intermediaries involved are U.S. companies and provide some of the crucial functions for the operation of internet-based businesses. But overseas websites caught in such an action will have little to no recourse to fight these charges since the legal proceedings will be carried out in US courts. </p>
<p>The potential for SOPA to destabilise the key infrastructure of the internet has worried many people from governments and organisations across the globe. The European Parliament recently adopted a <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/244247/european_parliament_joins_criticism_of_sopa.html">strong resolution</a> criticising SOPA. </p>
<p>A group of around 60 human rights organisations have also <a href="https://www.eff.org/document/letter-human-rights-community-opposing-sopa">expressed their concern</a> with the provisions of the bill, noting that: “SOPA sends an unequivocal message to other nations that it is acceptable to censor speech on the global internet”. </p>
<p>It is undeniable that infringment of intellectual property is a major concern and that there’s a need for stronger mechanisms to protect the rights of the copyright holders. But the scorched-earth tactics espoused in SOPA can have far-reaching consequences that could affect the functioning of the internet as a medium of free speech and commerce. </p>
<p>Paradoxically, that could lead to the end of the very medium that copyright holders have employed to advertise their wares around the globe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/4434/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Srikumar Venugopal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A pair of bills currently making their way through US legislature has set off alarm bells among internet technologists and users worldwide. The aim of PROTECT-IP, in the Senate, and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy…Srikumar Venugopal, PhD; Lecturer in Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.