Ponder this scenario if you will. Let's say you are an amateur
musician and a bit internet savvy. Instead of trying to get a record label
deal, you decide to build your own site, and market your music yourself. You
register your domain, find a hosting service, design your site, begin posting
songs for sale on your site for some pocket change amount. Your collecting
money from advertisers, and sales of your music through various credit card
services like Visa, Mastercard, Discover etc.
Suddenly you get a notice stating that your site has been
taken offline. Suddenly you find:
- A record label claims they own the copyright on a single song on your site
- Your advertising has been yanked
- Visa/Mastercard/Etc froze your accounts
- Anyone who types in your url in their browser is denied visiting your site
- All search engines have removed your site from their search results
- Your domain name has been taken away from you by the US government
To defend yourself, you have to prove that you own the
rights to the music you created. In the meantime, your livelihood is offline
and unavailable. Even though you can prove you own all the music on your site,
you have a major financial loss; all without going to court.
So maybe you financially survived after proving you own the music.
After an extended amount of time, you finally get your site back up, and
recover. Suddenly it happens again. Not only has your site been taken down, The
same label is now suing you for not only copyright infringement on a new song
you posted, but is also suing you because they believe you are not working hard
enough to curb piracy on your site
Though this is an abuse of IP law, they may get a small
fine. You on the other hand are financially devastated even though you won in
court. This is just a possible scenario but rooted in reality. It will be a
fact of life if PIPA and SOPA are passed.
Take this news article for example.
When the DCMA was passed it had the potential for abuse.
Since it has been passed, it has been abused countless times. The most recent example of abuse of the DMCA
is UMG’s take down of a Tech News Daily episode from YouTube. They claimed
copyright infringement and had the video taken down for 10 days. They did this
knowing full well they had no copyright claim to the news show.
The PIPA/SOPA bills that are being pushed by our government
give unprecedented power to the MPAA, RIAA, major content producers and anyone
else who has a copyright. This is above
and beyond what the DMCA gave copyright owners. The bills give them this kind
of power in good faith that it will not be abused. Unfortunately, just as the
DMCA was, these will be too with far reaching consequences.
Piracy is a complex problem that needs to be resolved, and
these vague bills set forth by our government is not the answer. They are too
over reaching, too broad, and too damaging.
If somehow you don’t believe the DMCA has been abused and
that we are over reacting over the PIPA/SOPA bills. Here are some real life
examples for you.
