What with the recent ‘blackout’ conducted by Wikipedia, Reddit and a whole host of other websites in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), I thought it was worth taking some time to highlight a couple of other issues.  Whilst I wholeheartedly support any opposition to SOPA and PIPA, and fully accept that legislation passed within the United States has wide ranging consequences that not only affect internet usage outside US borders but also basically set the ‘world minimum baseline standard’ with regards to internet freedom, I was somewhat disheartened and frankly annoyed to see so many British bloggers, youtubers and websites so actively supporting US activists’ efforts to get the US Congress to reconsider these acts.

Totalbiscuit blacked out his youtube page and posted a highly informative video about why SOPA is bad, Yogscast blacked out their page and linked back to TB’s video etc etc.  And all of this is great, I’m not denying that.  It shows a bright new future where the internet community is not divided by country or flag, where we can all stand up and speak in one voice and it showed the power the voice of the internet has when we bother to work together.  Obviously I say that in the knowledge that SOPA and PIPA could still be passed into legislation, but the White House is actively against SOPA meaning that a veto is highly likely.  Building on that, considering the very public backlash against SOPA it is extremely unlikely that SOPA at least would get the 67 votes required for a supermajority in the US Senate (allowing the Senate to supercede any presidential veto).

Wait.  You’re pissed at fellow Brits opposing SOPA/PIPA but simultaneously applauding their efforts?  WTF RUNZ????

Yes I am, because although many of these Brits have very publicly stood up to oppose a censorship law in a foreign country (which was entirely the right thing to do), the UK Parliament already passed their version of this law back in 2010; the Digital Economy Act 2010.  Whilst there was discontent and concern about the Act, there was no wide scale opposition in the same manner as there was about SOPA.  To me, it’s ever so slightly disheartening that many Brit bloggers/youtubers/personalities care more about internet censorship in the US than in their own country.  The Digital Economy Act was rushed through parliament before the dissolution ahead of the general election, because of the dissolution the Bill received no scrutiny at all.  The Bill received Royal Assent and became law in 2010, although some provisions of the act will not be enforced until 2012 (so now then).  Specifically, Sections 3 to 16 deal with online infringement of copyright which ”…establishes a system of law which aims to first increase the ease of tracking down and suing persistent infringers, and after a minimum of one year permit the introduction of "technical measures" to reduce the quality of, or potentially terminate, those infringers' Internet connections. It also creates a new ex-judicial process to handle appeals.”  This is frankly incompatible with our legal system and includes the removal of the presumption of innocence and actually removes the requirement for burden of proof. 

In fact it was only due to the efforts of politically aware citizens who forced a review via the government’s Your Freedom website that Ofcom was asked to review the Act which led to the repeal of Sections 17 and 18 – but only because those sections were ‘not practically enforceable and existing legislation also did an effective job’.  Sections 17 and 18 gave the power the “block access to a location on the internet”.  Thankfully the UK’s biggest ISPs, BT and Talk Talk, are actively seeking a Judicial Review of the entire legislation claiming that the requirements of the legislation are not only onerous on them as service providers but are also incompatible with EU Law and were not proportionate with the crime they sought to prevent.  Although they lost the case in the High Court they are seeking an appeal.  This is one of the reasons I continue to be a BT customer.

So yes why I support the solidarity movement in opposing SOPA/PIPA, I find it somewhat hypocritical that many of these British internet personality were (and still are) bizarrely silent when it comes to the Digital Economy Act 2010.  This was a law passed by the previous government in a very underhand manner, designed to avoid parliamentary scrutiny and bypass our established parliamentary democracy.  By the time most members of the House of Commons realised what they had to pass into law (many of them were not present during the debate again because it was rushed prior to the dissolution of parliament and many members were gearing up to fight for re-election) it was already too late.

What’s worse is that copyright holders have attempted to exploit discontent with the Digital Economy Act to further their own agenda.  In June 2011 a copyright lobbyist group had engaged in roundtable discussions with UK minister Ed Vaizey, the group proposed “voluntary” website blocking which would expedite judicial procedure (read that as completely bypass) and “achieve a balance between evidence and speed of action” (read that as removing the burden of guilt to facilitate web blocking).  Even the UN’s Special Rapporteur sounded the alarm at these proposals.  As yet I don’t believe these proposals came to anything but they certainly highlight the need for citizens to be aware of both the power of lobbyist groups within governments all around the world and to be aware of the actions of their own governments.  Just because many of us live in free democratic western nations does not mean that our governments/parliaments are immune to having terrible lapses in judgement when it comes to new and scary technology such as the internet.  I say lapses in judgement/errors because to be honest the reason why laws this actually get passed most the time is because politicians are frequently not aware of the wide ranging implications such legislation can have and therefore listen to the ‘advice’ of powerful lobbyist groups to make their decisions.  Again you only need to listen to the recent SOPA debate in the US Congress to realise that the vast majority of congress members didn’t actually know what SOPA or PIPA was or what their impact as legislation would be.  Those who actually read the bill and understood its implications were vehemently opposed to it.  Reinforcing my view that a bunch of geriatrics who think a keyboard and mouse relates purely to a musical instrument popular in 80s pop music and a small rodent should not be making legislation about the possible the most important technical innovation since the invention of the telephone. 

The next thing parliament seems intent on ballsing up is Net Neutrality in which the government, woefully unprepared to deal with the greater issues of this subject, is actually prepared to allow net service providers the right to prioritise revenue making traffic.  This effectively means that in order to maintain a high speed connection you would effectively have to pay your ISP twice; once for providing an internet service and again as a premium to be 'prioritised'.  This always allows ISPs to avoid paying for significant infrastructure upgrade to boost internet speed and capicity in the UK.  Anyone living in the UK will likely tell you that our 'net infrastructure' is far behind many other countries in Europe and definitely behind the US, despite government targets to have the entire population ‘connected to highspeed broadspeed’ by 2013 (I believe I could be wrong on the deadline).

Once again whilst I applaud the solidarity shown to our American brethren with regards to SOPA and PIPA, I urge all British bloggers, youtubers and internet personalities to stop and consider the very similar legislation that is already law within their own country.  I would urge you to visit the Open Rights Group and sign their petition seeking the repeal of the Digital Economy Act 2010.